A comparison of back propagation and generalized regression neural networks performance in neutron spectrometry

The process of unfolding the neutron energy spectrum has been the subject of research for many years. Monte Carlo, iterative methods, the bayesian theory, the principle of maximum entropy are some of the methods used. The drawbacks associated with traditional unfolding procedures have motivated the need of complementary approaches. Back Propagation Neural Networks (BPNN), have been applied with success in the neutron spectrometry and dosimetry domains, however, the structure and the learning parameters are factors that contribute in a significant way in the networks performance. In artificial neural network domain, Generalized Regression Neural Network (GRNN) is one of the simplest neural networks in term of network architecture and learning algorithm. The learning is instantaneous, which mean require no time for training. Opposite to BPNN, a GRNN would be formed instantly with just a 1-pass training with the development data. In the network development phase, the only hurdle is to tune the hyper parameter, which is known as sigma, governing the smoothness of the network. The aim of this work was to compare the performance of BPNN and GRNN in the solution of the neutron spectrometry problem. From results obtained can be observed that despite the very similar results, GRNN performs better than BPNN. (Author)