An empirical study of impact of crossover operators on the performance of non-binary genetic algorithm based neural approaches for classification

We study the performance of genetic algorithm (GA) based artificial neural network (ANN) for different crossover operators. We use simulated and real life data to test the performance of GA-based ANN. Our results indicate that arithmetic crossover operator may be a suitable crossover operator for GA based ANN. Genetic algorithm based artificial neural networks are used in several classification and forecasting applications. Among several genetic algorithm design operators, crossover plays an important role for convergence to the global heuristic solution. Several crossover operators exist, and selection of a crossover operator is an important design issue confronted by most researchers. The current study investigates the impact of different crossover operators on the performance of genetic algorithm based artificial neural networks.