Reservoir computing decoupling memory–nonlinearity trade-off

Reservoir computing (RC), a variant recurrent neural network, has very compact architecture and ability to efficiently reconstruct nonlinear dynamics by combining both memory capacity and nonlinear transformations. However, in the standard RC framework, there is a trade-off between memory capacity and nonlinear mapping, which limits its ability to handle complex tasks with long-term dependencies. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a new RC framework called neural delayed reservoir computing (ND-RC) with a chain structure reservoir that can decouple the memory capacity and nonlinearity, allowing for independent tuning of them, respectively. The proposed ND-RC model offers a promising solution to the memory-nonlinearity trade-off problem in RC and provides a more flexible and effective approach for modeling complex nonlinear systems with long-term dependencies. The proposed ND-RC framework is validated with typical benchmark nonlinear systems and is particularly successful in reconstructing and predicting the Mackey-Glass system with high time delays. The memory-nonlinearity decoupling ability is further confirmed by several standard tests.