Variations in associative memory design

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the anaiysis and synthesis of neurai networks to be used as associative memories. First considering a discrete-time neurai network modei which uses a quantizer-type muitiievei activation function, a way of seiecting the connection weights is proposed. In addition to this, the idea of overiapping decompositions, which is extensiveiy used in the soiution of iarge-scaie probiems, is appiied to discrete-time neurai networks with binary neurons. 'I’lie necesscuy toois for expansions and contractions are derived, and algorithms for decomposition of a set equiiibria into smaiier dimensionai equiiibria sets and for designing neurai networks for these smaiier ciimensionai equiiibria sets are given. The concept is iiiustrated with various exarnpies.