Abstract: Artificial neural network (ANN)-based methods belong to one of the most growing research fields within the artificial intelligence ecosystem, and many novel contributions have been developed over the last years. They are applied in many contexts, although some “influencing factors” such as the number of neurons, the number of hidden layers, and the learning rate can impact the performance of the resulting artificial neural network-based applications. This paper provides a deep analysis about artificial neural network performance based on such factors for real-world temperature forecasting applications. An improved back propagation algorithm for such applications is also presented. By using the results of this paper, researchers and practitioners can analyse the encountered issues when applying ANN-based models for their own specific applications with the aim of achieving better performance indexes.
Keywords: Artificial neural network, optimization, modeling and simulation, improved back propagation neural network, temperature forecasting applications
