Short-term traffic flow prediction based on improved wavelet neural network

Abstract

Due to the characteristics of time-varying traffic and nonlinearity, the short-term traffic flow data are difficult to predict accurately. The purpose of this paper is to improve the short-term traffic flow prediction accuracy through the proposed improved wavelet neural network prediction model and provide basic data and decision support for the intelligent traffic management system. In view of the extremely strong nonlinear processing power, self-organization, self-adaptation and learning ability of wavelet neural network (WNN), this paper uses it as the basic prediction model and uses the particle swarm optimization algorithm for the slow convergence rate and local optimal problem of WNN prediction algorithm. With the advantages of fast convergence, high robustness and strong global search ability, an improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed to optimize the wavelet neural network prediction model. The improved wavelet neural network is used to predict short-term traffic flow. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is more efficient than the WNN and PSO–WNN algorithms alone. The prediction results are more stable and more accurate. Compared with the traditional wavelet neural network, the error is reduced by 14.994%.