The Mixture of Multi-kernel Relevance Vector Machines Model

Abstract

We present a new regression mixture model where each mixture component is a multi-kernel version of the Relevance Vector Machine (RVM). In the proposed model, we exploit the enhanced modeling capability of RVMs due to their embedded sparsity enforcing properties. %The main contribution of this %work is the employment of RVM models as components of a mixture %model and their application to the time series clustering problem. Moreover, robustness is achieved with respect to the kernel parameters, by employing a weighted multi-kernel scheme. The mixture model is trained using the maximum a posteriori (MAP) approach, where the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm is applied offering closed form update equations for the model parameters. An incremental learning methodology is also presented to tackle the parameter initialization problem of the EM algorithm. The efficiency of the proposed mixture model is empirically demonstrated on the time series clustering problem using various artificial and real benchmark datasets and by performing comparisons with other regression mixture models.