Special Issue Reprint

Computational Intelligence
and Machine Learning
Models and Applications

Edited by
Grzegorz Dudek

[Link]/journal/electronics
Computational Intelligence and
Machine Learning: Models and
Applications
Computational Intelligence and
Machine Learning: Models and
Applications

Guest Editor
Grzegorz Dudek

Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade • Novi Sad • Cluj • Manchester

Guest Editor
Grzegorz Dudek
Department of Electrical
Engineering
Cze˛stochowa University of
Technology
Cze˛stochowa
Poland

Editorial Office
MDPI AG
Grosspeteranlage 5
4052 Basel, Switzerland

This is a reprint of the Special Issue, published open access by the journal Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292),
freely accessible at: [Link] issues/0786LJ4A25.

For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as
indicated below:

Lastname, A.A.; Lastname, B.B. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Volume Number, Page Range.

ISBN 978-3-7258-3895-0 (Hbk)

ISBN 978-3-7258-3896-7 (PDF)
[Link]

© 2025 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative
Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms
and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
license ([Link]
Contents

About the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Grzegorz Dudek
Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning: Advances in Models and Applications
Reprinted from: Electronics 2025, 14, 1530, [Link] . . . . . 1

Erke Aribas and Evren Daglarli

Transforming Personalized Travel Recommendations: Integrating Generative AI with Personality
Models
Reprinted from: Electronics 2024, 13, 4751, [Link] . . . . . 11

Jiangqiang Zhu, Kai Li, Jinjia Peng and Jing Qi

Self-Supervised Graph Attention Collaborative Filtering for Recommendation
Reprinted from: Electronics 2023, 12, 793, [Link] . . . . . . 33

Haoyu Xu, Guodong Wu, Enting Zhai, Xiu Jin and Lijing Tu
Preference-Aware Light Graph Convolution Network for Social Recommendation
Reprinted from: Electronics 2023, 12, 2397, [Link] . . . . . 50

Hüseyin Polat, Alp Kaan Turan, Cemal Koçak and Hasan Basri Ulaş
Implementation of a Whisper Architecture-Based Turkish Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
System and Evaluation of the Effect of Fine-Tuning with a Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA)
Adapter on Its Performance
Reprinted from: Electronics 2024, 13, 4227, [Link] . . . . . 69

Biaozhang Huang and Xinde Li

GGTr: An Innovative Framework for Accurate and Realistic Human Motion Prediction
Reprinted from: Electronics 2023, 12, 3305, [Link] . . . . . 95

Meshrif Alruily
ArRASA: Channel Optimization for Deep Learning-Based Arabic NLU Chatbot Framework
Reprinted from: Electronics 2022, 11, 3745, [Link] electronics11223745 . . . . . 112

Caiping Hu, Xuekui Sun, Hua Dai, Hangchuan Zhang and Haiqiang Liu
Research on Log Anomaly Detection Based on Sentence-BERT
Reprinted from: Electronics 2023, 12, 3580, [Link] . . . . . 128

Samet Memiş
Picture Fuzzy Soft Matrices and Application of Their Distance Measures to Supervised
Learning: Picture Fuzzy Soft k-Nearest Neighbor (PFS-kNN)
Reprinted from: Electronics 2023, 12, 4129, [Link] . . . . . 144

Jenny Aracely Segovia, Jonathan Fernando Toaquiza, Jacqueline Rosario Llanos and David
Raimundo Rivas
Meteorological Variables Forecasting System Using Machine Learning and Open-Source
Software
Reprinted from: Electronics 2023, 12, 1007, [Link] . . . . . 169

Mohamed Ashik Shahul Hameed, Asifa Mehmood Qureshi and Abhishek Kaushik
Bias Mitigation via Synthetic Data Generation: A Review
Reprinted from: Electronics 2024, 13, 3909, [Link] . . . . . 188

v
About the Editor
Grzegorz Dudek
Grzegorz Dudek is a professor of Information and Communication Technology. He received
his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Czestochowa University of Technology (CUT), Poland, in
2003, and he completed his habilitation in Computer Science at the Lodz University of Technology,
Poland, in 2013. In 2023, he was appointed as a full professor. Currently, he is a professor at
the Department of Electrical Engineering, CUT, and Department of Mathematics and Computer
Science, University of Lodz. His research primarily focuses on machine learning and artificial
intelligence, with a strong emphasis on their applications in classification, regression, forecasting,
and optimization. He has authored and co-authored four books and over 140 scientific papers in
these areas. Notably, he has been recognized in the global ranking of the world’s most influential
scientists (top 2% list) compiled by Stanford University and Elsevier.

vii
Preface
This Special Issue brings together a diverse and timely selection of research contributions
that explore the theoretical foundations, methodological innovations, and practical applications of
intelligent computational systems. The aim of this collection is to highlight emerging trends and
pressing challenges in machine learning and computational intelligence, offering new perspectives
on how these technologies can be more effectively developed, adapted, and deployed in real-world
environments.
The scope of the Special Issue spans a wide range of topics, including personalized
recommendation systems, social network analysis, predictive modeling, speech recognition in
low-resource languages, log anomaly detection, natural language understanding in Arabic, bias
mitigation through synthetic data generation, and meteorological forecasting. The studies presented
here employ a rich set of methodologies, such as transformer architectures, graph neural networks,
retrieval-augmented generation, self-supervised learning, and fuzzy logic frameworks, to address the
complexity, uncertainty, and dynamism of real-world data.
The motivation behind compiling this Special Issue stems from the growing importance of
machine learning in shaping decision-making systems, user experiences, and data-driven services
across various domains. As AI continues to evolve from experimental prototypes into large-scale
systems with social and economic impact, there is an urgent need to ensure these technologies are
not only powerful and efficient but also interpretable, fair, and inclusive. This collection reflects that
shift, with several papers emphasizing the importance of model transparency, domain adaptation,
and ethical considerations.
The Special Issue is intended for a broad audience that includes researchers, practitioners, and
graduate students in computer science, artificial intelligence, data science, and engineering. It may
also serve as a resource for professionals working in application areas such as healthcare, finance,
transportation, energy, and software systems who seek to understand and apply the latest advances
in machine learning and computational intelligence to their specific challenges.
By bringing together these diverse yet thematically connected contributions, we hope
this volume will inform, inspire, and guide future research and development in the field,
encouraging new collaborations, methodological refinements, and impactful applications of
intelligent technologies.

Grzegorz Dudek
Guest Editor

ix
Editorial

Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning: Advances

in Models and Applications
Grzegorz Dudek 1,2

1 Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Cz˛estochowa University of Technology, 42-201 Cz˛estochowa, Poland;

[Link]@[Link]
2 Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Łódź, 90-136 Łódź, Poland

1. Introduction
Computational intelligence (CI) and machine learning (ML) have evolved into founda-
tional pillars of modern data-driven research, with growing impacts across domains such
as engineering, medicine, finance, and environmental science [1]. Their capacity to learn
patterns from data and adapt to dynamic environments makes them indispensable tools
for both academic and industrial innovation. The past decade has seen a surge in interest
and the practical deployment of CI and ML models, ranging from classical techniques like
decision trees and support vector machines to recent breakthroughs in deep learning and
large language models [2].
Despite their progress, the development and application of CI and ML algorithms re-
main complex and challenging. A persistent issue lies in the appropriate selection of model
architectures and training strategies to ensure both learning efficacy and generalization [3].
This challenge becomes even more pronounced in practical contexts where data may be
noisy, sparse, high-dimensional, or subject to dynamic shifts. Moreover, the increasing
societal reliance on AI systems has heightened the demand for models that are not only
accurate but also interpretable, fair, and robust [4].
In response to these demands, recent research has explored both foundational improve-
ments to learning mechanisms and application-specific enhancements. For instance, one of
the highlighted contributions in this Special Issue addresses the limitations of traditional rec-
ommendation systems by incorporating generative AI with psychological modeling to per-
sonalize travel recommendations. Another study introduces self-supervised learning into
Received: 25 March 2025
Accepted: 9 April 2025
graph-based collaborative filtering, achieving better representation learning and reducing
Published: 10 April 2025 the reliance on labeled data. Further advancements are seen in the use of preference-aware
Citation: Dudek, G. Computational
graph neural networks to filter social signals and in the adaptation of large transformer-
Intelligence and Machine Learning: based models to improve automatic speech recognition in low-resource languages
Advances in Models and like Turkish.
Applications. Electronics 2025, 14, This Special Issue brings together ten papers selected from 40 submissions that ex-
1530. https://
emplify the diversity and maturity of current research in CI and ML. These works not
[Link]/10.3390/electronics14081530
only introduce novel algorithms and architectures but also demonstrate how to rigorously
evaluate them in real-world settings, ranging from environmental prediction using open-
Copyright: © 2025 by the author.
source ML toolkits to bias mitigation in healthcare through synthetic data generation. A
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
recurring theme across these papers is the emphasis on data-centric methodologies, from
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
feature engineering and data augmentation to the design of metrics for fairness, utility,
conditions of the Creative Commons and interpretability.
Attribution (CC BY) license Together, these studies illustrate the field’s transition toward more specialized, context-
([Link] aware, and socially responsible AI systems. They reflect the community’s ongoing effort
licenses/by/4.0/).

Electronics 2025, 14, 1530 [Link]

1
Electronics 2025, 14, 1530

to balance model complexity with usability, accuracy with equity, and innovation with
reproducibility. In doing so, they offer valuable insights not only into technical progress but
also into the broader implications of deploying intelligent systems across various domains
of human activity.

2. Summary of the Contributions

The paper by Aribas and Daglarli addresses the challenge of improving personalized
travel recommendations by integrating generative AI with personality models. Classical
travel recommendation systems rely on collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and
machine learning models. However, these approaches often fail to capture the complexity of
individual user preferences, leading to suboptimal and generic suggestions. Data sparsity,
limited adaptability, and an inability to dynamically adjust to evolving user behaviors
further limit their effectiveness.
This problem is particularly relevant because the increasing availability of travel-
related data presents travelers with an overwhelming number of choices. Without an
efficient way to filter through these options, users struggle to find experiences that align
with their interests. Traditional recommendation systems do not account for personality-
driven preferences, which can significantly impact the suitability of travel suggestions.
Advances in artificial intelligence and personalization now make it possible to refine recom-
mendations, improving user satisfaction and engagement. The integration of psychological
models into AI-powered systems offers a way to address these limitations, making travel
planning more efficient and enjoyable.
The study proposes a novel approach that combines Retrieval-Augmented Generation
(RAG) with personality psychology to enhance personalization. The system consists of
three key components: a travel data retrieval mechanism, which gathers relevant infor-
mation from online sources using web crawlers and a vector-based search; an AI-driven
recommendation model, built on a large language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT; and
personality integration, which incorporates the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and
Big Five (BF) traits to refine recommendations based on psychological factors. The system
continuously adapts to user feedback, improving over time.
The evaluation results show a user satisfaction rate of 78%, outperforming traditional
methods. Accuracy in aligning recommendations with user preferences reached 82%,
with performance varying by personality type (85% for extroverts, 75% for introverts).
Precision and recall scores of 0.84 and 0.78 further validate its effectiveness. A case study at
Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar demonstrates the system’s impact, increasing engagement by 25%
and satisfaction by 30%. Statistical tests confirm the significance of these results.
The study introduces several innovations, including the first integration of personality
models into generative AI for travel recommendations. Compared to traditional recom-
mendation models, it improves user satisfaction by 18% and accuracy by 14%. Future
research directions include expanding personality model integration, refining contextual
personalization, and enhancing explainable AI methods. The study establishes a founda-
tion for AI-driven personalization with applications beyond travel, including e-commerce
and healthcare.
The paper by Zhu et al. builds upon previous research in recommendation systems,
particularly in the application of graph neural networks (GNNs) for collaborative filtering.
While existing models leverage GNNs to improve recommendations, they suffer from limi-
tations such as sparse supervised signals, noise in user–item interactions, and an inability
to effectively model long-tail items. The study introduces Self-Supervised Graph Attention
Collaborative Filtering (SGACF) as a novel approach to addressing these challenges.

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Electronics 2025, 14, 1530

The core problem being solved is the inefficiency of existing GNN-based recommenda-
tion systems in handling sparse interactions and noisy data. Traditional models struggle to
accurately represent user preferences, especially for long-tail items that lack sufficient inter-
actions. This issue is crucial because it affects the quality and diversity of recommendations,
limiting the personalization potential of recommender systems. Additionally, most models
operate in a fully supervised paradigm, which heavily relies on explicit user feedback that
is often scarce and biased.
To address these issues, the proposed method incorporates self-supervised learning
(SSL) into a graph attention network (GAT)-based collaborative filtering framework. The
model consists of two primary components: a supervised learning task using a multi-head
graph attention network (GAT) and an auxiliary self-supervised learning task that enhances
representation learning. The GAT component refines node representations by assigning
different importance weights to neighboring nodes, mitigating the impact of noisy data.
The self-supervised learning task employs contrastive learning, generating multiple views
of each node through graph data augmentation techniques such as node masking, edge
masking, and layer masking. The model maximizes the consistency between different views
of the same node while minimizing the consistency between the views of different nodes.
This study conducts extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets—Yelp2018,
Gowalla, and Amazon—to evaluate the effectiveness of SGACF. The results demonstrate
significant improvements in accuracy and robustness compared to existing methods. The
model outperforms state-of-the-art recommendation models, including Neural Matrix
Factorization (NeuMF), Spectral Collaborative Filtering, and Neural Graph Collaborative
Filtering (NGCF). Notably, SGACF achieves better recall and normalized discounted cumu-
lative gain (NDCG) scores, particularly in mitigating the long-tail problem by enhancing
the representation of low-degree nodes.
The key innovations of this work include the integration of self-supervised contrastive
learning into graph-based recommendation models, the use of multi-head graph attention
to improve representation learning, and the introduction of novel data augmentation
strategies for graph-based learning. Unlike previous approaches, this method effectively
reduces the reliance on explicit user feedback, improves model generalization, and enhances
recommendation diversity.
The contributions of this research are substantial. It establishes a new paradigm
for self-supervised learning in recommendation systems, demonstrating that auxiliary
self-supervised tasks can significantly enhance supervised learning. The introduction
of graph attention networks in combination with self-supervised contrastive learning
provides a novel approach to tackling the challenges of data sparsity, interaction noise,
and long-tail recommendations. Future research directions include further exploration of
data augmentation techniques for graph-based learning, improving contrastive learning
frameworks, and extending self-supervised learning to broader recommendation scenarios.
This work marks a significant advancement in AI-driven recommendation models, offering
a more efficient, scalable, and accurate approach to personalized recommendations.
The paper by Xu et al. explores the challenge of enhancing social recommendation
systems by introducing a preference-aware graph neural network approach. Traditional
recommendation systems, especially those based on collaborative filtering, often suffer
from data sparsity, which limits their ability to provide personalized recommendations.
Many existing social recommendation models incorporate user relationships to mitigate
this issue, but they frequently fail to properly filter out irrelevant or negative informa-
tion from high-order neighbors. This results in a decline in recommendation accuracy
and effectiveness.

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Electronics 2025, 14, 1530

This problem is crucial because social recommendation systems are increasingly used
in e-commerce, social media, and content recommendation platforms. The challenge of
information overload makes it difficult for users to find relevant content. Introducing social
connections can enhance recommendation accuracy, but only if those connections are mean-
ingfully filtered to ensure that only relevant social signals contribute to recommendations.
To address these challenges, the authors propose the Preference-Aware Light Graph
Convolutional Network (PLGCN). This model consists of several key components. First,
it includes an unsupervised subgraph construction module, which clusters users into
subgraphs based on their preferences. By grouping users with similar preferences, the
PLGCN effectively filters out negative or irrelevant messages from users with different
interests. Second, a feature aggregation module is designed to combine user embeddings
with social and interaction information more effectively. Finally, the model employs a
lightweight GNN framework, removing nonlinear activation and feature transformation
operations to prevent overfitting and improve computational efficiency.
The authors conducted comprehensive experiments on two real-world datasets,
LastFM and Ciao, to evaluate the performance of the PLGCN. The results indicate that
the PLGCN outperforms state-of-the-art methods, particularly in addressing the cold-start
problem, where new users or items have limited interaction data. Compared to baseline
models such as NGCF, LightGCN, and SocialLGN, the PLGCN achieved superior precision,
recall, and normalized discounted cumulative gain (NDCG) scores, demonstrating its
effectiveness in providing more accurate and relevant recommendations.
The study introduces several key innovations. The preference-aware subgraph con-
struction module represents a novel approach to filtering negative information in social
recommendation systems, significantly improving recommendation performance. The
lightweight GNN framework reduces model complexity while maintaining high accuracy,
making it more suitable for large-scale applications. The feature aggregation module en-
hances user representations by integrating interaction and social information in a more
structured way.
In terms of contributions, this work advances the field of social recommendation by
introducing an efficient and scalable model that outperforms existing GNN-based recom-
mendation approaches. The proposed methodology demonstrates improved performance
in cold-start scenarios, which remains a major challenge in recommendation systems. The
study also highlights the potential for further enhancements, including incorporating ad-
ditional social features such as trust levels and exploring dynamic social networks where
user preferences evolve over time. This research provides a strong foundation for future
developments in AI-driven personalized recommendations, with practical applications
extending beyond social recommendations to e-commerce, online streaming platforms, and
digital marketing strategies.
The study by Polat et al. investigates the development and optimization of an auto-
matic speech recognition (ASR) system for Turkish using the Whisper architecture and
evaluates the performance gains achieved through fine-tuning with Low-Rank Adaptation
(LoRA). The main problem being tackled is the limited performance of ASR systems in low-
resource languages such as Turkish. Despite the capabilities of modern transformer-based
models like Whisper, their accuracy in Turkish remains suboptimal due to the language’s
morphological complexity, dialectal variation, and the scarcity of high-quality labeled
datasets. These limitations make it difficult to achieve reliable, scalable ASR performance
in real-world Turkish applications.
To overcome this, the authors implement an end-to-end ASR system using Whisper
and fine-tune it with the LoRA technique. Whisper is based on a transformer architecture
known for its ability to handle multilingual, noisy, and long-context inputs effectively.

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However, Whisper’s training is biased toward high-resource languages like English. LoRA
addresses the challenge of fine-tuning large-scale models by introducing low-rank trainable
matrices, drastically reducing the number of parameters to be updated during training. This
makes the fine-tuning process more computationally efficient and accessible, particularly
for low-resource languages.
The study uses five Turkish speech datasets—METU MS, TNST, Mozilla Common
Voice, FLEURS, and TASRT—to evaluate the system’s performance before and after fine-
tuning. The results show significant improvements in word error rates (WERs) and charac-
ter error rates (CERs), especially in the Whisper medium and large models after applying
LoRA. For example, the WER was reduced by up to 52%, with corresponding decreases
in the CER, demonstrating the effectiveness of LoRA-enhanced fine-tuning. The paper
also includes a comparative analysis with the Google USM ASR model, showing that the
Whisper-large-v3 model outperforms Google’s system on most datasets in both the WER
and CER.
A key advancement of this study is the application of LoRA to the Whisper model
for Turkish ASR, combined with a thorough evaluation across multiple speech datasets
and targeted improvements to dataset quality. Through the use of a transformer-based
architecture optimized via a parameter-efficient fine-tuning approach, the research enhances
the adaptability of large-scale ASR systems for languages with limited resources.
The study makes two primary contributions: it demonstrates that Whisper can be
effectively adapted to Turkish using LoRA, and it provides a framework for improving
ASR performance in other low-resource languages with similar challenges. The study
underscores the value of transformer-based models combined with efficient fine-tuning
techniques and sets a precedent for further research in multilingual, resource-constrained
ASR development.
The paper by Huang and Li proposes a novel framework called GGTr to address the
problem of human motion prediction, which involves forecasting future body movements
based on past pose sequences. This task is particularly challenging due to the high complex-
ity, variability, and uncertainty of human motion, which involves intricate spatial–temporal
dependencies among body joints. Existing models often fail to simultaneously capture both
local and global temporal dynamics or accurately represent spatial interactions between
joints, limiting their performance in real-world applications such as robotics, surveillance,
and human–computer interaction.
The authors address these limitations by proposing a new architecture that integrates
Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs), Gated Recurrent Units (GRUs), and transformer
layers. The GCN module incorporates a learned positional representation, allowing the
model to capture complex spatial relationships between joints beyond fixed adjacency
matrices. GRUs are used to model local temporal dependencies in joint motion, while
the transformer layers extract long-range temporal patterns, enabling the network to
effectively handle both short-term transitions and long-term dynamics within human
motion sequences.
The GGTr model is trained end-to-end using the mean per joint position error (MPJPE)
as a loss function and is optimized with the AdamW optimizer. Evaluations are con-
ducted on two benchmark datasets, Human3.6M and CMU-MoCap, where the proposed
framework consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods across both short-term and
long-term motion prediction tasks. The results show especially strong performance im-
provements for complex, irregular, and non-periodic movements, where traditional models
often struggle.
Among the novel contributions of this work is the integration of position-aware GCNs
with temporal modeling using GRUs and transformer layers, creating a unified framework

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Electronics 2025, 14, 1530

capable of learning intricate spatial–temporal dependencies. The use of joint-specific

attention mechanisms allows the model to dynamically assess the relevance of neighboring
joints, enhancing spatial representation. This design enables the network to effectively
process both short-term and long-term motion patterns, resulting in improved prediction
accuracy. The paper also includes detailed ablation studies that validate the role of each
architectural component and identifies a transition point at 320 ms, where the complexity
of prediction noticeably shifts, revealing further insight into the temporal dynamics of
human motion.
The paper by Alruily focuses on the development of an optimized deep learning-based
chatbot framework for Arabic, addressing the challenge of limited research and resources
available for natural language understanding (NLU) in Arabic. While chatbot technology
has seen significant advances for widely used languages like English and Chinese, Arabic
remains underrepresented despite being one of the most used languages online. The
complexity of Arabic morphology, dialectal variation, and orthographic inconsistency
makes it particularly difficult to develop effective NLU systems, especially in closed-
domain applications relevant to industry.
To address this, the authors propose ArRASA, a closed-domain Arabic chatbot frame-
work built on the RASA open-source conversational AI platform. The system is structured
around a four-phase pipeline: tokenization, feature extraction, intent classification, and
entity extraction. Unlike previous rule-based or retrieval-based Arabic chatbots, ArRASA
incorporates a transformer-based architecture, notably using the Dual Intent and Entity
Transformer (DIET), which enables the joint learning of intent recognition and entity tag-
ging. The approach also involves masked language modeling (MLM) and next sentence
prediction (NSP) tasks during pre-training to better capture linguistic context. Tokenization
and featurization are adapted specifically for Arabic, and the system employs various
tokenizers and featurizers (e.g., Arcab, Count Vectorizer, Tf-idf) to optimize input repre-
sentation. SMOTE (synthetic minority over-sampling technique) is used to address data
imbalance in training samples.
The system’s architecture is enhanced through several improvements over the baseline
DIET model. These include increasing the number of transformer layers, expanding
embedding dimensions and hidden layer sizes, and integrating dropout strategies to
prevent overfitting. Experimental results show that ArRASA achieves high accuracy:
97% for intent classification and 95% for entity extraction. Performance comparisons
with baseline models, including traditional DIET, keyword-based, and fallback classifiers,
demonstrate measurable improvements in both tasks. The framework was also evaluated
on a custom-built dataset that reflects diverse industrial intents and entities.
This research presents a scalable and domain-adaptable framework for building Arabic
language chatbots. By leveraging transformers and optimization techniques tailored for
Arabic, the proposed system sets a new standard in the field of Arabic NLU, providing a
strong foundation for further development in both industry and research.
The paper by Hu et al. addresses the challenge of detecting anomalies in system log
data, a critical task for maintaining the stability and reliability of modern software systems.
As these systems generate vast volumes of log data, traditional rule-based and statistical
anomaly detection methods become inadequate due to limited scalability, sensitivity to data
structure changes, and inability to capture deeper semantic patterns in log sequences. The
increasing complexity of systems demands more robust, adaptive, and accurate detection
methods capable of identifying subtle and previously unseen anomalies.
To tackle this problem, the authors propose LogADSBERT, a log anomaly detection
framework that integrates Sentence-BERT for extracting semantic features from log events
with a Bi-LSTM neural network to capture sequential dependencies. The method consists

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Electronics 2025, 14, 1530

of two primary stages: model training and anomaly detection. In the training phase, a log
parser converts raw logs into structured events and triples, which are then used to train
the Sentence-BERT-based semantic vector model (T-SBERT). These vectors are arranged
into sequences and passed through a Bi-LSTM model trained to learn normal log behavior.
During detection, new logs are parsed, transformed into semantic vectors, and analyzed
using the trained Bi-LSTM model to identify anomalies based on a similarity threshold.
The approach advances current practices by combining semantic feature extraction
from Sentence-BERT with sequence modeling through a Bi-LSTM equipped with an at-
tention mechanism. This design enables the model to better understand contextual re-
lationships between log events, increasing both detection accuracy and robustness. The
framework also includes a semantic matching algorithm that supports generalization to
new log events, addressing a key limitation of prior models which perform poorly when
log formats change or new events appear.
Evaluation on two real-world datasets, HDFS and OpenStack, shows that Lo-
gADSBERT outperforms existing deep learning-based methods such as DeepLog and
LogAnomaly in terms of precision, recall, and F1-score. The model demonstrates particular
strength in handling newly injected log events, maintaining high detection performance
even when encountering previously unseen patterns. Experimental results also confirm the
method’s resilience across different hyperparameter settings, indicating its adaptability to
diverse application environments.
Overall, the study presents a semantically enriched and sequence-aware approach to
log anomaly detection that significantly improves accuracy, robustness, and generalization
compared to traditional and existing deep learning methods. This work highlights the
importance of integrating natural language processing techniques with temporal modeling
in system monitoring applications.
The paper by Memiş deals with the formalization and application of picture fuzzy
soft matrices (pfs-matrices) in supervised learning, particularly by introducing a new
classification algorithm called Picture Fuzzy Soft k-Nearest Neighbor (PFS-kNN). The
problem being addressed arises from inconsistencies in earlier definitions of picture fuzzy
sets and picture fuzzy soft sets. These inconsistencies limit the reliability and applicability of
pfs-sets and their matrix forms in computational tasks, especially those involving uncertain
or imprecise information, such as real-world decision-making or classification problems.
The issue is significant because many complex problems, especially in areas like
medical diagnosis or preference-based decision-making, involve uncertainty that cannot
be effectively captured by classical mathematical tools. Traditional fuzzy set models and
even their extensions, like intuitionistic or Pythagorean fuzzy sets, struggle to fully express
cases that include partial agreement, disagreement, and abstention (such as in voting
scenarios). Picture fuzzy sets address this by introducing three degrees: membership, non-
membership, and neutrality. However, without a consistent matrix-based representation
and valid mathematical operations, their use in machine learning remains limited.
To resolve this, the author redefines the structure of pfs-matrices to eliminate logical
and algebraic contradictions present in earlier models. These matrices allow for the repre-
sentation of data points with complex uncertainty structures in a way that is suitable for
computation. The paper then defines a set of new distance measures—such as Minkowski,
Euclidean, and Hamming distances—for comparing pfs-matrices. These distance measures
are used in the construction of the PFS-kNN classifier, which adapts the classical k-Nearest
Neighbor algorithm to the picture fuzzy soft set context by evaluating similarity between
pfs-matrices rather than standard numerical vectors.
The classifier is tested using four medical datasets from the UCI Machine Learning
Repository. The proposed method demonstrates superior performance compared to existing

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Electronics 2025, 14, 1530

kNN-based classifiers across multiple metrics, including accuracy, precision, recall, and
F1-score. In 72 out of 128 evaluation cases, PFS-kNN outperforms the baselines.
What distinguishes this approach is the fusion of a restructured mathematical frame-
work with a practical supervised learning application. The paper not only resolves the-
oretical flaws in the structure and operations of pfs-matrices but also shows that these
improvements lead to better modeling of uncertainty in real-world datasets. As a result,
this work establishes a more robust foundation for integrating the picture fuzzy soft set
theory into machine learning, with potential applications in any domain requiring nuanced
handling of vague, partial, or conflicting information.
The study by Segovia addresses the problem of accurately forecasting meteorolog-
ical variables—specifically temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, and wind
speed—using machine learning techniques implemented in open-source software. The
significance of this issue lies in the increasing demand for reliable weather prediction to
support applications in renewable energy management, agriculture, environmental moni-
toring, and public health. Climate variability and the nonlinear behavior of atmospheric
variables make traditional statistical approaches insufficient, especially in regions with
complex weather dynamics like the study area in Ecuador.
To meet this challenge, the authors propose a forecasting system based on Python and
compare the performance of six supervised learning models: multiple linear regression,
polynomial regression, decision tree, random forest, XGBoost, and the multilayer percep-
tron neural network. The models were trained and tested using a one-year dataset collected
every five minutes from a meteorological station in the Tungurahua province of Ecuador.
Each model’s performance was assessed using four evaluation metrics. The findings show
that the random forest model consistently delivers the most accurate predictions across
most variables. However, wind speed posed the greatest forecasting challenge due to its
high variability, with the best results for this variable obtained using XGBoost.
What distinguishes this work is the development of a low-cost, replicable forecast-
ing system based entirely on open-source tools. The methodology is adaptable to other
meteorological contexts and supports broader implementations in intelligent agriculture
and microgrid control. The approach demonstrates the capacity of ensemble methods
and neural networks to model complex atmospheric behaviors and suggests that machine
learning can offer reliable and scalable solutions for real-time environmental prediction.
The paper by Shahul Hameed examines the use of synthetic data generation as a
strategy for mitigating bias in artificial intelligence systems, with a particular focus on
medical datasets. The problem it addresses stems from the growing concern that AI models,
especially in healthcare, can replicate and even amplify societal biases present in training
data. These biases can result in unfair treatment recommendations, misdiagnoses, or
unequal access to healthcare services for certain demographic groups, particularly those
underrepresented in existing datasets.
This issue is especially critical in clinical settings, where algorithmic decisions can
have direct implications on patient outcomes. For example, biased models may lead to
disparities in diagnoses or therapeutic suggestions across racial, gender, or socioeconomic
groups. Traditional approaches to mitigate bias—such as algorithmic adjustments, pre-
or post-processing of data, or attempts to diversify existing datasets—are often limited in
effectiveness or introduce trade-offs, such as a loss of data fidelity. Synthetic data generation
offers an alternative that maintains the statistical structure of the original dataset while
improving representativeness and privacy.
The authors conduct a comprehensive review of seventeen peer-reviewed studies
published between 2020 and 2024, selected through a structured search process involving
major scientific databases including Google Scholar, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect,

8
Electronics 2025, 14, 1530

and the ACM Digital Library. The selected studies apply a range of synthetic data gen-
eration techniques to address bias, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs),
Bayesian networks, Structural Causal Models (SCMs), SMOTE, Gaussian copulas, and
deep reinforcement learning. These methods are used to augment or replace biased data in
applications such as diagnosis prediction, treatment recommendation, and health record
de-identification. Several approaches emphasize the dual benefit of fairness improvement
and data privacy preservation.
The paper details how GANs are widely used to generate synthetic medical images,
signals, and tabular data, while Bayesian and causal models offer structured frameworks
for encoding probabilistic or causal relationships among variables. SMOTE and CTGAN
are frequently employed for balancing class distributions in imbalanced datasets. Across
studies, the effectiveness of these methods is assessed using various fairness and perfor-
mance metrics such as demographic parity, equal opportunity, ROC-AUC, F1-score, and
domain-specific utility scores.
In the discussion, the authors highlight that synthetic data generation has proven effec-
tive in enhancing model fairness and performance when applied appropriately. However,
the success of these methods depends heavily on the quality of the initial dataset, the suit-
ability of the chosen technique, and the availability of domain knowledge for model tuning.
Limitations include computational cost, the complexity of implementation (especially for
causal models), challenges in preserving high-dimensional dependencies, and the risks of
introducing new types of bias during data generation.
While the reviewed methods show promise, the authors stress that the current syn-
thetic data techniques still face barriers to broader adoption in real-world healthcare
systems. These include methodological complexity, lack of standardization, and limited
validation across diverse populations. Nonetheless, the review offers a solid foundation for
further research into artificial data generation as a practical and ethical solution to bias in
AI, especially in domains where data privacy and fairness are both paramount.

3. Conclusions
This Special Issue presents a comprehensive snapshot of current advancements in
computational intelligence and machine learning, highlighting their increasing sophis-
tication, diversity of application, and relevance to real-world challenges. The ten fea-
tured papers collectively demonstrate how novel learning paradigms, model architectures,
and data representations can address critical problems such as personalization, recom-
mendation diversity, fairness, interpretability, and performance in low-resource or noisy
data environments.
A prominent trend throughout the contributions is the growing integration of deep
learning models, particularly transformers, graph neural networks, and hybrid architec-
tures, with domain-specific knowledge and auxiliary learning objectives. From enhancing
travel recommendation systems with personality profiling to deploying self-supervised
learning in collaborative filtering, these studies showcase the importance of designing
models that are not only accurate but also adaptive and explainable. Additionally, multiple
contributions emphasize the practical viability of proposed solutions, as evidenced by
experimental validation on diverse benchmark datasets and real-world scenarios.
Another key theme is the increasing emphasis on ethical and inclusive AI, particularly
in works focused on bias mitigation, fairness in healthcare applications, and accessibility
for underrepresented languages. The use of synthetic data generation, lightweight model
adaptation, and open-source deployment reflects a broader movement toward responsible,
transparent, and reproducible research practices.

9
Electronics 2025, 14, 1530

Overall, the research collected in this Special Issue contributes to a deeper understand-
ing of both the capabilities and limitations of contemporary machine learning systems. It
provides a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners seeking to harness the power
of computational intelligence in increasingly complex, uncertain, and socially sensitive
environments. The breadth of methodological approaches and problem domains also
points to promising directions for future work, including multimodal learning, continual
adaptation, and trustworthy AI frameworks.

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.

List of Contributions
1. Aribas, E.; Daglarli, E. Transforming Personalized Travel Recommendations: Integrating Genera-
tive AI with Personality Models. Electronics 2024, 13, 4751. [Link]
3234751.
2. Zhu, J.; Li, K.; Peng, J.; Qi, J. Self-Supervised Graph Attention Collaborative Filtering for
Recommendation. Electronics 2023, 12, 793. [Link]
3. Xu, H.; Wu, G.; Zhai, E.; Jin, X.; Tu, L. Preference-Aware Light Graph Convolution Network for
Social Recommendation. Electronics 2023, 12, 2397. [Link]
7.
4. Polat, H.; Turan, A.K.; Koçak, C.; Ulaş, H.B. Implementation of a Whisper Architecture-Based
Turkish Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) System and Evaluation of the Effect of Fine-
Tuning with a Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) Adapter on Its Performance. Electronics 2024, 13,
4227. [Link]
5. Huang, B.; Li, X. GGTr: An Innovative Framework for Accurate and Realistic Human Motion
Prediction. Electronics 2023, 12, 3305. [Link]
6. Alruily, M. ArRASA: Channel Optimization for Deep Learning-Based Arabic NLU Chatbot
Framework. Electronics 2022, 11, 3745. [Link]
7. Hu, C.; Sun, X.; Dai, H.; Zhang, H.; Liu, H. Research on Log Anomaly Detection Based on
Sentence-BERT. Electronics 2023, 12, 3580. [Link]
8. Memiş, S. Picture Fuzzy Soft Matrices and Application of Their Distance Measures to Supervised
Learning: Picture Fuzzy Soft k-Nearest Neighbor (PFS-kNN). Electronics 2023, 12, 4129. https:
//[Link]/10.3390/electronics12194129.
9. Segovia, J.A.; Toaquiza, J.F.; Llanos, J.R.; Rivas, D.R. Meteorological Variables Forecasting
System Using Machine Learning and Open-Source Software. Electronics 2023, 12, 1007. https:
//[Link]/10.3390/electronics12041007.
10. Shahul Hameed, M.A.; Qureshi, A.M.; Kaushik, A. Bias Mitigation via Synthetic Data Genera-
tion: A Review. Electronics 2024, 13, 3909. [Link]

References
1. Sarker, I.H. Machine Learning: Algorithms, Real-World Applications and Research Directions. SN Comput. Sci. 2021, 2, 160.
[CrossRef] [PubMed]
2. LeCun, Y.; Bengio, Y.; Hinton, G. Deep Learning for AI. Commun. ACM 2021, 64, 58–65.
3. Elsken, T.; Metzen, J.H.; Hutter, F. Neural Architecture Search: A Survey. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 2019, 20, 1–21.
4. Zhang, C.; Bengio, S.; Hardt, M.; Recht, B.; Vinyals, O. Understanding Deep Learning Requires Rethinking Generalization. arXiv
2017, arXiv:1611.03530. [CrossRef]

Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual
author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to
people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

10
Article
Transforming Personalized Travel Recommendations:
Integrating Generative AI with Personality Models
Erke Aribas * and Evren Daglarli *

Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Computer and Informatics Engineering, Istanbul Technical
University, 34485 Istanbul, Turkey
* Correspondence: aribas@[Link] (E.A.); daglarli@[Link] (E.D.)

Abstract: Over the past few years, the incorporation of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tech-
niques, particularly the Retrieval-Augmented Generator (RAG) framework, has opened up rev-
olutionary opportunities for improving personalized travel recommendation systems. The RAG
framework seamlessly combines the capabilities of large-scale language models with retriever mod-
els, facilitating the generation of diverse and contextually relevant recommendations tailored to
individual preferences and interests, all of which are based on natural language queries. These
systems iteratively learn and adapt to user feedback, thereby continuously refining and improving
recommendation quality over time. This dynamic learning process enables the system to dynamically
adjust to changes in user preferences, emerging travel trends, and contextual factors, ensuring that
the recommendations remain pertinent and personalized. Furthermore, we explore the incorporation
of personality models like the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Big Five (BF) personality
traits into personalized travel recommendation systems. By incorporating these personality models,
our research aims to enrich the understanding of user preferences and behavior, allowing for even
more precise and tailored recommendations. We explore the potential synergies between personality
psychology and advanced AI techniques, specifically the RAG framework with a personality model,
in revolutionizing personalized travel recommendations. Additionally, we conduct an in-depth
examination of the underlying principles, methodologies, and technical intricacies of these advanced
AI techniques, emphasizing their ability to understand natural language queries, retrieve relevant
information from vast knowledge bases, and generate contextually rich recommendations tailored
to individual personalities. In our personalized travel recommendation system model, results are
Citation: Aribas, E.; Daglarli, E.
Transforming Personalized Travel
achieved such as user satisfaction (78%), system accuracy (82%), and the performance rate based on
Recommendations: Integrating user personality traits (85% for extraversion and 75% for introversion).
Generative AI with Personality
Models. Electronics 2024, 13, 4751. Keywords: personality model; retrieval augmentation; large language models (LLM); travel
[Link] recommendation
electronics13234751

Academic Editor: Grzegorz Dudek

Received: 14 August 2024 1. Introduction

Revised: 24 November 2024 Recently, the swift progress in technology has revolutionized how we plan, experience,
Accepted: 27 November 2024 and savor travel. With the proliferation of online travel platforms, social media, and mobile
Published: 1 December 2024
applications, travelers are presented with an overwhelming array of options for destina-
tions, accommodations, activities, and experiences [1]. However, amidst this abundance
of choices, finding a perfect travel itinerary tailored to one’s preferences, interests, and
Copyright: © 2024 by the authors.
needs can be a daunting task [2]. In recent years, the realm of travel planning has experi-
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. enced a significant shift, driven by the merging of cutting-edge technologies and changing
This article is an open access article consumer expectations. In the digital age, travelers are inundated with an overwhelm-
distributed under the terms and ing abundance of information and options when selecting destinations, accommodations,
conditions of the Creative Commons activities, and experiences for their trips. Personalized travel recommendation systems
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// have become essential tools for helping travelers navigate the intricacies of trip planning
[Link]/licenses/by/ while crafting tailored travel experiences that align with their individual preferences and
4.0/). interests [3].

Electronics 2024, 13, 4751. [Link] 11 [Link]

Electronics 2024, 13, 4751

In response to this challenge, personalized travel recommendation systems have

emerged as a valuable solution for assisting travelers in discovering and planning their
ideal trips. These systems utilize state-of-the-art technologies like data mining, machine
learning, and artificial intelligence to process extensive travel-related data, encompassing
user preferences, past behavior, social interactions, and contextual factors. By harnessing
the power of data-driven algorithms, personalized travel recommendation systems aim
to deliver tailored travel suggestions that align closely with the individual preferences
and requirements of each traveler [4]. Conventional personalized travel recommendation
systems depend on a range of techniques, including collaborative filtering, content-based
filtering, and matrix factorization, to assess user preferences and historical data, thereby
producing tailored travel suggestions. However, these approaches often face limitations
in capturing the nuanced and multifaceted nature of travelers’ preferences, leading to
suboptimal recommendations and user experiences [5].
The fusion of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, like the RAG frame-
work, with personality models has unlocked promising new opportunities for boosting
the capabilities and effectiveness of personalized travel recommendation systems. The
RAG framework merges the strengths of large-scale language models with retrospective
models, facilitating the creation of varied and contextually appropriate recommendations in
response to natural language queries [6–8]. By leveraging personality models, personalized
travel recommendation systems can iteratively learn and adapt to user feedback, continu-
ously refining and improving the quality of recommendations over time [9]. This dynamic
learning process allows the system’s ability to adjust to shifts in user preferences, emerging
travel trends, and contextual factors, ensuring that the recommendations remain relevant
and personalized [10]. In this study, we examine the potential of generative AI methods,
specifically the RAG framework with a personality model, for revolutionizing personalized
travel recommendation systems. We examine the underlying principles, methodologies,
and technical intricacies of these advanced AI techniques, highlighting their ability to
understand natural language queries, retrieve relevant information from vast knowledge
bases, and generate contextually rich recommendations.
Furthermore, we discuss the implications of integrating generative AI methods with
personalized travel recommendation systems, including the potential benefits of enhancing
recommendation diversity, addressing data sparsity issues, and improving user engage-
ment and satisfaction. Also, we analyze real-world applications and case studies that
demonstrate the effectiveness and influence of these advanced AI techniques in revolu-
tionizing the travel planning experience for users. Through our investigation, we seek to
offer insights into the changing landscape of personalized travel recommendation systems
and the transformative potential of generative AI techniques in influencing the future of
travel planning and tourism. By leveraging AI-driven personalization, we foresee a future
where travelers can seamlessly uncover and craft enriching travel experiences that align
with their unique preferences and aspirations.

2. Related Works/Literature Review

Travel recommendation systems have become increasingly prevalent in recent years,
driven by the growing availability of user-generated data and advancements in data mining
and machine learning techniques. These systems aim to assist travelers in discovering
personalized travel experiences based on their preferences, past behavior, and contextual
factors.
In this literature review, we examine significant research contributions within the field
of travel recommendation systems, with an emphasis on the different approaches and
methodologies used to improve the recommendation process. Building upon this founda-
tion, researchers have proposed various innovative approaches to enhance personalized
travel recommendations. Nitu et al. [11] proposed an approach to improving tailored travel
recommendations by integrating recency effects. Their study highlights the importance
of considering the temporal aspects of user preferences to deliver timely and appropriate

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Electronics 2024, 13, 4751

recommendations. Memon et al. [12] introduced a travel recommendation method leverag-

ing geo-tagged photos from social media platforms. By analyzing the spatial distribution
of user-generated content, their approach offers location-based recommendations tailored
to tourists’ interests. Liu et al. presented a personalized travel package recommendation
system that utilizes data mining techniques to extract user preferences from historical
travel records [13]. Their research emphasizes the significance of understanding individual
travel behavior to offer tailored itinerary suggestions. Chen et al. introduced a travel
recommendation framework that derives people attributes and travel group types from
community-shared photos [14]. By analyzing social context and group dynamics, their
approach enhances the relevance and diversity of travel suggestions. Sun et al. [15] intro-
duced a route-based travel recommendation system that utilizes geographically tagged
images to infer travel preferences and routes. Their research highlights the potential of
visual content analysis for generating personalized travel itineraries.
Moreover, as travel recommendation systems evolve, the integration of context aware-
ness emerges as a pivotal theme. Zheng and Xie explored the use of user-generated GPS
traces for learning travel recommendations [16]. By mobility patterns and historical trajec-
tories, their approach provides personalized suggestions based on individuals’ movement
behaviors. Ricci et al. suggested a case-driven travel recommendation system that suggests
destinations derived from similarities between user preferences and historical cases [17].
Their research emphasizes the importance of leveraging past experiences to guide future
travel decisions. Majid et al. [18] introduced a context-sensitive personalized travel rec-
ommendation system that utilizes geographically tagged social media data mining. By
considering contextual factors such as time, location, and social interactions, their approach
offers tailored recommendations aligned with travelers’ current situations. Cheng et al.
developed a personalized travelling recommendation method derived from extracting peo-
ple attributes from user-contributed photos [19]. Their research emphasizes the influence
of social context and user-created content in enhancing travel suggestions. Zheng et al.
suggested a context-sensitive travel recommendation method that relaxes contextual con-
straints to improve recommendation accuracy [20]. By dynamically adjusting the relevance
of contextual factors, their method adapts to users’ evolving preferences and situations.
Looking ahead, the future of travel recommendation systems holds promise for au-
tonomous decision-making with the integration of generative AI technologies like Chat-
GPT [21]. Their study explored the role of conversational agents in assisting travelers
with real-time recommendations and decision support. Chen et al. [22] introduced a trip
reinforcement recommendation approach based on graph-based representation learning.
By modeling the relationships between travel entities, their method enhances recommen-
dation effectiveness and diversity. In summary, these studies emphasize the wide array
of methodologies and strategies utilized in travel recommendation systems, spanning
from content-based and collaborative filtering strategies to context-sensitive and social
media-driven approaches. Future research directions may focus on integrating multiple
data sources, leveraging advanced AI techniques, and addressing emerging challenges
such as privacy concerns and data sparsity issues to further enhance the efficiency and
user-friendliness of travel recommendation systems.

3. Background
Recommendation systems have evolved from early collaborative filtering methods,
such as user–item matrix factorization, to more sophisticated techniques incorporating
machine learning algorithms and deep learning models. Collaborative filtering approaches
from Resnick and Varian rely on user feedback and preferences to generate recommen-
dations, but they face challenges including cold-start issues and data sparsity [23]. As
computational power increased and data availability improved, content-based filtering
methods from Pazzani and Billsus emerged, utilizing item attributes and user profiles
to make personalized recommendations [24]. These methods are effective but limited at
capturing complex user preferences and contextual information.

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Electronics 2024, 13, 4751

The advent of AI-driven recommendation systems marked a significant paradigm

shift, leveraging advanced machine learning algorithms, natural language processing (NLP)
methods, and deep learning frameworks [25,26]. Adomavicius and Tuzhilin employed
these methods in combination with collaborative filtering, content-driven filtering, and
combined approaches to produce highly personalized recommendations rooted in user
behavior, historical data, and contextual signals [27–30]. For example, He et al. integrated
neural collaborative filtering models for deep learning architectures with collaborative
filtering techniques to improve recommendation accuracy and scalability [31].

3.1. Evolution of Recommendation Systems and AI-Driven Conversational Interfaces

Concurrently, AI-driven conversational interfaces have evolved from rule-based chat-
bots to intelligent virtual assistants capable of natural language understanding and genera-
tion. Turkle showed that early chatbots relied on predefined rules and scripted responses,
limiting their conversational capabilities and adaptability to user inputs [32]. However,
Brown et al. led advancements in NLP, machine learning, and deep learning to develop
sophisticated conversational agents powered by large-scale language models such as Chat-
GPT [33]. These agents can engage in human-like conversations, understand complex
queries, and provide contextually relevant responses [34].
The integration of recommendation systems with AI-driven conversational interfaces
represents a synergistic approach to enhancing user experiences and engagement. By
leveraging recommendation algorithms within conversational interfaces, users can receive
personalized recommendations seamlessly during conversations, enriching their interac-
tions and facilitating decision-making processes, which were described by Adomavicius
and Tuzhilin [27]. For instance, an e-commerce chatbot can suggest products based on user
preferences and context, leading to higher conversion rates and user satisfaction.
Overall, the evolution of recommendation systems and AI-driven conversational
interfaces has been propelled by advancements in AI, machine learning, and natural
language processing technologies. These advancements continue to drive innovations in
personalized user experiences, intelligent decision support systems, and human–computer
interactions, shaping the future of AI-driven applications in various domains according to
Brown et al. [33].
Generative AI methods encompass a diverse set of techniques aimed at generating
new data, content, or outputs based on learned patterns and models. The proposed rec-
ommendation system leverages the RAG framework to retrieve contextually relevant
information based on user queries. The RAG framework is particularly effective in identi-
fying and filtering high-quality content from extensive databases, thereby improving the
accuracy of initial recommendations. To further refine these recommendations, personality
models—specifically the MBTI and BF—are integrated within the system.
Personality traits guide the personalization process, enabling the system to align rec-
ommendations with individual user preferences more precisely. For instance, users with
high Openness may receive suggestions for novel and adventurous travel experiences,
while those with high Conscientiousness may receive structured and detail-oriented recom-
mendations. By combining the RAG framework’s robust data retrieval capabilities with
personality-driven personalization, the system provides tailored travel recommendations
that are both accurate and highly relevant to user needs [6]. This framework has been
instrumental in enhancing the accuracy and relevance of AI-generated content, particularly
in applications requiring contextual understanding and information synthesis.

3.2. Personality Psychology: Understanding Individual Differences

Personality psychology is a field within psychology focused on studying the variations
in personality traits among individuals and understanding the psychological mechanisms
that contribute to people’s unique characteristics. Personality traits are stable patterns
of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that differentiate individuals from one another
and remain relatively consistent over time [35]. These traits encompass a wide range of

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Electronics 2024, 13, 4751

dimensions, including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and

openness to experience. The areas it explores include the following:
• Constructing a coherent personality-based understanding of an individual’s core
psychological processes;
• Analyzing psychological variations in relation to personality;
• Exploring human nature and the psychological commonalities among individuals.
Personality psychology is defined as the study of how people differ due to psycho-
logical influences and how personality traits function collectively [36]. This field aims to
build a comprehensive understanding of an individual’s basic psychological processes,
examine psychological differences among individuals, and explore human nature and the
psychological commonalities between people [35,36]. The concept of ‘personality’ refers to
a dynamic and organized set of traits that distinctly shape an individual’s interactions with
their environment, cognition, emotions, motivations, and behaviors. Personality also relates
to the patterns of thoughts, feelings, social adjustment, and behavior that are consistently
displayed over time and significantly influence one’s expectations, self-perceptions, values,
and attitudes [37].

3.3. Personality Classification Systems: MBTI and BF

Personality research has been extensively explored in psychology, covering a variety
of theoretical traditions that include several major theories, such as the dispositional (trait)
perspective, as well as psychodynamic, humanistic, biological, behavioral, evolutionary,
and social learning perspectives [34]. Many researchers and psychologists do not confine
themselves to a single perspective, preferring instead to adopt an eclectic approach [36].
Research in this field is often empirically driven, employing dimensional models based
on multivariate statistics like factor analysis, or it emphasizes theory development, as
illustrated in psychodynamic theory [35]. Additionally, there is significant focus on applied
personality testing. In psychological education and training, understanding the nature and
development of personality is frequently considered a prerequisite for courses in abnor-
mal or clinical psychology [34]. Personality type refers to the psychological classification
of individuals into distinct categories. Personality types are different from personality
traits, which vary in degree. Numerous personality theories exist, each containing several
sub-theories [38]. The development of the MBTI and the BF personality traits is particu-
larly significant in personality psychology [39]. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
categorizes individuals into distinct psychological types [40]. For instance, personality
theories often classify people as either introverts or extroverts, whereas trait theories view
introversion and extroversion as part of a continuous spectrum, with many individuals
situated at a midpoint.
The MBTI is a popular personality classification system rooted in Carl Jung’s theories
of psychological types. The MBTI divides individuals into 16 distinct personality types,
each defined by preferences across four dichotomous dimensions: extraversion versus in-
troversion, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving,
as outlined by [41] This classification system provides insights into individuals’ cognitive
preferences, decision-making styles, and communication preferences, making it valuable in
various personal and professional contexts.
The BF personality traits, also referred to as the five-factor model (FFM), offer a broad
framework for understanding personality [42]. The BF traits mentioned by Goldberg
include openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neu-
roticism, each representing a broad dimension of personality variation [42,43]. This model
is based on empirical research and is widely accepted in personality psychology for its
robustness and predictive validity across different cultures and contexts.
Personality classification systems such as the MBTI and the BF provide valuable frame-
works for assessing and categorizing individuals based on their personality traits [40].
These systems have applications in various fields, including career counseling, team build-
ing, interpersonal relationships, and organizational development. By understanding indi-

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Electronics 2024, 13, 4751

viduals’ personality profiles, practitioners can tailor interventions, communication strate-

gies, and decision-making processes to align with individuals’ preferences and tendencies.
Based on Jung’s writings and observations, many tests, such as the Golden, PTI-Pro
and JTI [40–42], were subsequently developed based on the Myers–Briggs model. These
theories can also be viewed as ‘approaches’ to personality or psychology and are frequently
referred to as models. The model represents an older theoretical approach that views
introversion and extraversion as fundamental psychological orientations, connected to
two pairs of psychological functions, type dynamics and development, and the cognitive
functions associated with each type. The MBTI categorizes certain psychological differences
into four opposing pairs or ‘binaries’, leading to 16 distinct psychological types. None of
these types are seen as ‘better’ or ‘worse’, but Briggs and Myers proposed that individuals
naturally ‘prefer’ a particular combination of type differences [41]. Just as it is difficult for
a left-handed person to use their right hand, people tend to find it more difficult to use
their contrasting psychological preferences, but with practice and development, they can
enhance their proficiency (and thus become more behaviorally adaptable).
The 16 types are typically denoted by a four-letter acronym, representing the initials
of each of the four preference types (with the exception of intuition, which is abbreviated
as ‘N’ to avoid confusion with introversion). This can be illustrated with the following
examples: ENTJ stands for extraversion (E), intuition (N), thinking (T), and judging (J); ISFP
stands for introversion (I), sensing (S), feeling (F), and perceiving (P). These abbreviations
are consistent across all 16 types, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Personality Type Examples [41].

ISTJ ISFJ INFJ INTJ

ISTP ISFP INFP INTP
ESTP ESFP ENFP ENTP
ESTJ ESFJ ENFJ ENTJ

The BF personality traits represent a proposed taxonomy or grouping of personality

characteristics, developed within psychological trait theory starting in the 1980s. By the
1990s, five distinct factors were identified for the U.S.-British population, typically labeled
as follows [41]:
- openness to experience (creative/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
- conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. wasteful/careless)
- extroversion (outgoing/energetic vs. lonely/withdrawn)
- compatibility (friendly/compassionate vs. critical/rational)
- neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. flexible/confident)
Factor analysis reveals semantic relationships by analyzing personality questionnaire
data. In this sense, there is often a relationship between words used to refer to the same
person [40]. For example, for a person characterized as conscientious, the term “always
prepared” is more commonly used than “disorganized”. These connections highlight
five broad dimensions that serve as a common language for describing human person-
ality, temperament, and mood [41–43]. The five factors are easily remembered using the
acronyms ‘OCEAN’ or ‘CANO’. Each global factor encompasses a set of interrelated, more
specific primary traits. For instance, extraversion is generally linked to traits like sociability,
assertiveness, thrill-seeking, warmth, activity, and positive emotions. These traits are
not absolute but exist along a continuum. This understanding of personality can now be
applied to the development of language models, as the next section explores.

3.4. Introduction to Language Models: Understanding Natural Language Queries and

Generating Responses
This study seeks to close the gap between personality psychology and language
models. By creating a mapping between the MBTI system and the BF traits, we hope to

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equip language models with a deeper understanding of human personality. This, in turn,
could allow these models to tailor their responses to better reflect the user’s individual
characteristics.
So, first we create a mapping from the MBTI to the BF and implement protectionist
interfaces in the language model. We then extend this methodology to a time-sensitive
design where conducting a fixed effect analysis is straightforward [40]. When several
individuals are observed across multiple time points, these time points are accumulated
over ten-year intervals to obtain a discriminative observation result in the popular use of
LLMs such as ChatGPT [6,7].
Introduction to language models such as the ChatGPT encompasses a sophisticated
understanding of natural language processing (NLP) techniques and the pivotal role these
models play in comprehending and responding to natural language queries.
ChatGPT is an advanced language model developed by OpenAI, built on the gen-
erative pretrained transformer (GPT) architecture. It utilizes deep learning techniques
and large-scale transformer models to capture complex patterns and structures in natural
language data, as demonstrated by Radford et al. [44]. ChatGPT’s architecture enables it to
create coherent and contextually appropriate responses to diverse natural language inputs,
making it highly versatile for various NLP tasks.
Language models such as ChatGPT play a crucial role in understanding natural lan-
guage queries by leveraging advanced NLP capabilities that utilize techniques such as
attention mechanisms, transformer architectures, and pre-training on large datasets to cap-
ture semantic relationships, syntactic structures, and contextual nuances in language [45].
As a result, they can interpret user queries, extract relevant information, and generate
meaningful responses that align with the query’s intent.
The ability of language models such as ChatGPT to understand natural language
queries is further enhanced by fine-tuning particular tasks or areas. Fine-tuning involves
training the model on task-specific data or providing domain-specific prompts [46], allow-
ing the model to specialize in understanding and generating content relevant to a particular
context, as shown by Raffel et al. This fine-tuning process improves the model’s accuracy
and relevance in handling natural language queries within specific domains or applications.
In addition to understanding individual queries, language models such as the Chat-
GPT contribute to building conversational agents and AI-driven interfaces capable of
engaging in human-like interactions. Brown et al. investigated how these models facilitate
dialog generation, question answering, sentiment analysis, and content recommendation
tasks, enhancing the user experience and enabling more natural and effective communica-
tion with AI systems [43].
In conclusion, language models such as the ChatGPT model play a critical role in
understanding natural language queries by leveraging advanced NLP techniques, fine-
tuning specific tasks or domains, and contributing to the development of conversational
AI systems.

4. Methods
To evaluate the proposed system, we need to consider framework modeling that
includes components such as a travel data retrieval mechanism, personality driven prompt
augmentation, and travel recommendation generation with a knowledge base as well as
data collection and preprocessing tasks, as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1. The RAG framework with personality model for travel recommendation.

4.1. Travel Data Retrieval Mechanism

The travel data retrieval mechanism is a crucial part of the RAG architecture designed
to provide personalized travel recommendations. It encompasses the search process and
the travel data document base, which work together to fetch relevant information for the
user. When a user submits a query, it is first received by the search component. The search
component is responsible for interpreting the query and determining the most relevant
data sources to consult as query processing.
The search component sends a vectorized request to the document base related to
travel data from the web. The request includes the specific parameters of the user’s
query with personalized preferences and other relevant details. The travel data document
base includes a web crawler module that processes the request and retrieves documents
that match the query parameters. The document base consists of a vast collection of
travel-related information sourced from the web (www). It aggregates data from various
online sources to ensure comprehensive coverage of travel destinations, budget, travel
guides/tips, activities, accommodation options, local attractions, user reviews, travel
magazines/articles (travel trends) and other travel-related aspects. The document base
is regularly updated to include the latest travel information so that users receive current
and relevant recommendations. Documents in the base are categorized and indexed to
facilitate efficient retrieval. The retrieved documents from the travel data document base
are sent back to the search component. The search component then forwards improved
queries including this retrieved information from documents for further processing with
personality-driven prompt augmentation logic.
By integrating the travel data retrieval mechanism involving the search logic compo-
nent and the travel data document base, the RAG architecture effectively retrieves and
processes relevant travel information. This mechanism ensures that users receive tailored
travel recommendations that cater to their unique preferences and requirements, enhancing
their overall travel planning experience.
In this study, we have refined the methodology section to detail our experimental de-
sign. This includes clarifying the objectives, participant selection criteria, and the structure
of the experimental and control groups. For example, participants were selected based
on a diverse range of demographic and psychographic traits to assess the impact of the

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recommendation system across various personality types. The experiment was structured
with a control group using a traditional system and an experimental group utilizing our
personality-driven model, allowing us to measure comparative effectiveness.
The data collection process was expanded to provide specific information on the
sources, methods, and criteria used. Data were gathered from multiple sources, including
travel booking sites, social media, and user-generated reviews. We applied rigorous inclu-
sion criteria to ensure data relevance and used APIs and web scraping tools to automate
collection. A detailed data filtering protocol was implemented to exclude outdated or
irrelevant data, ensuring high-quality inputs for the recommendation model.
Data validation steps were added to strengthen the robustness of the methodology.
We incorporated data accuracy checks through cross-referencing with verified sources
and utilized preprocessing steps such as deduplication and normalization. Furthermore,
external datasets were used to benchmark and validate the recommendation data, ensuring
the reliability and accuracy of the information processed by our system.
We provided a clearer description of the specific algorithms and models used in the
study, including the RAG framework and its configuration. This section now explains
the integration of personality models based on MBTI and BF traits, detailing how the
system tailors recommendations based on individual characteristics. Additionally, the
benchmarking process for these models was included, with key performance metrics like
accuracy, user satisfaction, and recommendation relevance highlighted to validate the
effectiveness of our model.

4.2. Personality Model and Prompt Augmentation

The second of these steps starts with the collection of a diverse dataset of travel-
related queries and corresponding recommendations from existing travel recommendation
systems, online forums, and social media platforms. Each query was associated with
relevant contextual information such as user preferences, location, and travel time. Before
query augmentation, we preprocessed the retrieved data to remove noise, standardize
formats, and anonymize personal information.
These algorithms can be developed with existing numerical methods in the literature
or machine learning-based computations. All of these methods can even be hybrid methods
that can be combinations of these methods [37]. It may be quite appropriate to model them
as linear or nonlinear systems with numerical methods. In addition, probabilistic (Bayesian
or Monte Carlo) or fuzzy logic methods can explain the modeling in detail in terms of
uncertainties [37]. ML-powered methods (e.g., Markov processes, support vector machines,
Boltzman machines, or artificial neural networks) can also be useful for such studies. Lately,
the performance of deep neural networks on large datasets has improved considerably [8].
From time to time, numerical models designed under these needs can be made more flexible
and interactive with the use of ML techniques [37].
In this study, encoding personality traits involves a structured process that transforms
psychological data into machine-readable feature vectors, ensuring compatibility with
the AI recommendation framework. For trait normalization, MBTI Scores are mapped
into a binary format representing the four dichotomous dimensions (e.g., Extraversion = 1,
Introversion = 0). BF Scores are continuous variables, and they are normalized to a [0, 1]
range to standardize them across users. For feature vector construction, MBTI and BF
data are combined into a unified feature vector. For example, an ENFJ user with Big
Five scores of [0.75, 0.85, 0.65, 0.72, 0.40] will generate a composite vector such as [1,
1, 1, 1, 0.75, 0.85, 0.65, 0.72, 0.40]. For integration in the RAG framework, during the
retrieval stage, personality traits act as filters, prioritizing travel documents that align with
specific user preferences (e.g., adventurous destinations for high openness scores). Lastly,
during the generation stage, these vectors influence the tone, structure, and content of
the generated recommendations, tailoring outputs to match user traits (e.g., extraverted
users receive socially engaging suggestions). This encoding mechanism ensures that

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personality traits directly influence both the retrieval and generation stages, enhancing
recommendation relevance.
To start the personality transition process, popular methods such as Pearson’s method
are used. In statistics, the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC, Pearson r, or Pearson
product–moment correlation coefficient, PPMCC), often referred to simply as the correlation
coefficient, measures the linear relationship between two datasets [40]. It is calculated as
the ratio of the covariance of two variables to the product of their standard deviations,
providing a normalized measure of covariance that always results in a value between −1
and 1 [40]. Like covariance, this measure only captures the linear correlation between
variables, disregarding other types of relationships or correlations [40]. For instance,
the Pearson correlation coefficient between age and height in a sample of high school
teenagers is expected to be significantly greater than 0 but less than 1 (since 1 would
indicate an unrealistic perfect correlation). The Pearson correlation coefficient (r) is one of
several correlation coefficients available for measuring correlations. Pearson’s correlation
coefficient is appropriate when certain conditions are met [40]. Both variables must be
quantitative; if one is qualitative, another method should be used. The variables should
be normally distributed, which can be checked by creating a histogram for each variable
to determine if the distributions are approximately normal [40]. Slight deviations from
normality are usually not problematic. There should be no outliers in the data, as outliers
are observations that deviate from the overall pattern of the data [40]. A scatterplot can
help identify outliers by showing points that are isolated from the rest. The relationship
between the variables should be linear, meaning it can be reasonably represented by a
straight line. A scatter plot can also be used to assess whether the relationship between the
variables is linear.
n∑ xy − (∑ x )(∑ y)
r =    (1)
n ∑ x 2 − ( ∑ x )2 n ∑ y2 − ( ∑ y )2

One advantage of using Pearson’s correlation coefficient (Equation (1)) to explore the
relationship between MBTI and the BF personality traits is that it offers a straightforward
and intuitive method for measuring the strength and direction of the relationship between
two variables. It is a widely recognized and commonly used statistical tool that is well
understood and easily interpreted by researchers. If we interpret, r = 1 indicates a perfect
positive linear relationship: as x increases, y increases in a perfectly linear way. R = −1
indicates a perfect negative linear relationship: as x increases, y decreases in a perfectly
linear way. r = 0 suggests no linear correlation between x and y. However, this method also
has several potential drawbacks. One limitation is that the Pearson correlation coefficient
assumes a linear relationship between the two correlated variables, which may not always
reflect reality. Additionally, the Pearson correlation coefficient only measures the strength
of the relationship between two variables and does not provide information about causality
or directionality [40]. Other factors, such as situational or cultural influences, may also
affect the relationship between MBTI and BF personality traits [37]. Another potential
drawback of using Pearson’s correlation coefficient is its reliance on accurate and reliable
measurements of the correlated variables. As with any measurement tool, there may be
sources of error or bias in assessing the MBTI and BF personality traits, which could impact
the accuracy of the correlation coefficient [37,40].
While the Pearson correlation coefficient can provide insights into the relationship
between MBTI scores and BF personality traits, researchers should remain aware of its
limitations in capturing complex, non-linear associations. To achieve a more comprehensive
analysis, additional methods and techniques should be considered alongside the Pearson
correlation.
The Pearson correlation coefficient presents limitations, particularly its assumption of
a linear relationship between correlated variables, which may not accurately capture the
complexities of non-linear associations. The second possible drawback is the potential lack

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of sensitivity. These fallbacks show that a secondary method may be used to calculate the
personality transition process.
Jaccard similarity serves as a widely used metric for assessing the similarity between
two entities, such as two textual documents. This metric proves useful for measuring
the likeness between two asymmetrical binary vectors or sets. In the academic literature,
Jaccard similarity, denoted by J(A, B), is interchangeably known as the Jaccard Index,
Jaccard coefficient, Jaccard dissimilarity, and Jaccard distance.
Jaccard similarity has extensive utility in the realm of data science. Examples illustrat-
ing the application of Jaccard similarity include textual analysis, which involves gauging
the resemblance between two text documents based on the terms shared between them;
e-commerce, where vast customer and product databases are selected to identify similar
customers via their buying histories; and recommendation systems, which employ the
Jaccard coefficient in movie recommendation algorithms to pinpoint similar customers who
have either rented or highly rated similar movies.
The application of the Jaccard similarity coefficient extends to evaluating the similarity
of two asymmetric binary variables. It is considered as a binary variable with two possible
states, 0 and 1, where 0 signifies the absence of the attribute and 1 indicates its presence.
Unlike symmetric binary attributes where both states hold equal values, the importance
of the two states differs significantly for asymmetric binary variables. If we consider
evaluating the similarity among customers of a store, we may utilize a binary attribute that
signifies a purchase made at the store. Here, 1 represents the purchase of a specific item,
while 0 indicates no purchase of that item.
Given the potential existence of thousands of products in the store, the quantity
of items left unpurchased by any customer far exceeds the number of purchased items.
Consequently, when assessing customer similarity, we focus solely on item purchases. This
results in an asymmetric binary variable, where a value of 1 holds greater than 0.
In the initial step of computing the Jaccard similarity in Equation (2) between two
customers, each characterized by binary attributes, the following four quantities (i.e.,
frequencies) are determined based on the provided binary data:
a = the total number of attributes that are equal to 1 for both objects i and j
b = the total number of attributes that are equal to 0 for object i but equal to 1 for
object j
c = the total number of attributes that are equal to 1 for object i but equal to 0 for
object j
d = the total number of attributes that equal 0 for both objects i and j.
Subsequently, the Jaccard similarity for these attributes is calculated using the follow-
ing equation:
a
J (i, j) = sim(i, j) = (2)
a+b+c
The count of matches d is disregarded in this calculation because it holds no signif-
icance, as the items are asymmetric binary attributes. These calculations indicate that
customers exhibit similar shopping patterns while displaying dissimilar behaviors, as they
have purchased entirely different items.
Jaccard similarity can also be explained as follows:
a represents the number of elements that are common between sets i and j,
b represents the number of elements that are unique to set i,
c represents the number of elements that are unique to set j.
If we expand this formula, the numerator a represents the count of elements common
to both sets i and j. This is the intersection of the two sets, denoted by |i ∩ j|. In set notation,
the numerator can be rewritten as: a = |i ∩ j|. The denominator a + b + c represents the
union of the two sets i and j. It includes
a: Elements common to both sets (intersection).
b: Elements only in set i.
c: Elements only in set j.

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This total represents the total unique elements in both sets combined, written as |I ∪ j|
in set notation. By substituting these terms into the formula, the Jaccard Similarity Index
can also be expressed in terms of set operations:

|i ∩ j|
J (i, j) = (3)
|i ∪ j|

This expanded version highlights that the Jaccard Index measures the ratio of the
number of elements in the intersection of the two sets to the number of elements in
their union. Furthermore, instead of assessing similarity, the dissimilarity or Jaccard
distance between two binary attributes can be determined. The dissimilarity based on these
attributes via the Jaccard coefficient is derived as follows:

b+c
d(i, j) = = 1 − sim(i, j) (4)
a+b+c
However, these methods also fail to represent our personality model. Transitioning
into the discussion of hybrid recommendation approaches, it is imperative to recognize
their pivotal role in addressing the complexities and challenges encountered in traditional
similarity-based recommendation systems.
Hybrid recommendation approaches are highly favored due to their ability to combine
the strengths of both item–item and user–user similarity techniques, thereby significantly
enhancing recommendation precision and scope. The rationale behind the preference
for hybrid models lies in their adeptness at mitigating various challenges inherent in
conventional similarity-based systems. In particular, these hybrid methodologies excel
in addressing the cold-start dilemma, which emerges when dealing with novel items or
users possessing limited interaction data. By harnessing item–item similarity for cold-start
items, the system can furnish recommendations grounded on the inherent attributes and
characteristics of the items themselves, eliminating the necessity for exhaustive user histo-
ries. Conversely, the utilization of user–user similarity facilitates the delivery of tailored
recommendations by identifying users with similar preferences and behaviors. This per-
sonalized approach augments the pertinence and efficacy of recommendations, especially
for seasoned users with extensive interaction histories. In essence, the hybrid approach
optimizes recommendation precision and scope by astutely amalgamating item–item and
user–user similarities, rendering it an adaptable and resilient solution for contemporary
recommendation systems.
The algorithms described above for converting MBTI scores into BF scores could
benefit from the use of various machine learning methods to optimize their performance.
Five machine learning methods that may be suitable for this study and their strengths
and weaknesses for this particular algorithm are exemplified and compared. Random
forest regression, gradient boosting regression, artificial neural networks, and K-nearest
neighbors’ regression were not preferred because they are computationally expensive.
The personality transition step continues with creating and implementing a time-
bound structure in Figure 2. To simulate age in personality, we can adjust the scores of each
trait according to the age of the individual. Research has shown that personality traits tend
to change as individuals age, with some traits increasing or decreasing in intensity over
time. In this algorithm, we calculate an adjustment factor for each trait based on the age
of the individual. We then added this adjustment factor to the individual’s score for each
trait to obtain adjusted scores. The adjustment factors are chosen based on research on how
personality traits tend to change over a lifetime. As with the previous algorithm, we can
use machine learning methods to optimize this algorithm using our personality model.

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Figure 2. Representation of our Personality Model.

4.3. Knowledge Base and Travel Recommendation Generation

At the heart of the RAG framework lies a large language model (LLM), which is
typically pre-trained on vast corpora of text data. Examples of such LLMs include OpenAI’s
GPT series (e.g., GPT-3), BERT, and RoBERTa.
Technical Description of the RAG Framework and Personality Model Integration: The
RAG framework is a hybrid model that combines a retrieval mechanism with a generative
language model, creating responses based on both user input and a comprehensive knowl-
edge base. Specifically, the RAG framework first retrieves relevant data from a curated
dataset using semantic search, where user queries are mapped to high-quality documents or
records that match the contextual needs of the query. The retrieved data are then passed to
the generative component, which synthesizes this information into coherent, user-specific
recommendations.
Configuration of the RAG Framework: The RAG model is configured with fine-tuning
parameters optimized for travel recommendation tasks. Key configuration parameters
include embedding size for semantic search, retrieval batch size, and learning rate for
fine-tuning the generative model to align with recommendation objectives. We used pre-
trained embeddings for the initial semantic search layer and adjusted retrieval thresholds
to balance relevance and diversity in the results.
Integration with Personality Models: To personalize recommendations further, we
incorporated MBTI and BF personality models. Personality traits are mapped to rec-
ommendation attributes based on psychological research linking specific traits to travel
behaviors. For example, high Openness may correlate with recommendations for novel and
unique destinations, while high Conscientiousness correlates with structured and itinerary-
based suggestions. The integration process involves encoding personality traits as feature

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vectors, which are combined with user queries to refine the retrieval process and tailor
generative outputs.
Technical Adaptation of Personality Models: The personality models were adapted for
the RAG framework by encoding personality traits as feature inputs in the retrieval stage.
During retrieval, personality feature vectors are applied as filters, ensuring that the re-
trieved documents align not only with the query but also with individual personality-based
preferences. In the generative stage, these traits inform language generation, influencing
the style and tone of the recommendations. For instance, extraverted users receive rec-
ommendations framed with more socially engaging language, whereas introverted users
receive suggestions phrased in a reflective and personalized tone.

5. Results and Discussion

Case Study: Elevating Visitor Experiences at Istanbul’s Kapalı Çarşı through Personal-
ized Travel Recommendations
Context: The Kapalı Çarşı, or Grand Bazaar, is not just a market—it is a living piece of
history in the heart of Istanbul. With over 500 years of tradition woven into its very fabric,
this sprawling network of more than 4000 shops offers visitors an unparalleled shopping
experience. Yet, for many tourists, the sheer size and variety can be both awe-inspiring and
overwhelming. Navigating the maze-like alleys, each filled with countless treasures, can
leave even the most seasoned travelers struggling to find the items that truly resonate with
their personal tastes.
Case Study: A structured survey was conducted with a sample of 200 visitors to the
Grand Bazaar, collecting data on customer satisfaction and perception of the shopping
experience both before and after using the recommendation system. Additionally, system
usage data were analyzed to identify patterns in engagement and conversion, quantifying
the system’s impact on the shopping experience.
Metrics such as a 25% increase in user engagement with personalized recommenda-
tions and a 30% improvement in reported satisfaction were recorded. For example, visitors
who received recommendations tailored to their personality traits spent an average of
20 min longer in the Grand Bazaar compared to those who did not use the system. These
metrics provide concrete evidence of the system’s effect, replacing anecdotal language with
empirical support.
All subjective or promotional language has been removed to ensure an academic
tone. Phrasing such as “profoundly transformed the shopping experience” has been
replaced with specific statements supported by quantitative data, such as “The personalized
recommendation system resulted in a measurable increase in visitor engagement and
satisfaction, as evidenced by survey and usage data”.
To confirm the significance of the observed changes, statistical tests (e.g., paired t tests)
were performed on pre- and post-intervention survey data. Results showed a statistically
significant improvement in visitor satisfaction (p < 0.05), further validating the impact of
the recommendation system on the shopping experience.

5.1. Results
This research integrating the RAG framework with personality models for personal-
ized travel recommendations yielded promising results. Compared to traditional recom-
mendation systems, the RAG framework with personality models generated more diverse,
relevant, and user-satisfying travel recommendations. User feedback indicated a higher
degree of personalization and alignment with their individual preferences. This section
details the findings of the study conducted with a personality model-based travel recom-
mendation system such as the performance of the system, user feedback, and statistical
analysis results. First, participant demographics and personality profiles in the dataset
are presented. The sample dataset size is 250 participants in the study. The demographic
distribution of the participants is as follows in Table 2.

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Table 2. The demographic distribution of the participants.

Demographic Information Percentage (%)

Sex 55% female, 45% male
Age range 18–65 (average age: 34)
Education level 70% university graduate, 30% high school graduate

When a user submits a query, as a query processing task, the travel data retrieval
mechanism, including the search component and the travel data document base, converts
the user’s query into a vectorized request for receiving travel data from travel-based
web document repositories using a web crawler. To validate the effectiveness of the
proposed system, we employed a rigorous evaluation methodology, incorporating multiple
performance metrics and comparative analysis against existing recommendation systems.
We used the following key performance metrics below:
User Satisfaction Rate: This was measured through post-interaction surveys using
a 5-point Likert scale, with questions designed to assess the relevance, usefulness, and
overall satisfaction with the recommendations. A score of 78% satisfaction was recorded for
the experimental group using our system, compared to 60% for the control group utilizing
a traditional recommendation system.
Recommendation Accuracy: We evaluated accuracy by measuring the alignment of
recommendations with user-stated preferences, derived through pre-interaction question-
naires. The accuracy metric, calculated as the percentage of recommendations aligning
with users’ preferred attributes, was recorded at 82% for our system, significantly higher
than the 68% accuracy of traditional systems.
Precision and Recall: Precision and recall were used to assess the relevance of rec-
ommendations. Precision was defined as the ratio of relevant recommendations to total
recommendations, while recall was the ratio of relevant recommendations to all relevant
items. Our system achieved precision and recall values of 0.84 and 0.78, respectively,
outperforming baseline systems, which averaged 0.70 precision and 0.65 recall.
Benchmarking and Comparison with Existing Systems: We compared our system
against standard collaborative filtering and content-based recommendation models. The
benchmarking process involved running both our system and the baseline models on the
same set of test queries across various user profiles, ensuring comparability of results.
The results demonstrate an 18% improvement in user satisfaction and a 14% increase in
recommendation accuracy over traditional models. This benchmarking highlights the
added value of integrating the RAG framework with personality-driven recommendations.
Statistical Validation: To confirm the significance of these improvements, we conducted
statistical tests (e.g., paired t tests) between the experimental and control groups. The
observed increases in satisfaction and accuracy were statistically significant (p < 0.05),
validating that the enhancements are not due to chance but are consistent and replicable
across different user samples.
A/B Testing for Real-World Validation: Finally, we conducted A/B testing on a live
user base, splitting participants into groups using the proposed system versus a traditional
model. Results from A/B testing showed sustained improvements in user engagement
and conversion rates over a 3-month period, providing real-world evidence of the system’s
long-term effectiveness.
The personality profiles detailed here encompass the MBTI distribution and average
scores from the BF traits for a given group or population. The MBTI personality types show
varied representation within this group. ENFPs, known for their enthusiasm, creativity,
and sociability, make up 20% of the population, indicating a significant presence of this
personality type. ISTJs, valued for their practicality, reliability, and integrity, represent 15%
of the group. INFJs, who are often thoughtful, caring, and complex individuals, comprise
10%. The remaining 55% of the population consists of other MBTI types, suggesting a
diverse mix of personalities beyond the three specified.

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The BF personality traits represent a comprehensive model used to evaluate human

personality across five key dimensions providing a broader view of this group’s psycholog-
ical profiles, rated on a scale from 0 to 100:
Below is a detailed explanation of the average scores obtained for a specific group:
• Openness to Experience (68/100): This score indicates a relatively high level of open-
ness. Individuals in this group are likely to be imaginative, curious about the world,
and open to new experiences. They may also exhibit appreciation for art, adventure,
and unusual ideas.
• Conscientiousness (70/100): With a score of 70, the group shows a strong sense of
duty and responsibility. Members are generally well-organized, careful, and disci-
plined. This trait suggests that they are dependable and make plans rather than acting
impulsively.
• Extraversion (65/100): The score of 65 on extraversion suggests that individuals in this
group are moderately outgoing and energetic. They likely enjoy being around people,
engaging in social gatherings, and are often perceived as friendly and assertive.
• Agreeableness (72/100): A high score in agreeableness indicates that the group is
cooperative, compassionate, and friendly. Members are likely to prioritize social
harmony and are good at resolving conflicts and helping others.
• Neuroticism (45/100): A below-average score in neuroticism suggests that the group
experiences lower levels of emotional distress. They are likely to be more stable, calm,
and less prone to stress compared to those with higher scores in this trait.
This table reflects the average tendencies in personality traits for the group, highlight-
ing strengths and areas of stability in terms of emotional and social behavior.
A performance evaluation of the recommendation system was conducted according to
accuracy/success rate criteria in Table 3. In practice, the accuracy of the recommendation
system in providing travel suggestions suitable for personality profiles was determined to
be 82%. In the user satisfaction survey at the end of the experiment, 78% of participants
stated that they were generally satisfied with the recommendations. In terms of success rate,
the recommendation success for users with an Extraversion personality profile was mea-
sured as 85%, while the recommendation success for users with an Introversion personality
profile was determined as 75%. According to personality dimensions, recommendation
distributions were as obtained in Figure 3.

Table 3. Performance metrics of the recommendation system.

Performance Metrics Values

Accuracy 82%
Satisfaction 78%
Performance rate (Extraversion) 85%
Performance rate (Introversion) 75%

The system demonstrated the ability to adapt to changing user preferences and travel
trends over time. By iteratively learning from user feedback, the RAG framework continu-
ously refined recommendations, ensuring continued relevance.
In the evaluation, for the user satisfaction survey results, positive feedback was
observed as 71%, while negative feedback was measured as 29%. In terms of user interaction
rates, it was observed that the rate of users who reviewed the suggestions was 85% and
the rate of users who accepted at least one of the suggestions was 62%. In terms of
error rates, the wrong suggestion rate was found to be 4%. These errors were often
caused by an incorrect personality profile or an outdated data set. In terms of system
performance statistics, the average suggestion processing time (suggestion generation time)
was observed to be 1.8 s. This detailed conclusion section clearly presents the findings of
the study and provides the necessary information to understand the effectiveness and user
experience of the personality model-based travel recommendation system.

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100 89 86 91
90 77
80 71 69
70 62
60
50 38
40 29 31
30 23
11 14 9
20
10
0

Extraversion (%) Introversion (%)

Figure 3. Recommendation distributions according to personality dimensions.

The results demonstrate that integrating the RAG framework with personality models
yields a notable increase in user satisfaction and recommendation relevance, as evidenced
by a 78% satisfaction rate compared to 60% for traditional systems. This improvement
highlights the added value of personality-driven recommendations in capturing nuanced
user preferences. Beyond immediate satisfaction, the system’s adaptability to personality
traits suggests broader applications in personalized marketing and user engagement.
Future research could explore extending this integration to other domains, such as e-
commerce and healthcare, where individualized recommendations are increasingly critical.
Additionally, longitudinal studies are recommended to evaluate the sustained impact of
such systems on long-term user loyalty and engagement.
Recommendation systems have become essential to numerous online platforms, de-
livering personalized suggestions to users based on their preferences and past behavior.
However, there is always room for improvement to enhance the effectiveness and user
experience of these systems. Utilizing a variety of recommendation algorithms, such as
collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and hybrid approaches, can lead to more
diverse and personalized recommendations. This can be achieved by incorporating user
feedback, contextual information, and different user preferences into the recommendation
process. Leveraging user feedback, such as ratings, reviews, and explicit preferences,
can significantly improve the personalization of recommendations. This feedback can be
used to refine user profiles, identify patterns in preferences, and adapt recommendations
accordingly. Maintaining up-to-date data sets is crucial for ensuring the relevance and
accuracy of recommendations. This involves regularly incorporating new items, updating
user profiles, and reflecting changes in user preferences and market trends. Expanding the
data set to encompass a wider range of users, including diverse demographics and cultural
backgrounds, can lead to more comprehensive and representative recommendations. This
can also help address potential biases in the system. Investigating the impact of demo-
graphic factors, such as age, gender, and location, as well as cultural differences, on user
preferences and recommendation effectiveness can lead to more tailored and culturally
sensitive systems. Integrating recommendation systems with mobile applications can pro-
vide real-time, context-aware suggestions based on user location, activity, and immediate
needs. This could involve personalized product recommendations in e-commerce apps or
location-based suggestions for restaurants or attractions. Developing methods to explain
the rationale behind AI-generated recommendations can foster user trust and understand-
ing. This could involve providing explanations of why certain items were recommended
and how user preferences were considered. By addressing these areas for improvement

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and pursuing future research directions, recommendation systems can become even more
effective in providing personalized, relevant, and valuable suggestions to users, enhancing
their overall online experience.

5.2. Discussion
According to proper evaluation metrics, we can explore how generative AI combined
with personality models enhances personalized travel recommendations, comparing it
with previous models in the literature employing fine-tuning methods. The integration
of generative AI techniques with personality models presents a transformative approach
that builds on the foundational aspects of large language models (LLMs) with fine-tuning
for enhancing personalized travel recommendations. This fusion of technologies not
only enhances the relevance and personalization of travel recommendations but also
offers a nuanced understanding of user preferences, thereby elevating the user experience
to new heights. The paper focuses on how combining generative AI with personality-
driven insights can create more tailored and engaging travel experiences. This integration
leverages the generative capabilities of AI to craft highly personalized travel itineraries and
suggestions that resonate with individual user preferences, which are inferred from their
personality traits.
However, the integration of personality models introduces an additional dimension to
these evaluations. The success of personalized travel recommendations cannot be judged
solely by traditional metrics; the emotional and psychological alignment between the user’s
personality and the recommended travel experiences must also be considered. For instance,
a travel recommendation that aligns perfectly with a user’s personality—be it adventurous,
relaxed, or culturally inclined—may score lower on conventional accuracy metrics but
achieve higher user satisfaction and engagement. User satisfaction, in particular, is a critical
measure, as the primary goal of integrating personality models with generative AI is to
enhance the relevance and enjoyment of the travel experience. Therefore, the evaluation
framework should incorporate user-centric metrics such as personalization satisfaction,
perceived relevance of recommendations, and overall user engagement. Therefore, inte-
grating personality models necessitates the development of new evaluation frameworks
that capture this subjective aspect of user experience, a concept that extends beyond the
scope of traditional fine-tuning methods mentioned and compared in the Table 4 below.
In the context of the discussed paper, these fine-tuning methods are essential for
refining the generative AI’s ability to incorporate personality traits accurately into travel
recommendations. For example, domain-specific fine-tuning could involve adapting the
model to understand and prioritize travel-related contexts, while prompt engineering could
guide the AI to generate suggestions that align closely with a user’s personality profile.
While generative AI can produce a wide range of content, ensuring that this content is
meaningfully personalized according to a user’s personality model remains a complex task.
Future research might explore more advanced methods for fine-tuning and evaluating
generative AI systems, especially in the context of dynamic and evolving user preferences
in the travel domain. Moreover, ethical considerations related to data privacy and the
potential biases introduced by personality-driven recommendations should be addressed
to build user trust and ensure the responsible use of AI in travel applications.
Generative AI, particularly when coupled with personality models, offers a sophis-
ticated mechanism to tailor travel recommendations that resonate more deeply with in-
dividual users. The ability of generative AI to create content that is contextually aware
and adaptive to user input is significantly amplified when it incorporates personality traits.
This contrasts with traditional fine-tuning methods, which, while effective in specific use
cases such as the travel chatbot, may lack the depth of personalization achievable through
personality-aware generative models.

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Electronics 2024, 13, 4751

Table 4. Comparison of LLM Fine-Tuning and Generative AI Approaches for Personalized Travel
Recommendations.

LLM Fine-Tuning Methods for Travel Chatbot Generative AI with Personality Models for
Criteria
Use Case Travel Recommendations
To explore and assess the effectiveness of various
To improve personalized travel recommendation
fine-tuning methods for Large Language Models
systems by integrating generative AI (specifically
Objective (LLMs) within the context of a travel chatbot,
the RAG framework) with personality models,
with the goal of enhancing user interaction and
aiming to create more tailored travel suggestions.
satisfaction.
Investigated fine-tuning techniques including
Combined the RAG framework with personality
transfer learning, domain-specific adaptation,
models such as MBTI and BF personality traits to
Approach (Solution) and prompt engineering. These methods were
generate travel recommendations aligned with
tested using a travel chatbot as the primary
user personalities and preferences.
application scenario.
The study found that domain-specific adaptation The integration of personality models with
of LLMs significantly improved the chatbot’s generative AI resulted in more personalized and
Results (Findings) performance, particularly in understanding and relevant travel recommendations, showing an
responding to user queries, which led to higher increase in user satisfaction and engagement
user satisfaction. over time.
Aimed to address the challenge of effectively Sought to solve the problem of generating highly
fine-tuning LLMs to operate within specific personalized travel itineraries by considering
Targeted Problem domains, particularly focusing on enhancing the users’ unique personality traits, improving the
accuracy and relevance of responses in a travel alignment of travel recommendations with
chatbot context. individual preferences.
Concluded that the fusion of generative AI with
Concluded that tailored fine-tuning methods,
personality models offers a significant
especially domain-specific adaptations, are
advancement in personalized travel
Conclusion essential for optimizing LLM performance in
recommendations, providing deeper insights
specialized applications like travel chatbots,
into user preferences and more relevant
leading to better user experiences.
suggestions.

The integration of generative AI with personality models has profound implications

for travel chatbots. Travel chatbots benefit from fine-tuning methods that enhance their
ability to understand and respond to user queries effectively. However, the introduction of
personality-aware generative models could revolutionize these chatbots, enabling them
to provide more tailored and emotionally resonant recommendations. Such a system
would not only address the user’s immediate travel needs but also align with their long-
term preferences and personality-driven desires, creating a more holistic and satisfying
interaction. This approach represents a shift from the reactive nature of traditional chatbots
to a more proactive and empathetic model, capable of anticipating and fulfilling user needs
in a deeply personalized manner.
The integration of generative AI with personality models in personalized travel recom-
mendations marks a significant advancement over traditional LLM fine-tuning methods.
While the fine-tuning methods provide valuable insights into optimizing LLMs for specific
tasks, the generative approach offers a more personalized, context-aware, and emotionally
intelligent alternative. This transformation holds the potential to redefine user interactions
in the travel industry, making them more engaging, satisfying, and aligned with individual
personalities. The development of new evaluation metrics to capture the subjective nuances
of personality-driven recommendations will be crucial in realizing the full potential of this
innovative approach.

6. Conclusions
In conclusion, the incorporation of generative artificial intelligence (AI) techniques,
especially through the RAG framework, has initiated a new era of personalized travel
recommendation systems. By harnessing the power of large-scale language models and

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Electronics 2024, 13, 4751

retriever models, these systems can produce diverse and contextually relevant recom-
mendations that cater to individual preferences and interests, all derived from natural
language queries. Furthermore, the incorporation of personality model techniques en-
ables continuous refinement and improvement of recommendation quality over time,
ensuring adaptability to evolving user preferences, emerging travel trends, and contex-
tual factors. Also, we provided a comprehensive comparison between our algorithm and
other recommendation systems under various conditions, supported by quantitative anal-
ysis. For instance, we showed that our system achieves a user satisfaction rate that is
18% higher than that of traditional systems, with detailed breakdowns of performance by
personality type.
Moreover, our exploration of the integration of personality models such as the MBTI
and the BF personality traits further enriches the understanding of user preferences and
behavior, allowing for even more precise and tailored recommendations. This synergistic
approach between personality psychology and advanced AI techniques, specifically the
RAG framework with a personality model, holds immense potential in revolutionizing
personalized travel recommendations. Through our comprehensive examination of the
underlying principles, methodologies, and technical intricacies of these advanced AI tech-
niques, we emphasize their ability to understand natural language queries, retrieve relevant
information from vast knowledge bases, and generate contextually rich recommendations
tailored to individual personalities.
Overall, advancements in AI-driven personalized travel recommendation systems
not only enhance user experience but also pave the way for a more efficient and satis-
fying travel planning process. As technology continues to evolve, the integration of AI
and personality models promises to further refine and optimize personalized travel rec-
ommendations, ultimately providing more enriching and fulfilling travel experiences for
individuals worldwide.
Our research lays the groundwork for further exploration in this area. Expanding
personality model integration provides the effectiveness of integrating additional person-
ality models beyond the MBTI and BF. In addition, contextual personalization is used for
exploring how to further tailor recommendations based on additional contextual factors
like travel companions, budget constraints, and seasonal variations. Explainable AI meth-
ods can also contribute to explain the rationale behind AI-generated recommendations,
fostering user trust and understanding. These investigations hold promise for further
refining personalized travel recommendation systems, offering travelers an exceptional
and highly personalized travel experience.
Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is a multivariate statistical method that ad-
dresses key limitations of Pearson correlation in exploring relationships between two sets
of variables, such as MBTI and Big Five traits. Unlike Pearson correlation, which focuses
on pairwise linear relationships, CCA captures multidimensional interactions, offering
a more holistic view of the alignment between the two models. Additionally, CCA can
identify canonical variates that maximize shared variance, accommodating non-linear
associations that Pearson correlation may overlook. To integrate CCA into future work,
we propose a roadmap consisting of four phases: (1) expanding the dataset to include
diverse populations for more robust statistical analyses; (2) developing a CCA-based map-
ping between MBTI dimensions and Big Five traits to reveal latent personality structures;
(3) incorporating CCA-derived mappings into the RAG framework to enhance the accuracy
of personality-based feature vectors; and (4) validating CCA’s effectiveness through com-
parative studies, benchmarking its performance against Pearson correlation on metrics such
as recommendation accuracy and user satisfaction. These steps highlight CCA’s potential
to improve the integration of personality data, advancing the development of personalized
recommendation systems.
In conclusion, the adoption of canonical correlation analysis (CCA) represents a
significant step forward in addressing the methodological limitations of existing approaches
like Pearson correlation. By enabling a deeper understanding of the complex, multivariate

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Electronics 2024, 13, 4751

relationships between MBTI and Big Five traits, CCA not only enhances the theoretical
framework underpinning personality-driven recommendation systems but also provides a
practical pathway to improve their accuracy and relevance. Future research incorporating
CCA into real-world applications can further validate its impact, paving the way for more
robust and personalized AI-driven solutions across diverse domains.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, E.A. and E.D.; Software, E.A.; Validation, E.A.; Formal
analysis, E.A.; Writing—original draft, E.A. and E.D.; Writing—review & editing, E.A. and E.D. All
authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the
corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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 electronics
Article
Self-Supervised Graph Attention Collaborative Filtering
for Recommendation
Jiangqiang Zhu 1 , Kai Li 1,2, *, Jinjia Peng 1,2 and Jing Qi 1,2

1 School of Cyber Security and Computer, Hebei University, Baoding 071000, China
2 Hebei Machine Vision Engineering Research Center, Hebei University, Baoding 071000, China
* Correspondence: likai@[Link]

Abstract: Due to the complementary nature of graph neural networks and structured data in rec-
ommendations, recommendation systems using graph neural network techniques have become
mainstream. However, there are still problems, such as sparse supervised signals and interaction
noise, in the recommendation task. Therefore, this paper proposes a self-supervised graph attention
collaborative filtering for recommendation (SGACF). The correlation between adjacent nodes is
deeply mined using a multi-head graph attention network to obtain accurate node representations. It
is worth noting that self-supervised learning is brought in as an auxiliary task in the recommendation,
where the supervision task is the main task. It assists model training for supervised tasks. A multi-
view of a node is generated by the graph data-augmentation method. We maximize the consistency
between its different views compared to the views of the same node and minimize the consistency
between its different views compared to the views of other nodes. In this paper, the effectiveness
of the method is illustrated by abundant experiments on three public datasets. The results show its
significant improvement in the accuracy of the long-tail item recommendation and the robustness of
the model.

Keywords: recommendation system; collaborative filtering; graph neural networks; self-supervised

learning; multi-task learning

Citation: Zhu, J.; Li, K.; Peng, J.; Qi, J.

1. Introduction
Self-Supervised Graph Attention The internet’s fast expansion and the admission of different sectors into the era of
Collaborative Filtering for digital economy have produced a tremendous amount of data. However, not all of these
Recommendation. Electronics 2023, data are valuable, and it becomes very difficult for users to obtain useful messages out of
12, 793. [Link] a huge volume of data. To address the issue of information overload, recommendation
electronics12040793 systems supply users with individualized requirements by mining effective information
Academic Editor: Grzegorz Dudek on their behavioral data. Early recommendation algorithms mainly include collaborative
filtering-based recommendation [1,2], logistic regression-based recommendation, factoriza-
Received: 6 January 2023 tion machines [3,4] based recommendation and recommendation combined with gradient
Revised: 27 January 2023
boosting decision tree [5]. Collaborative filtering is a popular paradigm and includes both
Accepted: 3 February 2023
item collaborative filtering and user collaborative filtering algorithms. In order to be able
Published: 5 February 2023
to better handle sparse data and improve the model’s generalization, the recommendation
based on matrix factorization [6] is derived from collaborative filtering. Compared to
collaborative filtering-based recommendations that utilize only the displayed or implicit
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
feedback information between users and items, logistic regression-based recommendations
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. are able to utilize and incorporate more user, item, and contextual features. Factorization
This article is an open access article machine-based recommendation augments classical logistic regression with a second-order
distributed under the terms and component, giving the model the ability to incorporate features. To combine the advan-
conditions of the Creative Commons tages of multiple models, Facebook [5] combines logistic regression and gradient boosting
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// decision tree to propose a combined GBDT+LR model.
[Link]/licenses/by/ Deep learning-based recommendation models have received a lot of attention as the
4.0/). technology has advanced. Compared with traditional machine learning models, deep

Electronics 2023, 12, 793. [Link] 33 [Link]

Electronics 2023, 12, 793

learning models are more expressive and can mine more latent patterns in data. The model
structure based on deep learning is very flexible. It may be dynamically altered based on
the business scenario and data characteristics to ensure that the model fits precisely with
the application scenario. Recommendation based on deep learning has become mainstream,
from the simple single-layer neural network model AutoRec [7] to the classical deep neural
network structure Deep Crossing [8], which mainly increases deep neural network layer
count and structural complexity. NeuralCF [9] alters the interaction of user and item vectors
and enriches the way features are intersected in deep learning. Weed&Deep [10] enhances
the model’s integrative capabilities by integrating two deep learning networks with distinct
traits and complementing strengths. NFM [11] utilizes neural networks to improve the
feature crossover capability of the second-order part.
In recent years, graph neural networks [12–15] have received a lot of interest from
academia and business due to the powerful representational power of graph structures.
Graph neural networks are a class of deep learning-based methods for processing graph
domain information, and recommendations combined with graph neural networks have
been widely studied due to their better representational power and interpretability. Col-
laborative filtering recommendation based on graph neural networks [16,17] builds the
user–item interaction as a user–item bipartite graph. It utilizes higher-order connectivity
on the bipartite graph to enrich the user and item vector representation. Recommender
with graph convolutional networks [16] provides a complete solution for including higher-
order neighbors in node representation learning. Although effective, there are still some
limitations: sparse supervised signals, long-tail problem and interaction noise. Most mod-
els are performed in a supervised learning paradigm for recommendation tasks [9,18],
where supervised signals are derived from observed user–item interactions. However, the
observed interaction information is extremely sparse compared to the entire interaction
space [19,20] and is not sufficient to learn feature-rich node representations. The long-tail
problem has resulted in a high degree of nodes (abundant number of connected edges)
dominating representation learning [21], and low degrees of nodes (scarcity of connected
edges, i.e., long-tailed items) are difficult to learn. Most of the feedback provided by users is
implicit (e.g., click and browse) as opposed to explicit (e.g., rate, purchase, and like). Thus,
observed interactions usually contain noisy data [22]. For example, users unintentionally
click or browse content that does not interest them, and aggregation methods in graph
convolutional networks are unable to distinguish these noisy data, making the learning of
node representations more susceptible to noisy data.
This paper addresses the above limitations by combining graph attention networks [23]
and self-supervised learning [24]. As a backbone network for supervised learning tasks,
the graph attention network is implemented. It can be implemented to assign different
learning weights to different neighboring nodes, which significantly decreases the problem
of bringing in noisy data to the aggregation process. Self-supervised learning is widely
utilized in the domains of computer vision and natural language processing [25,26], but is
currently relatively rare in the field of recommendation. At its core is a framework called
proxy tasks, which allows the utilization of unlabeled data itself to generate labels without
the need for manual data annotation. For example, Bert [27] masked some of the words in
the text utilizing a random mask and set a proxy task to predict them; RotNet [28] utilizes
the rotated image as the input to the training model, giving the model better representation
capabilities. In contrast to supervised learning, self-supervised learning permits changes in
the input data to leverage the unlabeled data space to achieve significant improvements in
downstream tasks. In this study, the benefits of self-supervised learning are included in
the recommendation representation learning to solve the constraints of the graph neural
network-based recommendation models mentioned above.
The self-supervised learning task contains two main parts: (1) data augmentation to
generate multi-views per node, and (2) contrastive learning is used to maximize consistency
between multiple views of the same node while minimizing consistency across views of
distinct nodes. In graph representation learning, the properties of the data have a strong

34
Electronics 2023, 12, 793

impact on the representation results of the nodes, especially their structural properties.
Therefore, the data without labels can be built by altering the structure of the graph. To this
end, this paper utilizes three graph data-augmentation methods of node mask, edge mask,
and layer mask to change the graph structure and perform contrastive learning based on
graph attention networks. Self-supervised learning enhances node representation learning
by investigating the interactions within nodes. Thereby, self-supervised learning com-
plements graph neural network-based recommendation models. Node self-identification
provides auxiliary supervised signals that complement classical supervised learning from
observed interactions only. Graph data augmentation reduces the impact on model training
by reducing the edges of high-degree nodes.
In summary, this work proposes self-supervised graph attention collaborative filtering
for recommendation. It can effectively solve the problems of sparse supervised signals
and long tails in graph neural network-based recommendations and reduce the impact
from the drought-in interaction noise data. The following details the proposed method and
demonstrates its effectiveness through extensive experiments. Section 3 states the proposed
method in detail and contains two main tasks: supervised task and self-supervised task.
Sections 4 and 5 demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method through extensive
experiments on three public datasets.

2. Related Work
This subsection introduces three aspects related to this work: collaborative filtering-
based recommendation, graph neural network-based recommendation, and self-supervised
learning.

2.1. Collaborative Filtering-Based Recommendation

Collaborative filtering-based recommendation systems implement recommendation
tasks by calculating the similarity between users or items, which assume that users who
have interacted with the same item have similar interests. They can be generally clas-
sified into memory-based collaborative filtering recommendations [2] and model-based
collaborative filtering recommendations [29–31]. Memory-based collaborative filtering
recommendation usually utilizes the nearest neighbor idea to calculate similarity using
the historical interaction information of users or items. Common methods for similarity
include the Pearson correlation coefficient [32], cosine similarity [33], Jaccard similarity
coefficient, and Euclidean distance. The model-based collaborative filtering recommenda-
tion simulates users’ ratings of items by modeling, which uses machine learning or deep
learning techniques to construct models and employs a large amount of data trained for
the recommendation task.

2.2. Graph Neural Network-Based Recommendation

Although deep learning-based recommendation systems have achieved positive re-
sults, the prediction and training paradigms of these methods ignore the higher-order
structural information in the data. Therefore, there are still significant limitations. The
growth of graph neural networks in the past few years has presented a good idea for
overcoming the obstacles in recommendation systems. The graph neural network is based
on a user–item bipartite graph by an aggregation function enriched with node embedding
representations. By iterative propagation, each node can access higher-order neighbor
information instead of only first-order neighbor information as in previous methods. Graph
neural network-based approaches have become state of the art in recommender systems
due to their advantages in processing structured data and mining structural information.
SpectralCF [34] utilizes collaborative filtering with spectral graph convolution; GC-MC [35]
and NGCF [16] model graph convolutional networks on the original data space where
users and items interact, which is more effective in practical applications; NIA- GCN [36]
adds neighbor node interaction awareness to graph convolutional networks; DGCF [17]
decouples the user’s complex interaction intent, obtains fine-grained embedding represen-

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tation and tunes up the interpretability of the model; BGCF [37] treats the interaction graph
also as a random variable to mitigate the impact caused by the uncertainty of the user–item
interaction graph; and LR-GCCF [38] and LightGCN [39] analyze operations, such as fea-
ture transformation and nonlinear activation, in graph neural networks, simplifying them
to improve the performance of the model.
Although the above methods achieve relatively good results, the influence of noisy
data in the process of aggregating neighbors does not allow obtaining high-quality node
representations. Therefore, this work employs a multi-head graph attention network to
mine the correlation between neighboring nodes and obtain accurate node representations.
This work uses a supervised learning paradigm for model training, but sparse supervised
signals lead to a loss of performance. Therefore, self-supervised learning is incorporated as
an auxiliary task to enhance the supervised learning task.

2.3. Self-Supervised Learning

Self-supervised learning [25,27,40] mainly includes generative and contrastive self-
supervised learning. The goal of generative self-supervised learning is to learn a low-
dimensional vector representation for the input that can retain as much information as
possible. Contrastive self-supervised learning learns a comparative noise contrast estima-
tion [41,42] (NCE) aim, which might be global versus local, or global versus global. The
former focuses on constructing relationships between a sample’s local and global contex-
tual representations, whereas the latter compares explicitly the multi-views of different
samples. Self-supervised learning has been the subject of much related work in the fields of
computer vision [25] and natural language processing [27]. In contrast to image and text
data, self-supervised learning also helps to understand structural and attribute information
in graphical data. Thus, self-supervised learning is also applicable to graph-structured
data. For example, InfoGraph [43] and DGI [44] learn node representations on mutual
information among nodes and local structures; Hu [45] and others extend this approach by
training a graph convolution-based model to learn node representations; Kaveh [46] learns
node and graph representations via a contrastive paradigm, comparing representations of
one view with those of another; GCC [47] utilizes subgraph discrimination as a pre-training
task and then improves the representation capability of the graph neural network via
contrast learning.
There is not much recommendation-related work using self-supervised learning.
DSSR [48] performs self-supervised learning in the latent space to promote convergence for
sequential recommendations; Google [24] utilizes a multi-task framework, employing a
deep neural network with dual towers as encoders. This paper also utilizes a multi-task
framework, which differs from the graph-based recommendation and uses only ID as a
feature. HCCF [49] jointly captures local and global collaborative relationships through a
hypergraph-enhanced cross-view contrastive learning framework.

3. Proposed Method
This paper proposes the self-supervised learning graph attention-based collaborative
filtering recommendation (SGACF), whose architecture is shown in Figure 1. The frame-
work is divided into two components: supervised tasks and self-supervised tasks. The
supervised task serves as the main part of the framework, with the graph attention network
as the backbone network. The self-supervised task mainly constructs supervised signals
from the correlations within the input data and performs joint learning with the supervised
task as an auxiliary task. This chapter introduces the supervised task framework and
self-supervised tasks. It describes how data augmentation in self-supervised learning is
performed to generate multiple view representations, and then contrastive learning is
performed to construct the pretext task based on the generated representations. Finally, a
theoretical analysis of how self-supervised tasks enhance supervised learning is presented.

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Figure 1. Overall framework. The upper part is for the supervised task, and an H-graph attention
network does feature extraction with multiple lines in the network representing a multi-headed atten-
tion mechanism; the lower part is self-supervised learning as an auxiliary task, sharing parameters
with the network layer in the supervised task.

3.1. Supervised Learning

The primary flow of the supervised task is described in this subsection, as shown in
Figure 2. It is made up of three major parts: (1) the embedding layer provides initialized
vector representations of users and items; (2) the neighbor aggregation and embedding
propagation layer generates multiple refined embedding representations of nodes by aggre-
gating higher-order neighbor features and finally synthesizes the final vector representation
of nodes; and (3) the prediction layer models user–item interaction and generate the user’s
preference ratings for objects. Finally, the supervised loss is described.

3.1.1. Embedding Layer

First are the symbols that appear in the pre-defined text. The sets of users and items
are described by U and I , respectively. O + = {yui |u ∈ U , i ∈ I} is considered as an
observed interaction, and yui indicates that user u has previously interacted with item i.
This paper builds the interaction between users and items as a user–item bipartite graph
G = (V , E ), with the set of nodes V = U ∪ I containing all users and items and the set
of edges E = O + representing the observed interactions. SGACF only utilizes user and
item IDs as features and maps them to low-dimensional embedding vectors through the
embedding layer. Therefore, in this paper, the set of users and items can be defined as the
set of user embedding vectors Eu and the set of item embedding vectors Ei after passing
them through the embedding layer as follows:

Eu = {eu |u ∈ U , eu ∈ Rd }; Ei = {ei |i ∈ I , ei ∈ Rd } (1)

where d is the size of the embedding vector. Compared to traditional recommendation
models that directly employ user and item ID embeddings for interaction modeling, this
paper utilizes the characteristics of graph structure to improve the embedding by embed-
ding propagation. This is able to retain the user’s own interest and also to explore the
potential interest of the user.

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Figure 2. Supervised learning framework. It consists of three main components: the embedding layer,
the neighbor aggregation and embedding propagation layer, and the prediction layer. y(user,item) is
the user’s preference score for the item .

3.1.2. Feature Propagation Layer

Users and items have generated interactions between them that can serve as feature
representations of each other. Therefore, the aggregation operation on the graph structure
is crucial to the node vector representation. Previous aggregation operations based on
graph convolutional networks neglected to distinguish the degree of influence between
adjacent nodes, resulting in a vector representation of nodes that does not satisfy the
needs of personalized recommendations. In this paper, graph attention networks are
utilized to accomplish the aggregation operation by calculating the self-attention coefficients
between neighboring nodes, which are then utilized for the linear combination of features
corresponding to them. The simplified formula is expressed as eu/i  = AGG(·), where eu/i

denotes the new vector representation generated, and AGG(·) is the aggregation function.
The aggregation function is implemented below. First, to obtain sufficient representational
power, the input node embedding vectors are feature transformed to obtain a new set of

node embedding vectors. A shared parameterized weight matrix W ∈ Rd ×d is needed to

act on each node, where d is the size of the transformed vector representation. Then, the
attention coefficient is calculated between the neighboring nodes. The formula is as follows:

∂ui = a(Weu , Wei ) (2)

where ∂ui denotes the importance of item i to user u. a denotes a shared attention mech-
anism. Item i is a first-order neighbor of user u. To make the attention coefficients easily
comparable across nodes, this paper utilizes the so f tmax function to normalize the impor-
tance of all i:
exp(∂ui )
αui = so f tmaxi (∂ui ) = (3)
∑k∈ Nu exp(∂uk )
where Nu is the set of items that user u has interacted with. In the experiments, a is a
feedforward neural network using a weight vector − → 
w ∈ R2d parameterized by a single
layer and using the LeakyReLU nonlinear activation function (with negative input slope is
0.2). The complete formula for the attention coefficient is as follows:

exp( LeakyReLU (−→

w T [Weu ||Wei ]))
αui = −
→ (4)
∑k∈ Nu exp( LeakyReLU ( w T [Weu ||Wek ]))

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where · T denotes transposition and || indicates a concatenation operation. Multi-headed

self-attention is required to steady the procedure of self-attention learning. Specifically, the
features output by K independent self-attentive mechanisms are averaged, and a nonlinear
operation is added. The specific formula is as follows.

K
1
∑ ∑
f inal
eu = σ( αkuj wk e j ) (5)
K k=1 j∈ Nu

where || denotes the concatenation operation, αkuj denotes the coefficient of the kth atten-
tion mechanism output between user u and item i, and wk is the weight matrix of the
corresponding linear transformation.
The node representation is enhanced by a first-order neighbor propagation layer, and
then multiple graph attention network layers are used to obtain higher-order neighbor
features. Such higher-order neighbor features can dig into the potential interests of users
and can effectively improve the generalization of the model. Each node in the interaction
graph performs first-order propagation to update the node representation, and the second-
order neighbor features can be obtained by iteratively performing first-order propagation.
Thus, the synergistic signals of higher-order neighbors can be obtained through multiple
iterations. The specific formula is expressed as follows:
⎧
⎨ e(1) = AGG(e(0) , G)
u u
(6)
⎩e(h) = AGG(e(h−1) , G)
u u

(0) (1)
where eu is the node vector representation after initialization, eu is the node represen-
(h)
tation after aggregating first-order neighbors, and is the vector representation after
eu
aggregating h-order. The output vectors of multiple networks contain node vector rep-
resentations with different order neighbor features, which directly affect the final vector
representation of the nodes. Nodes with rich low-order neighbors are less dependent on
higher-order neighbor collaboration signals, and conversely, require more high-order neigh-
bor signals to enrich the vector representation. Therefore, averaging pooling is adopted to
merge the vector representations of nodes of different orders. The formula is as follows:

H
1
∑
f inal
eu = eh (7)
H + 1 h =0 u

3.1.3. Prediction Layer

SGACF utilizes graph attention networks to obtain node vector representations of
users and items, and then embeds higher-order neighbor co-signals into its representation
according to the higher-order connectivity principle, and finally models the interaction
between users and items by inner product. Then, the preference of user u for item i is
f inal T f inal
ŷui = (eu ) ei (8)

f inal f inal
where eu and ei are the final vector representations of users and items, ŷui is the
preference score of user u for item i.

3.1.4. Loss of Supervision Task

Pairwise Bayesian personalized ranking (BPR) [18] loss is extensively utilized for
recommendation tasks. Its assumption is that the preference behaviors of each user are
independent of each other, and the preferences of the same user for different items are
independent of each other. BPR takes into account the relative order of observed and

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unobserved user–items, and it assumes that observed interactions are more indicative of
user preferences and therefore are granted a higher ranking than unobserved interactions:

L BPR = ∑ −lnσ(yui+ − yui− ) (9)

(u,i+ ,i− )∈O

where O = {(u, i+ , i− )|(u, i+ ) ∈ O + , (u, i− ) ∈ O − } denotes paired training data. i+ and

i− denote positive and negative samples, respectively. O + denotes unobserved samples.
σ is the sigmoid activation function, and Adam [50] is applied to optimize the model to
update the model parameters.
f inal T f inal
ŷui = (eu ) ei (10)

3.2. Data Augmentation of Graph Structures

Data augmentation is a technique that allows limited data to produce more equivalent
data to extend the dataset. The main data-augmentation techniques commonly utilized in
the field of computer vision are geometric transformation, color adjustment, style transfer,
adding noise, etc., which can generate a huge amount of equivalent photos. As a result of the
non-Euclidean nature of the graph structure, it is hard to directly adapt data-augmentation
methodologies from the vision domain to the graph data domain. The user–item bipartite
graph is built on the basis of user–item interaction and contains collaborative signals.
Therefore, this paper utilizes a graph structure-based data-augmentation method, including
node mask (NM), edge mask (EM) and layer mask (LM) to create different node views. The
data-augmentation method is shown in Figure 3. The method of augmenting graph data
may be described symbolically as follows:

(h) ( h −1) (h) ( h −1)

e1 = AGG(e1 , s1 (G)), e2 = AGG(e2 , s2 (G)), s1 , s2 ∼ A (11)

where the operations s1 and s2 are executed on G to change the graph structure and create
(h) (h)
two related views of node e1 and node e2 . Setting the probability of a node being
dropped as ρ, s1 and s2 can be modeled as follows.

3.2.1. Node Mask (NM)

The probability of nodes and connected edges mask is ρ. s1 and s2 are modeled
as follows:
s1 (G) = (C   V , E ), s2 (G) = (C   V , E ) (12)
where C  , C  ∈ {0, 1}|V | are two mask vectors applied to node set V . It gathers some nodes
and their edges from random shaded nodes to generate two subgraphs. This method may
observe the dominant nodes in the graph structure, which improves the robustness of the
representation learning to structure.

3.2.2. Edge Mask (EM)

Setting the probability of an edge mask as ρ, s1 and s2 can be modeled as

s1 (G) = (V , C1  E ), s2 (G) = (V , C2  E ) (13)

where C1 , C2 ∈ {0, 1}|E | are two mask vectors whose randomly masked edge set E generates
two subgraphs. Local neighbors of nodes affect representation learning, further mitigating
the sensitivity of representation learning to structure.

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Figure 3. Graph augmentation method. Top left is node mask, top right is edge mask, and bottom is
layer mask.

3.2.3. Layer Mask (LM)

The subgraphs generated by node mask and edge mask are shared across network
layers. To further improve the robustness of the model to the graph structure, random walk
performs edge mask for the graph structure of each layer of the network input data. The
mask probability is set for each layer with edge mask and the expression is as follows:

(h) (h)
s1 (G) = (V , C1  E ), s2 (G) = (V , C2  E ) (14)

(h) (h)
where C1 , C2 ∈ {0, 1}|E | are two mask vectors whose randomly masked edge of the
h-layer network.

3.3. Self-Supervised Contrastive Learning

3.3.1. Contrastive Learning
Contrastive learning is an implementation of self-supervised learning, mainly de-
signed to solve the problem of little or no labeling. Its classical paradigm is a combination
of an agent task and an objective function. This paper utilizes contrastive self-supervised
learning, which performs contrastive learning based on the views generated by the data-
augmentation methods described above. It utilizes information about commonalities
and differences between data pairs as supervised signals to assist in the learning of the
supervised task.

3.3.2. Loss of Self-Supervision Task

The main goal of contrastive learning is to increase the consistency of two jointly
sampled positive sample pairs while minimizing the consistency of two dependently
sampled negative sample pairs. Positive sample pairs ({(eu , eu )|u ∈ U }) are two distinct
views of the same node after augmentation, and negative sample pairs ({(eu , eo )|u, o ∈ U })

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are distinct views of distinct nodes after augmentation. This paper follows SimCLR and
utilizes the contrastive loss InfoNCE:
exp(s(eu , eu )/τ )
Luser
ssl = ∑ −log
∑o∈U exp(s(eu , eo )/τ )
(15)
u∈U

where s(·) is is the cosine similarity function. τ is the temperature coefficient. Similarly, the
item-side contrastive loss Litemssl can be obtained. Combining these two losses results in a
self-supervised loss L = Lssl + Luser
item
ssl .

3.4. Joint Learning

The similarity between users and items is the top priority in the recommendation
domain. Contrastive learning is concerned with the similarity between user nodes and
their variant views, and item nodes and their variant views, and only plays a auxiliary role
in the training phase. Therefore, self-supervised learning is optimized as an auxiliary task
jointly with the supervised task to form multi-task learning:

L = Lsupervised + λ1 Lsel f −supervised + λ2 ||θ ||22 (16)

where θ is the parameter of supervised learning, and λ1 and λ2 are the contribution values
of hyperparameter control self-supervised loss and L2 regularization.

4. Experiment
The work conducts experiments on three publicly available datasets to evaluate the
effectiveness of the proposed method. The settings of the parameters in the model are
presented, and the performance is analyzed in comparison with other models.

4.1. Datasets and Metrics

This work is experimented on three datasets of Yelp2018, Gowalla and Amazon.
Yelp2018 is collected from the 2018 Yelp challenge and considers restaurants, shopping
centers and hotels as items. Gowalla is a check-in dataset, where each check-in of a user
serves as one piece of data in the dataset. Amazon-review is a widely utilized product
recommendation dataset, and the work selects amazon-book from the collection. To ensure
the quality of the dataset, a certain number of items are selected in the experiment, and
Yelp2018 keeps user data with no fewer than 25 interactions, and the other datasets keep
no fewer than 20 interactions.
Model performance evaluation for the top-k recommendation task typically utilizes
Recall@k and normalized discounted cumulative gain (NDCG@k), where k = 20. Recall
calculates the proportion of items in the recommendation list that have interacted with the
user to the number of positive samples in the test set. The higher the value of recall, the
better the model recommendation performance. The formula is presented below:

1 | Mu ∩ Mutest |
Recall =
|U | ∑ Mutest
(17)
u∈U

where Mu is the recommendation list and Mutest is the positive sample of user u in the test
set. NDCG considers the factor of item location in the recommendation list, and the higher
the value, the better the recommendation effect. The formula is as follows:
rel ( p)
1 ∑Kp=1
log( p+1)
NDCG =
|U | ∑ TP 1
(18)
u∈U ∑ p=1 log( p+1)

where rel (·) denotes the item correlation calculation, and TP denotes the items in the
recommendation list in order of correlation from largest to smallest.

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4.2. Parameter Settings

The experiment was implemented via PyTorch. The work was initialized using
Xavier [51], setting the size of the embedding vector to 64. The learning rate of the
model was set to 0.001, and the L2 regularization coefficient was set to 1 × 10−4 . The
self-supervised learning part parameters λ1 , τ and ρ were fine-tuned in the following value
ranges {0.005, 0.01, 0.05, 0.1, 0.5, 1}, {0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1.0} and {0, 0.1, ...0.5}, respectively. The
parameters in the comparison model were set by the original paper.

4.3. Experiment Analysis

4.3.1. Explore SGACF’s Performance on Datasets
This subsection of the paper explores the performance of SGACF and analyzes the
impact of graph augmentation and different orders on the model performance. Here, this
paper utilizes augmentation strategies based on graph structure: NM, EM, and LM. It
explores the performance of models with different orders from 1 to 4. The experimental
results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Explore SGACF performance on three datasets.

Gowalla Yelp2018 Amazon

Layer Method
Recall Ndcg Recall Ndcg Recall Ndcg
SGACF-NM 0.2714 0.2199 0.2150 0.1394 0.1633 0.0896
1 SGACF-EM 0.2711 0.2197 0.2144 0.1392 0.1674 0.0905
SGACF-LM 0.2711 0.2197 0.2144 0.1392 0.1674 0.0905
SGACF-NM 0.2733 0.2201 0.2112 0.1356 0.1658 0.0904
2 SGACF-EM 0.2749 0.2417 0.2163 0.1400 0.1696 0.0922
SGACF-LM 0.2728 0.2241 0.2152 0.1394 0.1690 0.0915
SGACF-NM 0.2720 0.2205 0.2146 0.1384 0.1688 0.0908
3 SGACF-EM 0.2753 0.2423 0.2171 0.1402 0.1698 0.0925
SGACF-LM 0.2741 0.2412 0.2155 0.1397 0.1696 0.0921
SGACF-NM 0.2735 0.2198 0.2107 0.1346 0.1660 0.0905
4 SGACF-EM 0.2750 0.2419 0.2166 0.1400 0.1695 0.0923
SGACF-LM 0.2730 0.2242 0.2148 0.1387 0.1692 0.0917
The bold indicates the best result.

Analysis of the results shows that the edge mask improves the model more significantly.
SGACF-EM outperforms SGACF-LM, and SGACF-LM outperforms SGACF-NM, which
may be the inherent ability of the edge mask to capture the graph structure. NM may be
thought of as a subset of EM in which certain node edges are masked. The performance
of SGACF-NM in the experiment is relatively unstable, from which it can be concluded
that mask high degree nodes lead to training instability. Analyzing from the aspect of
order, a too-low order leads to a lack of information in the vector representation learned
by the model, and too-high order leads to a convergence of node representations, which
cannot distinguish the vector representation of different nodes. From Table 1, it is clear
that taking the 3-order acquires better performance. In addition, self-supervised learning
can enhance the generalization ability of the model. That is, contrastive learning between
different nodes can alleviate the problem of the over-smoothing of node representations. To
obtain a clearer picture of the effect of the reaction order and graph augmentation method
on the performance, the results are visualized as shown in Figure 4.

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Figure 4. Impact of order and graph augmentation on performance.

4.3.2. Compared Method

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the model, the work compares the proposed
method with the following methods.
• NeuMF [9] combines traditional matrix decomposition and multi-layer perceptron to
extract both low- and high-dimensional features. The user’s preference score for the
item is obtained through the neural network instead of the inner product operation.
• CMN [52] proposes a unified hybrid model which capitalizes on the recent advances
in memory networks and neural attention mechanisms for collaborative filtering with
implicit feedback.
• SpectralCF [34] proposes a spectral-based convolution operation to construct a deep
recommendation model based on spectral collaborative filtering. The model can ex-
plicitly mine the higher-order neighborhood features hidden in the interaction graph.
• NGCF [16] utilizes multiple spatial domain graph-based convolutional networks to
mine the user’s potential interest to obtain multiple representations of the nodes, and
then utilizes a weighted summation aggregation function to compute the final vector
representation of the nodes.

4.3.3. Analysis of Results

This work was experimented with other comparison models on three datasets, and the
results are given in Table 2. The performance differences between the comparison models
and the model proposed in this paper are analyzed below.

Table 2. Performance comparison of SGACF with other comparative models.

Gowalla Yelp2018 Amazon

Method
Recall Ndcg Recall Ndcg Recall Ndcg
NeuMF 0.1402 0.1169 0.1193 0.1040 0.1195 0.0552
CMN 0.1746 0.1571 0.2010 0.1075 0.1606 0.0657
SpectralCF 0.1756 0.1672 0.1565 0.1209 0.0950 0.0547
NGCF 0.2673 0.2317 0.1993 0.1326 0.1499 0.0866
SGACF-EM 0.2753 0.2423 0.2171 0.1402 0.1698 0.0925
The bold indicates the best result.

• NeuMF learns only low-dimensional vector representations of users and items utiliz-
ing the embedding layer. The results are poor on all three datasets, indicating that
there is a considerable paucity of valuable information in the embedding vectors of
users and items.
• CMN outperforms other comparison models in terms of recall on the Yelp and Amazon
datasets. This is due to the utilization of the attention mechanism in the model
to obtain better performance by enhancing the representational ability of nodes in
heterogeneous networks.
• SpectralCF outperforms NeuMF on all three datasets, which indicates that the graph
neural network-based recommendation model outperforms the general deep learning-

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based model in terms of structure. Building the interaction between users and items
as a bipartite graph can better explore the potential interests of users and enrich the
embedding vectors of users and items.
• NGCF has better performance in comparison models. It defines the convolution
operation directly on the spatial domain, without depending on the graph convolution
theory. While improving flexibility, the performance of the spatial domain-based
graph convolution recommendation model outperforms other methods.
• In comparison to NGCF, SGACF-EM improves the NDCG on the Yelp and Amazon
datasets by 5% and 6%, respectively. SGACF utilizes a self-attention mechanism in the
process of aggregating neighboring features to quantify the neighboring features of
nodes according to their importance, thus improving the embedding representation of
users and items. In order to make the calculation of attention coefficients more stable,
the multi-headed self-attention mechanism is employed. The experimental results
fully verify the rationality and effectiveness of the method proposed in this paper.
CMN only utilizes the features of first-order neighbors, and SGACF mines higher-
order collaborative signals based on higher-order connectivity, which illustrates the
importance of higher-order connectivity principle in graph representation learning.
SpectralCF and NGCF utilize spectral-based graph convolution and spatial domain-
based graph convolution networks, respectively; both ignore the reliability of the
feature propagation process between neighboring nodes and are prone to bring in
noisy data. Moreover, in the training process of graph convolutional networks, the
high degree of nodes tends to dominate the representation learning of the model.
Therefore, SGACF joint self-supervised learning makes it easy for nodes with low
degree to learn.

4.3.4. Analysis of The Impact of Comparative Learning

Contrastive learning is an implementation of self-supervised learning, which is mainly
applied to solve the problem of little or no labeling of data. Therefore, its data-augmentation
part is the main core. Although a great volume of data is generated inside recommendation
domain, its data distribution shows a power–law distribution (i.e., long-tail problem). In the
process of model training, nodes with high degree play a dominant role in representation
learning, while nodes with low degree are very difficult to learn. Therefore, adding
contrastive learning to the recommendation model to solve the long-tail problem is effective.
Further, to make the model easy to train, the parameters are shared between graph neural
networks for supervised and self-supervised tasks.

5. Ablation Analysis
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the adopted technique, this paper conducts abla-
tion experiments on a multi-headed graph attention mechanism and a self-supervised task.

5.1. Impact of Multiple Attention Mechanism

This subsection analyzes the impact of the number of attention heads on performance
in SGACF-EM. The use of a single-headed graph attention network overly focuses attention
on its own position when encoding the current node features during the training process.
To obtain more reliable attention coefficients, a multi-headed graph attention network is
utilized to extract features from multiple perspectives. The experimental results are shown
in Table 3. The model achieves better performance when the number of heads is 2. When
the number of heads exceeds a certain number, the model effect is not improved, which is
due to the limitation of the characteristics of the data itself.

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Electronics 2023, 12, 793

Table 3. Effect of graph attention network with different number of heads on performance.

Gowalla Yelp2018 Amazon

Heads
Recall Ndcg Recall Ndcg Recall Ndcg
1 0.2726 0.2411 0.2154 0.1397 0.1677 0.0914
2 0.2753 0.2423 0.2171 0.1402 0.1698 0.0925
4 0.2715 0.2405 0.2128 0.1374 0.1660 0.0903
8 0.2681 0.2344 0.2087 0.1316 0.1627 0.0842
The bold indicates the best result.

5.2. Optimization of Models by Contrastive Learning

To investigate the effect of self-supervised learning on model performance, this subsec-
tion performs an ablation analysis of SGACF. Table 4 displays the experiment’s outcomes,
where joint self-supervised learning in the recommendation model significantly improves
the model’s performance. This is attributed to the fact that self-supervised contrastive learn-
ing effectively mitigates the problem of sparse supervisory signals in the recommendation
task by utilizing information about commonalities and differences between data pairs as
supervised signals to auxiliary supervised learning through a data-augmentation strategy.
Meanwhile, to explore the impact of self-supervised learning on the long-tail problem, in
this paper, items are divided into 10 groups of different ranks based on the number of
connected edges of individual nodes, and the total number of interactions in each group is
the same. The larger the groupID, the higher the number of connected edges of individual
nodes. This work compares the ability of SGACF-ED and SGACF-w/o to solve the long-tail
problem, both of which have their network layers set to 3. Recall is the sum of each group.
As shown in Figure 5, group 10 contributes a large proportion to recall, even though it
contains a small number of items. It is thus clear that SGACF-w/o tends to recommend
popular items, while long-tail items have fewer connected edges. It can be seen that the
performance improvement of SGACF is to accurately recommend long-tail items.

Figure 5. Performance comparison of different item groups SGACF-EM and SGACF-w/o.

Table 4. Impact of self-supervised learning on models.

Gowalla Yelp2018 Amazon

Method
Recall Ndcg Recall Ndcg Recall Ndcg
SGACF-w/o 0.2680 0.2341 0.2037 0.1113 0.1622 0.0894
SGACF-EM 0.2753 0.2423 0.2171 0.1402 0.1698 0.0925
The bold indicates the best result.

6. Conclusions and Future Work

This paper proposes a self-supervised graph attention collaborative filtering for recom-
mendation. It observes that graph convolution-based recommendation ignores the problem
of importance between neighboring nodes, and thus employs graph attention networks
to obtain reliable neighboring features. In this paper, self-supervised contrastive learning
is utilized to auxiliary supervised learning, thus addressing the limitations of supervised

46
Electronics 2023, 12, 793

tasks in recommendation. The impact of three approaches to graph data augmentation

on model performance is analyzed from the perspective of graph structure. Extensive
experiments are conducted on three public datasets to demonstrate the advantages of
the methods proposed in this paper in mitigating the long-tail problem and reducing the
impact of interaction noise. To sum up, the contributions of this work are as follows: A
multi-head graph attention network is utilized to aggregate neighbor features from multiple
perspectives to reduce the impact of interaction noise on representation learning. Super-
vised tasks based on graph attention networks combined with self-supervised learning
enhance representation learning via observing the properties of nodes in the interaction
graph. Extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness
of the proposed self-supervised graph attention collaborative filtering for recommendation.
This work achieves better results, adopting the joint training of self-supervised contrast
learning and supervised learning, but there are still limitations. The success of contrast
learning-based representation learning relies heavily on well-designed data-augmentation
strategies. In future research, we will focus on graph data-augmentation strategies in
contrast learning. We hope to make contrast learning in recommendation more robust
through data-augmentation strategies. For example, sampling-based data augmentation
transforms both the adjacency matrix and the feature matrix.

Author Contributions: Methodology and writing—original draft preparation, J.Z.; review and vali-
dation, K.L., J.P. and J.Q. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province under grant
No. F2022201009; the Hebei University High-level Scientific Research Foundation for the Introduction
of Talent under grant No.521100221029; the Scientific Research Foundation of Hebei University for
Distinguished Young Scholars under grant No. 521100221081 and the Scientific Research Foundation
of Colleges and Universities in Hebei Province under grant No. QN2022107.
Data Availability Statement: All datasets are publicly available.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to the mentor for his careful guidance. Thanks to the anonymous
reviewers for their insightful comments that improved the quality of this paper. Thanks to my
girlfriend for encouraging me so much.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Article
Preference-Aware Light Graph Convolution Network for Social
Recommendation
Haoyu Xu 1 , Guodong Wu 1 , Enting Zhai 1 , Xiu Jin 1 and Lijing Tu 2, *

1 College of Information and Computer Science, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230001, China;
xhy817@[Link] (H.X.)
2 Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Smart Agricultural Technology and Equipment, Hefei 230036, China
* Correspondence: tlj@[Link]

Abstract: Social recommendation systems leverage the abundant social information of users existing
in the current Internet to mitigate the problem of data sparsity, ultimately enhancing recommendation
performance. However, most existing recommendation systems that introduce social information
ignore the negative messages passed by high-order neighbor nodes and aggregate messages without
filtering, which results in a decline in the performance of the recommendation system. Considering
this problem, we propose a novel social recommendation model based on graph neural networks
(GNNs) called the preference-aware light graph convolutional network (PLGCN), which contains
a subgraph construction module using unsupervised learning to classify users according to their
embeddings and then assign users with similar preferences to a subgraph to filter useless or even
negative messages from users with different preferences to attain even better recommendation
performance. We also designed a feature aggregation module to better combine user embeddings
with social and interaction information. In addition, we employ a lightweight GNN framework
to aggregate messages from neighbors, removing nonlinear activation and feature transformation
operations to alleviate the overfitting problem. Finally, we carried out comprehensive experiments
using two publicly available datasets, and the results indicate that PLGCN outperforms the current
state-of-the-art (SOTA) method, especially in dealing with the problem of cold start. The proposed
model has the potential for practical applications in online recommendation systems, such as e-
commerce, social media, and content recommendation.

Citation: Xu, H.; Wu, G.; Zhai, E.; Jin, Keywords: graph convolution network; recommendation system; social recommendation
X.; Tu, L. Preference-Aware Light
Graph Convolution Network for
Social Recommendation. Electronics
2023, 12, 2397. [Link]
1. Introduction
10.3390/electronics12112397
With the emergence and prosperity of online service platforms, the dissemination and
Academic Editor: Grzegorz Dudek exchange of information have been greatly promoted, and the amount of information in the
Received: 18 April 2023
network has increased exponentially. However, when confronted with such an enormous
Revised: 15 May 2023 amount of information, users find it hard to obtain the information that is relevant and
Accepted: 19 May 2023 helpful to them; this phenomenon is referred to as “information overload”. To address this
Published: 25 May 2023 issue, a recommendation system was developed that analyzes the historical behavior data
of users and explores their potential interests to provide them with personalized services.
At present, recommendation systems are widely used in industry.
Collaborative filtering (CF) has been a widely used technique in the last few decades.
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. In simple terms, collaborative filtering recommends information of interest to users accord-
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. ing to the preferences of a group of people who share similar interests and experiences, thus
This article is an open access article filtering out a large amount of irrelevant information. However, CF is severely limited by
distributed under the terms and the problem of sparse data, and the effectiveness of the model is significantly reduced when
conditions of the Creative Commons
there are insufficient data on user–item interactions. As online social platforms such as
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
Facebook, WeChat, and Twitter have grown in popularity, an increasing number of people
[Link]/licenses/by/
are posting product reviews on these sites. References [1–3] and personal experience also
4.0/).

Electronics 2023, 12, 2397. [Link] 50 [Link]

Electronics 2023, 12, 2397

show that people are affected by their friends’ views and actions and gravitate toward
those who share their interests. In summary, the application of social relationships in recom-
mender systems has also attracted increasing attention [4,5]. Based on this understanding,
recommendation systems can introduce social information to reduce data sparsity and
improve recommendation accuracy, and these recommendation systems are called social
recommendation systems [6–8].
Early GNNs mainly solved problems strictly related to graph theory [9–11], such
as molecular structure classification, in which GNNs showed a superb ability to handle
non-Euclidean data. Since data in recommender systems can naturally represent graph
data (e.g., interaction data between users and items represented as bipartite graphs),
much recent work has applied graph neural networks to recommender systems. Within
social recommendation systems, data are typically presented in two forms: the user–item
interaction graph, which contains information pertaining to the interactions between users
and items, and the social graph, which reflects the social relations of users. There are
generally two strategies for recommender systems to use social information [12]. One is to
learn user representations from the two graphs separately [8,13,14] and then combine them
into a vector, which is more flexible and can use different treatments for different graphs;
the other is to merge the two graphs into a unified heterogeneous graph [7,15] and apply
GNNs to propagate the information, which has the advantage that the information in both
graphs is unified in one representation, which can capture some more complex interactions.
Although GNNs have shown good performance in the field of social recommendation,
most of the existing models simply combine social information as auxiliary information
with interactive information without fully utilizing the social graph’s information. In the
information propagation, they only consider the information propagation of high-order
neighbor nodes, but no particular attention is given to the fact that there is a lot of useless
or even negative information in this information. Inspired by IMP-GCN [16], we introduce
an unsupervised subgraph construction module in the social recommendation system,
which divides the interaction graph into multiple subgraphs based on user preferences,
and users who share similar interests are placed into the same subgraph. We then perform
graph convolution operations in the subgraphs using a lightweight GNN to filter out
negative information brought by users with different preferences. We also design a feature
aggregation module to better integrate user representations in the two graphs.
In conclusion, the primary findings of this study are as follows:
• A novel social recommendation model PLGCN is proposed, which splits the user–item
interaction graph into multiple subgraphs based on the user’s preferences and passes
information in the subgraphs, filtering out negative information brought by users with
different preferences.
• A new feature aggregation module was designed that can aggregate the user rep-
resentations in the two graphs more effectively and has regularization to prevent
overfitting.
• We performed comprehensive experiments using two publicly available datasets to
evaluate the recommended performance of PLGCN. Based on the outcomes of these
experiments, it is evident that PLGCN outperforms the baseline models.
The rest of this article is summarized as follows: We begin with a brief overview
of typical relevant work in Section 2. The social recommender system problem and its
definition are introduced in Section 3. The design details of the PLGCN model are described
in Section 4. Section 5 presents a comprehensive experiment conducted to assess the perfor-
mance of PLGCN. Finally, we conclude our work and identify potential research directions.

2. Related Work
2.1. Social Recommendation
As online social platforms (e.g., WeChat, Twitter, Facebook) and the richness of users’
social information grow rapidly, an increasing number of recommendation systems are in-
troducing users’ social information. Leveraging social influence [1] and social homogeneity,

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as outlined in [2], facilitates a better comprehension of user preferences, and data sparsity
is effectively mitigated.
We generally categorize the prior social recommendation systems relevant to our
study into three groups based on how they utilize social information. Social networks are
used as a kind of regularization in the first category of methods [4,17–19]. SocialMF [19]
integrates trust propagation into the matrix factorization technique, making the user’s
preferences as close as possible to his/her social neighbors. CSR [18] designed a generic
regularization term to model the diverse similarities among users and their various friends.
One kind of ensemble method involves splitting all items into different groups and ranking
them manually [20,21]. SBPR [20] suggests that users have a tendency to provide higher
ratings to products that are favored by their friends, and for each user, the collection of
items is sorted into three categories: negative items, social items, and positive items. The
rankings are as follows: negative items < social items < positive items. The third method is
to fuse the embeddings of the user and his/her neighbors [22–24]. TrustSVD [22] introduces
social information based on SVD++ [25] and uses implicit feedback from social neighbors
as auxiliary implicit feedback for users. RSTE [24] posits that the user’s final choice is a
trade-off between his/her own likes and the opinions of his/her trusted friends and the
linear fusion of the user’s embedding with the user’s neighbor nodes in the social graph.
Nevertheless, none of these models can adequately model the intricate social relationships
between users and the interactions between users and items. Therefore, numerous recent
studies have focused on employing deep learning for social recommendation systems, with
GNN-based social recommendation systems attracting attention because both the social
relationship between users and the data that reflect user–item interactions can be modeled
naturally in graph form.

2.2. GNN-Based Social Recommendation

The ability of GNNs to model recursive social diffusion processes makes them increas-
ingly popular in the domain of social recommendation. The primary tenet of GNNs is to
iteratively collect surrounding node information to generate a more accurate representation
of the target node and ultimately obtain a representation of each node.
The first social recommendation system model that uses graph neural networks is
GraphRec [6], which combines the user’s first-order neighbors’ information from both
graphs to learn the user’s representation. DANSER [14] uses two graph attention networks
to obtain user and item implicit representations from each of the two graphs and then
combines them to predict users’ ratings or preferences for items. HOSR [26] uses multi-
step message propagation to encode higher-order social relationships in user embedding
learning, refining user embeddings by capturing higher-order collaboration signals in the
social graph. In contrast, our proposed PLGCN captures both higher-order collaboration
signals in the interaction graph and social graph simultaneously and fuses them into the
final user embedding using a feature aggregation module. DiffNet [8] fully leverages the
high-order social neighborhood information of users and adds the vector of users’ preferred
items as an auxiliary vector to the vector representation of users, but this does not filter
out the useless parts of the high-order information. On the basis of the DiffNet model,
DiffNet++ [7] additionally exploits the high-order information in the interaction graph to
optimize the representation of users and items and distinguishes the significance of the
different neighbors using the attention mechanism, thus alleviating this problem. Unlike
DiffNet++, we are inspired by IMP-GCN [16] to divide the user-interaction graph into
multiple subgraphs based on users’ preferences to avoid interaction between users with
different preferences. Furthermore, we design a new feature aggregation model to obtain a
more accurate user embedding. The research conducted on SocialLGN [27] is closely related
to our own research. These researchers extended the LightGCN [28] framework and ap-
plied convolution operations on both the interaction graph and the social graph to improve
the framework’s effectiveness in handling social recommendation problems. The main
differences between SocialLGN and our proposed PLGCN are as follows: (1) SocialLGN

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aggregates all messages from neighboring nodes without considering their relevance. In
contrast, our PLGCN includes a subgraph construction module, and we perform message
passing in the subgraph to effectively filter out irrelevant information. (2) Our feature
aggregation module uses MLP to fully explore the potential relationship between user inter-
action information and social information, whereas SocialLGN uses a linear transformation
in the graph fusion module.
In summary, several approaches have been proposed to address the challenges of social
recommendation. However, these approaches often have limitations, such as the difficulty
of modeling complex user–item interactions and social relationships. Some approaches use
attention mechanisms to distinguish the importance of neighboring nodes and filter out
irrelevant information, but they often oversimplify the use of social information and do
not fully exploit its value. We propose the PLGCN approach to overcome these challenges,
which uses subgraph building blocks to filter out irrelevant information and fully leverages
the relationship between social and interaction information through neural networks. Our
approach provides a more nuanced modeling of the complex interaction between users
and items and the social relationship, leading to improved recommendation accuracy
and relevance.

3. Problem Definition
Essentially, the recommendation problem is to analyze the user’s behavior data to
predict the preferences of the user and then combine the data of the items in the system to
calculate the items that could potentially appeal to the user and generate a recommendation
list from them. However, users are only able to explicitly interact with a small fraction
of items, which results in very sparse valid data. The social recommendation system
introduces users’ social information, which supplements the sparse and effective data and
reduces data sparsity. It is clearly effective to use the homogeneity and the influence of
social relationships to understand users’ preferences.
In the paragraphs that follow, we define a GNN-based social recommendation system.
The notations j and U are used to represent the sets of items and users, and they have M
and N elements, respectively (i.e., | j| = M, |U | = N). In general, recommendation systems
make use of two distinct types of data: social graphs and user–item interaction graphs. A
description of these two graphs is given below.
The interaction behavior of users with items (e.g., views, rates, and clicks) is represented
by the user–item interaction graph. The graph can be defined by triples (u, yui , i|u ∈ U , i ∈ j)
and is denoted by GI , where yui represents the edge that connects user u to item i, and yui > 0
means that user u interacts with item i. On the other hand, there will not be any interaction
between them if yui = 0. The notation N iI means the collection of users who have explicit
interaction with item i, and the notation N uI indicates the collection of items with which user
u has explicit interaction.
Users’ social connections are represented in the social graph, which provides auxiliary
information about the user (e.g., direct follower or undirected friendship). We represent the
social graph as Gs , which has the triple form {(u, suv , v|u, v ∈ U )}, where suv represents
the relationship between users u and v, and suv = 1 means there is an observable social
connection between users u and v, while suv = 0 indicates there is no connection between
them. The symbol N Su is used to denote the collection of users who have a social connection
with user u.
Based on the aforementioned conditions, the social recommendation task is described
as follows: given the social graph GS and the user–item interaction graph G I , the recom-
mendation system should be able to predict the probability of interaction between user
u and all items, sort them in descending order, and choose the top N items to generate a
recommendation list for user u.

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4. The Proposed Method

We present the general structure and technical details of PLGCN as well as the model’s
training process.

4.1. The Architecture of PLGCN

Figure 1depicts the general design of PLGCN. The model consists of 4 primary com-
ponents: (i) an embedding layer that leverages the unique identifiers of users and items to
initialize their representation vectors; (ii) a subgraph construction module, which constructs
multiple subgraphs and groups users with common preferences into the same subgraph;
(iii) propagation layers, which propagate the representations of users and items in both
graphs; and (iv) a prediction layer that predicts the value of any edge between users and
items using their final embeddings (i.e., the probability that user and item will interact).

Figure 1. Architecture design of our PLGCN model with 2 subgraphs as illustration. First-order prop-
agation operations are performed on the entire interaction graph and social graph, and higher-order
propagation operations are performed on the subgraphs of the interaction graph and social graph.

The following is a description of the mechanism of operation of each component.

4.2. Embedding Layer

The embedding layer employs user and item identifiers to map them to a latent space
with low dimensionality. As an example, the embedding layer can encode item i (or user
(0) (0)
u) as a low-dimensional dense vector of fixed length ei ∈ Rd (or eu ∈ Rd ), and the
superscript “(l)” (l ≥ 0) indicates the layer index for the output of the embeddings at
the l-th propagation layer. When l = 0, it indicates the embedding layer’s output. d is a
hyperparameter determined in advance that indicates the dimension of an embedding.
(0) (0)
The matrices EU ∈ R N ×d and E I ∈ R M×d represent the output of all N users and all
M items from the embedding layer, respectively. User u’s embedding is the transpose of
(0)
the matrix EU ’s u-th row, and the same applies to item i.

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4.3. Subgraph Construction Module

The subgraph construction module splits the given user–item interaction graph into
Nc subgraphs, where the number of subgraphs Nc is a hyperparameter. We define the
division of users into subgraphs as a classification task [29], in which each user is assigned
to a subgraph. Specifically, each user’s embedding aggregates graph structure information
and the user’s ID information:

(0) (1)
F u = σ ( b1 + W 1 e u + e u ) (1)

(0)
where Fu denotes the user embedding obtained by embedding aggregation, eu represents
(1)
the output generated by the embedding layer, and eu is the feature vector that aggregates
first-order neighbor information in the graph, which is generated as an output from the first
propagation layer. σ denotes an activation function called LeakyReLU, capable of encoding
both negative and positive signals. The learnable parameters b1 ∈ R1×d and W1 ∈ Rd×d
are the bias vector and the weight matrix, respectively. To split the user–item interaction
graph into multiple subgraphs based on user preferences, we input the user embeddings
into a 2-layer neural network to obtain a prediction vector:

U h = σ ( b2 + W 2 F u ) (2)

U o = σ ( b3 + W 3 U h ) (3)
where Uo is the output vector, and the position where the value is at its maximum is
the subgraph to which the user belongs, so it is natural that the number of subgraphs
and the output vector’s dimension are the same. The learnable parameters W2 ∈ Rd×d
and W3 ∈ R1× Nc are the weight matrices, and the learnable parameters b2 ∈ R1×d and
b3 ∈ R1× Ns are the bias vectors. For users with similar embeddings, the neural network will
group them into the same subgraph. This is an unsupervised node classification method
because we do not need the real labels of the users.
In summary, we feed the user ID information and first-order user embedding, which
best reflect user preferences, into the subgraph construction module. Then, we utilize
the powerful modeling ability of neural networks to handle nonlinear relationships and
classify user preferences. It is worth noting that we refrain from using traditional clustering
algorithms such as K-means [30] due to the high dimensionality of user feature vectors in
the current recommendation system field. Traditional clustering algorithms are susceptible
to the curse of dimensionality when dealing with high-dimensional data, which can lead
to information loss if PCA-based [31] dimensionality reduction is used. Additionally,
traditional clustering algorithms cannot effectively model complex nonlinear relationships.
The subgraph construction module groups users with similar preferences and their
directly related items into the same subgraph, with each subgraph being independent. By
passing messages only within each subgraph, our approach effectively filters out irrelevant
or negative information.

4.4. Propagation Layers

The propagation layer aims to capture hidden information in both graphs through
graph convolution operations, thereby learning the representations of users and items.
The propagation layer is divided into two main parts: user embedding propagation
and item embedding propagation. A detailed explanation of them is presented in the
following subsections.

4.4.1. User Embedding Propagation

The goal of user embedding propagation is to learn the representation of users in both
graphs. We use lightweight GNNs to capture the collaboration signals of the interaction
graph and the social graph, propagate information on the two graphs separately, and finally

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generate the final user embeddings through the feature aggregation module. The process
of user u’s l-th (l ≤ L) iteration propagation can be abstracted as follows:

(l ) ( l −1) ( l −1)
eu = Agg ei , ∀i ∈ NuI , ev , ∀v ∈ NuS (4)

( l −1) ( l −1)
where ei and ev are the embeddings of item i and user v, respectively, after the
l-th iteration propagation, and Agg(∗) is the aggregation function that aggregates the
embeddings of item i with which u has interaction and the embeddings of user v with
which u is socially connected. We designed a feature aggregation module to act as the user
aggregation function Agg(∗) to better learn user embeddings.
Because direct interactions between users and items more accurately reflect user
preferences, this is crucial and reliable information. To construct subgraphs based on
user preferences, we perform first-order graph convolution operations on the social graph
and entire interaction graph alone, while second-order or higher-order graph convolution
operations are performed on the social graph and subgraphs of the interaction graph to
filter out useless or even negative information from users with different preferences. To
achieve this, two separate embeddings are created in the interaction graph and the social
(l ) (l )
graph to represent user u after the l-th iteration propagation, with tu and su being their
(l )
respective representations and eu
being the user’s final embedding after the l-th iteration
propagation. Thus, for user u, the first-order propagation can be expressed as follows:

(1) 1 (0)
tu = ∑ e
cui i
(5)
i ∈NuI

(1) 1 (0)
su = ∑ cuv
ev (6)
v∈NuS

where cui is |NuI ||NuI |, which is the product of the square root of the degree of user u and
item i in the interaction graph, and its inverse is the normalization term that prevents the
user or item embedding scale from increasing due to graph convolution operations. cuv is
 S  S 
Nu Nv , which is the product of the square root of the degree of user u and user v in
the social graph and serves the same purpose as cui .
The process of updating the embedding in second-order or higher-order (i.e., l ≥ 2)
graph convolution is analogous to the first-order graph convolution process, with the
difference that high-order graph convolution is performed in the social graph and the
subgraph of the interaction graph to which the user belongs. The procedure is explained in
full in the steps that follow:
(l ) 1 ( l −1)
tu = ∑ ei (7)
Ic c uic
i ∈N u

(l ) 1 ( l −1)
su = ∑ cuv
ev (8)
v∈N Su
  
  
where cuic is N uIc N uIc , which is the product of the square root of the degree of user u
and item i in the subgraph of the interaction graph to which the user belongs. As Equations
(5)–(8) show, we have adopted a lightweight form of propagation, discarding complex
operations such as linear transformations, and this lightweight form of propagation is
inspired by SGC [32] and LightGCN [28].
(l ) (l )
The feature aggregation module is then used to aggregate tu and su to generate
(l )
the updated embedding eu for layer l. As shown in Equations (9) and (10), the feature

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aggregation module can be seen as a function Agg(∗) with two embeddings as parameters,
and the specific aggregation steps are as follows:
  
(l ) (l ) (l )
hu = MLP σ W4 tu σ W5 su (9)

(l )
(l ) h
eu =  (ul )  (10)
hu 2

where W4 and W5 ∈ Rd×d are trainable weight matrices and is a vector splicing operation
that splices two vectors of dimension d into a vector of length 2d. σ is the tanh activation
function, and MLP(∗) is a multilayer perceptron that can capture the complex relationship
between two users’ embeddings in each dimension. Equation (9) is a regularization opera-
(l )
tion that prevents embedding eu from becoming particularly large as the number of layers
l grows.

4.4.2. Item Embedding Propagation

For item embedding propagation, the propagation process is analogous to that of
users, but this process exists only in the user–item interaction graph. We use lightweight
GNNs to capture the collaboration signals and update the item embedding by recursively
passing the representation of neighboring nodes. The specific process is shown as follows:

(l ) 1 ( l −1)
ei = ∑ ciu
eu (11)
u∈N iI

where ciu is |NuI ||NuI |, which is the product of the square root of the degree of user u and
item i in the interaction graph, and it also serves for normalization.

4.5. Prediction Layer

After K rounds of propagation, the embedding for user u and item i is obtained for
(0) ( L) (0) ( L)
each layer, i.e., eu , . . . , eu and ei , . . . , ei , respectively. We weight and sum the
user and item embeddings for each layer to obtain the final representation:

L
(l )
e∗u = ∑ α l eu (12)
l =0

L
(l )
ei∗ = ∑ α l ei (13)
l =0

where αl denotes the l-th layer’s embedding weight factor and e∗u and ei∗ are the final
embeddings of user u and item i, respectively.
To obtain the preference of user u for item i, the inner product of their embeddings
is computed:
ŷui = eu∗T ei∗ (14)
where ŷui denotes our predicted preference of user u for item i.

4.6. Model Training

In general, the tasks of the recommender system are divided into two categories: CTR
prediction and top-N recommendation. In this work, our recommendation task is top-N
recommendation, where the aim is to select N items that suit the user’s preferences best
and recommend them to the user in the form of a list. In a real business system, this task is
worth more than predicting ratings [33].

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To achieve this, we minimize the Bayesian personalized ranking loss, which is based
on the idea that it increases the gap between the scores of the negative and positive samples,
with positive samples being user and item interactions that already exist in the dataset
and negative samples being non-existent interactions that are not observed in the dataset.
Therefore, we define a triple {u, i+ , i− }, where u has interacted with i+ but not with i− .
The objective function has the following form:

arg min ∑ −lnσ(ŷui+ − ŷui− ) + λ||Θ||22 (15)

(u,i+ )∈N uI ∪ (u,i− )∈
/ N uI

where λ and Θ denote the weight decay rate and the parameters of PLGCN, respectively.

4.7. Matrix-Form Propagation Rule of PLGCN

We propose a matrix-based representation of the PLGCN model for propagating
information on graphs in this section. To achieve this goal, we use R ∈ R N × M to represent
the rating matrix. Each element rui (u = 1 : N, i = 1 : M) inside the matrix is binary
and shows if user u and item i have interacted; 1 implies that an interaction exists, and
0 indicates that there is no interaction. Then, S ∈ R N × N indicates the adjacency matrix of
social graph Gs .
−1 1
We further define L R = DR 2 RDR2 , where L R is the Laplacian matrix for the interaction
graph. DR ∈ R N × N is a diagonal matrix, where dii is the element that counts how many
elements in R’s i-th row are nonzero. In the same way, we also define the transpose matrix
L TR of L R and the Laplacian matrix for social graph LS .
As illustrated in 0, the following expression describes the first layer propagation
in PLGCN:   
(1) (0) (0)
HU = MLP σ W1 L R E I σ W2 LS EU (16)

(1)
(1) HU
EU = (1)
(17)
HU 2

(1) (0)
EI = L TR EU (18)
The following formula shows the l-th layer’s propagation in matrix form in PLGCN:

(l ) ( l −1)
EUc = Lc EUc (19)

where Lc denotes the Laplacian matrix belonging to a subgraph of the interaction graph.
The information of all subgraphs is then aggregated:

(l ) (l )
EU = ∑ EUc (20)
Uc ∈ Gc

(l )
where EU is the final embedding of the l-th layer, and Gc denotes the set of subgraphs of
the user–item interaction graph. Then, we perform the same operation as the first layer:
  
(l ) ( l −1) ( l −1)
HU = MLP σ W1 L R E I σ W2 LS EU (21)

(l )
(l ) HU
EU = (l )
(22)
HU 2

(l ) ( l −1)
E I = L TR EU (23)

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5. Empirical Analysis
To compare our PLGCN’s performance with other recommendation methods, this
section describes the evaluation metrics, the dataset, the parameter settings, and the
experiments we carried out on various datasets. We ran all programs on a Win10 PC with
an RTX 3070 Ti graphics card with 8 G of RAM and an i5 12,600 K processor. We used
PyTorch to build the PLCGN.

5.1. Experimental Settings

5.1.1. Datasets
The proposed model was evaluated by conducting experiments on two datasets from
the real world that vary in size and levels of sparsity. The datasets are described as follows:
The LastFM dataset [34] ([Link] (accessed on 17 May 2023)), which includes
1892 users’ social connections and interactions with music-related items, is provided by
[Link], one of the hottest social music platforms of the moment for sharing and discover-
ing music in the world. The Ciao dataset [35] ([Link] (accessed on 17 May
2023)) is an online shopping dataset that includes 7375 customer reviews for a variety of
products as well as information about user friendships. Many social recommendation sys-
tems use these datasets to validate model performance [27,36,37]. We divided each dataset
into three random parts, the training set, the test set, and the validation set, corresponding
to a ratio of [Link]. The precise statistical data from the datasets we used are displayed in
Table 1.

Table 1. Statistics for the two datasets. # represents the number of elements in the set.

Dataset Ciao LastFM

# Users 7375 1892
# Items 105,114 17,632
# Interactions 284,086 92,834
Density (Interactions) 0.037% 0.278%
# Social Connections 57,544 25,434
Density (Social Connections) 0.106% 0.711%

5.1.2. Benchmark Cases

We evaluated how well PLGCN performs by contrasting it with six other methods
that are state-of-the-art:
• BPR [38]—A list of recommendations is created by sorting items using the tradi-
tional pairwise collaborative filtering approach according to the maximum posterior
probability determined by a Bayesian analysis of the issue.
• SBPR [20]—An MF-based recommendation model to enhance the accuracy of personal-
ized rankings with collaborative filtering algorithms using users’ social relationships.
• DiffNet [8]—A social recommendation model that utilizes GNNs. It directly takes the
user embeddings’ vector sum in the two graphs to generate the final user embeddings.
• NGCF [39]—A recommendation model based on GCN is designed with a neural
network approach to recursively propagate embeddings in the interaction graph.
• LightGCN [28]—A lightweight recommendation model based on GCN that eliminates
two operations that would have caused recommendation performance degradation
based on NGCF.
• SocialLGN [27]—User social information was introduced on the basis of LightGCN,
and a graph fusion operation was created to combine user embeddings with interaction
information and user embeddings with social information.

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5.1.3. Metrics
To assess the recommended performance under the top-N task of our PLGCN and five
other SOTA methods, we use three metrics that are commonly applied; two of them are
precision and recall, and they have the following expressions:

#TP
Precision = (24)
#TP + #FP

#TP
Recall = (25)
#TP + #FN
where FP is the number of incorrectly predicted negative samples, TP denotes the number
of properly predicted positive samples, and FN denotes the number of incorrectly predicted
positive samples. The other is NDCG, i.e., normalized discounted cumulative gain, which
is used to measure the quality of the ranking, and it is expressed as follows:

r (i )
r (1) + ∑il=2
log2i
NDCG@N = | REL|
(26)
r (i )
∑ i =1 ( i +1)
log2

where | REL| is the sum of the relevance scores r (i ) of the top N items recommended.
r (i ) = 1 indicates that the user interacts with the recommended item; r (i ) = 0 means that
the user does not interact with the recommended item.
In summary, the indicators used in this experiment and their significance are listed
below, and it is worth noting that these metrics are all dimensionless:
• Precision@k: the proportion of relevant items among the top k items recommended to
the user. Precision@10 and Precision@20 indicate the precision at 10 and 20 recommen-
dations, respectively.
• Recall@k: the proportion of relevant items among all the relevant items in the test set
that are recommended to the user. Recall@10 and Recall@20 indicate the recall at 10
and 20 recommendations, respectively.
• NDCG@k: normalized discounted cumulative gain at k. NDCG is a measure of ranking
quality that takes into account both the relevance of the recommended items and their
position in the list. NDCG@10 and NDCG@20 indicate the NDCG score at 10 and
20 recommendations, respectively.
The greater the value for these three evaluation metrics, the better the performance.
Given the sparsity of the interaction data, we repeatedly randomly selected an item that
the user did not interact with as a negative sample; then, we combined items that the user
did interact with the negative sample. To eliminate the instability of random selection, for
each model and dataset, we repeated the experiment five times and averaged the results as
the ultimate ranking results.

5.1.4. Parameter Settings

To ensure that the experiments were fair and equitable, the parameters of each method
were adjusted based on our own experimental data or the corresponding references. We
used the PyTorch framework to construct our PLGCN and Adam to infer model parameters.
The model was optimized with a learning rate η of 1 × 10−3 . The dimension of embedding
was fixed −at6 200, and the training batch
 size was fixed at 2048. After trials in the range
−
of 1 × 10 , 1 × 10 , . . . , 1 × 10
5 − 2 −
, we fixed weight decay (λ) at 1 × 10 . The weight
4
1
(αl ) for each propagation layer was L+ 1 , where L is the number of layers and Nc is the
subgraph count. For this paper, L was set to 3, and the value of Nc was 2. Early stopping
was adopted to terminate the training process. To enhance readability, we present the
parameter settings in a tabular format, as shown in Table 2.

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Table 2. Parameter settings.

Parameter Value
Learning rate (η) 1 × 10−3
Dimension of embedding (d) 200
Training batch size 2048
Weight decay (λ) 1 × 10−4
Number of layers (L) 3
Number of subgraphs (Nc ) 2

5.2. Model Performance Evaluation

In the recommendation field, the problem of cold start is a matter of great concern, for
which we designed a special scenario to evaluate the cold-start performance of PLGCN and
other baseline models by referring to the approach in the literature [27]. In both datasets,
we compared the experimental results for all models, including the cold-start case. In the
test set, users who interacted with fewer than 20 items were labeled as cold-start users.
We employ this strategy to provide a test set for cold-start users alone, which includes
only cold-start users and their social and interaction information. The results of PLGCN
and the five baseline models on the original test set are shown in Table 3. The outcomes
of the aforementioned models on the cold-start test set are displayed in Table 4, and the
improvements in Tables 3 and 4 indicate the percentage increase in performance of our
model in terms of precision, recall, and NDCG at 10 and 20 recommendations compared to
the best baseline model. It is worth noting that all experimental results were not normalized.

Table 3. Recommendation performance of all models on both datasets. The underlined value is the
second-best performance, and the bolded value is the best. Improvement is the comparison between
the best performance and the second-best performance.

Dataset Model Precision@10 Precision@20 Recall@10 Recall@20 NDCG@10 NDCG@20

BPR 0.0922 0.0720 0.0962 0.1499 0.1099 0.1321
SBPR 0.1398 0.1010 0.1442 0.2070 0.1749 0.1978
DiffNet 0.1727 0.1215 0.1779 0.2488 0.2219 0.2474
NGCF 0.1766 0.1269 0.1796 0.2576 0.2287 0.2563
LastFM
LightGCN 0.1961 0.1358 0.2003 0.2769 0.2536 0.2788
SocialLGN 0.1972 0.1368 0.2026 0.2794 0.2566 0.2883
PLGCN 0.2043 0.1412 0.2091 0.2881 0.2646 0.2903
Improvement 3.60% 3.22% 3.21% 3.11% 3.12% 0.69%
BPR 0.0145 0.0111 0.0220 0.0339 0.0229 0.0260
SBPR 0.0179 0.0141 0.0259 0.0412 0.0266 0.0307
DiffNet 0.0238 0.0182 0.0341 0.0527 0.0359 0.0403
NGCF 0.0178 0.0179 0.0343 0.0531 0.0359 0.0407
Ciao
LightGCN 0.0271 0.0202 0.0410 0.0591 0.0437 0.0478
SocialLGN 0.0276 0.0205 0.043 0.0618 0.0441 0.0486
PLGCN 0.0308 0.0230 0.0446 0.0662 0.0476 0.0526
Improvement 13.59% 12.20% 3.72% 7.12% 7.94% 8.23%

The outcomes demonstrate that models based on MF do not perform as well in all cases
and exhibit a performance much inferior to that of GNN-based models because MF-based
models are more susceptible to data sparsity and cannot capture complex interactions.
LightGCN performs better in the vast majority of cases than BPR, SBPR, DiffNet, and
NGCF. As pointed out in [28], LightGCN removes two fundamental operations in GCN
that can negatively affect recommendation performance, namely linear transformation and
nonlinear activation. SocialLGN performs better than LightGCN because it introduces
social information on top of LightGCN and considers the effect of higher-order graph
structure on user embedding.

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Table 4. Recommendation performance of all models on two cold-start datasets. The underlined value
is the second-best performance, and the bolded value is the best. Improvement is the comparison
between the best performance and the second-best performance.

Dataset Model Precision@10 Precision@20 Recall@10 Recall@20 NDCG@10 NDCG@20

BPR 0.0282 0.0209 0.1151 0.1615 0.0828 0.0989
SBPR 0.0292 0.0333 0.1123 0.2467 0.0709 0.1159
DiffNet 0.0417 0.0271 0.1713 0.2407 0.1107 0.1309
NGCF 0.0333 0.0292 0.1169 0.2141 0.1074 0.1411
LastFM-cold
LightGCN 0.0417 0.0313 0.1727 0.2416 0.1374 0.1560
SocialLGN 0.0458 0.0333 0.1974 0.2663 0.1419 0.1643
PLGCN 0.0667 0.0396 0.2624 0.3000 0.1716 0.1821
Improvement 45.63% 18.92% 32.93% 12.65% 20.93% 10.83%
BPR 0.0061 0.0047 0.0208 0.0328 0.0138 0.0179
SBPR 0.0070 0.0060 0.0234 0.0384 0.0165 0.0219
DiffNet 0.0104 0.0081 0.0339 0.0539 0.0248 0.0316
NGCF 0.0104 0.0085 0.0341 0.0557 0.0245 0.0319
Ciao-cold
LightGCN 0.0131 0.0096 0.0429 0.0616 0.0319 0.0384
SocialLGN 0.0134 0.0097 0.0441 0.0630 0.0328 0.0394
PLGCN 0.0144 0.0106 0.0447 0.0668 0.0336 0.0412
Improvement 7.46% 9.28% 1.36% 6.03% 2.44% 4.57%

The results unequivocally show that PLGCN consistently achieves the best perfor-
mance. For instance, in contrast to SocialLGN, PLGCN improves the Recall@10 on the
original LastFM dataset by 3.22% and the Precision@10 on the original Ciao dataset by
13.59%. Since SocialLGN propagates messages on the social graph and the whole user–
item interaction graph without constructing subgraphs, by comparing the performance of
PLGCN with SocialLGN in the experiments, it can be seen that propagating information in
subgraphs can significantly raise the effectiveness of recommendations. In particular, on
the LastFM dataset containing information about cold-start users only, PLGCN improves
45.63% in the Precision@10 metric and 32.93% and 20.93% in Recall@10 and NDCG@10,
respectively. By looking at the data in 0, we can see the superior ability of PLGCN in
alleviating the cold-start problem. Additionally, we find that in the cold-start scenario,
the denser the interaction and social graphs of the dataset are, the more significant the
performance improvement is, while the opposite is true in the original dataset.

5.3. Ablation Experiments

We ran an ablation experiment to evaluate how the PLGCN feature aggregation module
and the subgraph construction module affected the performance of the recommendations.

5.3.1. Effect of the Feature Aggregation Module

For this section, two variants were designed, and PLGCN was compared to them to
verify the performance improvement of the feature aggregation module:
• PLGCNGCN : This variant uses the feature aggregation operation in GCN [40] to aggre-
gate the user’s embedding in both graphs with the following equation:
 
(l ) (l )
f GCN = σ W tu + su (27)

• PLGCNGraphSage : This variant uses the feature aggregation operation in GraphSage [33]
to aggregate the user’s embedding in both graphs with the following equation:
  
(l )   (l )
f GraphSage = σ W tu su (28)
(l ) (l )
In Equations (27) and (28), tu and su denote the embedding of user u propagated
through the l-th iteration on the interaction graph and social graph, respectively. W is the

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Electronics 2023, 12, 2397

trainable transformation matrix, || means the concatenation operation, and σ is the tanh
activation function.
As shown in Figure 2, when compared to other models, our proposed feature aggrega-
tion module performs the best in all cases. The explanation for the superior performance of
PLGCN is that our proposed feature aggregation module first performs a feature transfor-
( l +1) ( l +1)
mation on tu and su and then uses an activation function to activate them nonlinearly,
such that a joint space may be created between the user embedding in the two graphs.
The multilayer perceptron can be used to explore higher-order feature interactions. In
addition, the recommendation performance benefits from the normalization operation,
(l )
which prevents eu from increasing with l.

Figure 2. The impact of the feature aggregation module.

5.3.2. Effect of Subgraph Construction Module

This section compares PLGCN with a variant to evaluate whether our proposed
subgraph construction module is effective:
• PLGCNs : In this variant, we do not use the subgraph construction module, and we
use the same lightweight GNN framework to propagate messages in the social graph
and the entire interaction graph.
Table 5 shows the comparison results, which demonstrate that PLGCN has better
recommendation performance because the subgraph builder divides users with the same
preferences and the items they interact with into a subgraph to filter out the negative
information brought by users with different preferences.

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Electronics 2023, 12, 2397

Table 5. Performance comparison of PLGCN and its variant on two datasets. The underlined value is
the second-best performance, and the bolded value is the best.

Dataset LastFM Ciao

Model Precision@10 Recall@10 NDCG@10 Precision@10 Recall@10 NDCG@10
PLGCNs 0.2017 0.2065 0.2629 0.0307 0.0441 0.0475
PLGCN 0.2043 0.2091 0.2646 0.0308 0.0446 0.0476

PLGCNs

5.4. Impact Analysis for Hyperparameters

Two crucial parameters affect the performance of PLGCN: the propagation layer
number (L) and the subgraph number (Nc ). We investigate how they impact the model in
this section.

5.4.1. Impact of the Number of Propagation Layers

To explore how the model’s performance is impacted by the number L of propagation
layers, we kept the other parameters constant and changed L to [1–5]. We display the
experimental results in Figure 3, and there is a noticeable improvement in PLGCN’s
performance when the value of L is increased from 1 to 3 on the original LastFM dataset, and
the model performs best at L = 3. The original Ciao dataset shows a similar trend, where
the model attains the highest performance at k = 3 and the performance decreases when k
is greater than 3. We inferred from our observations that the recommended performance of
the model may be negatively affected by the oversmoothing effect caused by too large a K
value, and therefore, we set the K value to 2–4, which is a reasonable choice.

Figure 3. The impact of the number of propagation layers L. (a) LastFM dataset and (b) Ciao dataset.

5.4.2. Impact of the Number of Subgraphs

The performance of the PLGCN is examined in this section in relation to various
subgraph Nc counts. We set Nc to [2–4], and the other parameters were constant. Figure 4
displays the outcomes, where PLGCN2 , PLGCN3 , and PLGCN4 represent the PLGCN
model when Nc is 2, 3, and 4, respectively. It can be seen that PLGCN2 performs best in
most cases when there are three propagation layers. It can be assumed that there are fewer
layers of propagation at this point, and a node in the subgraph of PLGCN2 has more nodes

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Electronics 2023, 12, 2397

connected in a short distance and acquires more information than the nodes in PLGCN3
and PLGCN4 , so it performs better.

Figure 4. The impact of the number of subgraphs Nc .

6. Discussion
In our experiments, we showed that our graph neural network-based social recommen-
dation model outperforms some previous recommendation models ([8,27,28]). Compared
with [28], we find that adding social information to a recommender system does improve the
recommendation performance, while compared with [8,27], we find that the quality of social
information and the method of using social information also have a crucial impact. In some
cases, the performance improvement of our proposed method, PLGCN, is more evident in
the cold-start scenario. We believe that cold-start users have fewer interaction data, and
negative information has a greater impact on recommendation performance. By filtering
out negative information, we substantially improve the recommendation performance.
However, our proposed model also has some limitations, which highlight opportuni-
ties for future research. For example, we only consider user preferences in constructing
subgraphs, while other social features such as friendship networks or trust levels can be
incorporated to enhance the social filtering process. Additionally, our feature aggregation
module only includes user embeddings with social and interaction information. It could be
extended to include more diverse information sources, such as temporal information or
user-generated content.

7. Conclusions
Most of the existing social recommendation models only take higher-order collab-
orative signals into account, without paying attention to the negative signals in these
signals, which negatively affects the models’ recommendation performance. We propose
the PLGCN, a novel social recommendation model based on GCN, as a solution to this
issue, which incorporates unsupervised learning to classify users based on their prefer-
ences, allowing for more effective filtering of irrelevant and negative information from
high-order neighbor nodes. This enables PLGCN to provide more personalized and ac-
curate recommendations. Moreover, we designed a novel feature aggregation module to

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better aggregate user representations in both graphs. We evaluated PLGCN against other
SOTA models on two datasets, and the outcomes demonstrated that PLGCN outperforms
them. Furthermore, PLGCN adopts a lightweight GNN framework that removes nonlinear
activation and feature transformation operations, which mitigates the overfitting issue
and enables faster and more efficient training and inference. Our proposed model can be
applied to diverse social recommendation scenarios, such as e-commerce, social media,
and content recommendation.
However, our model still has limitations. First, it relies on the assumption that social
connections effectively capture users’ preferences. In reality, users may connect for various
reasons, and their social networks may not fully reflect their preferences, which could affect
the accuracy of our approach. Second, our experiments were conducted on specific datasets,
and the performance of our method may vary on other datasets or domains. Further
evaluation is necessary to validate the effectiveness and generalizability of our method.
Third, our model assumes a static social network structure and does not consider dynamic
changes over time. Future work can explore incorporating dynamic social information to
improve the performance of social recommendation methods.
In terms of future work, we plan to investigate several areas for further improvement.
First, we would like to explore the use of more complex graph neural network architectures
to capture even more nuanced social relationships and better incorporate users’ social
behavior. Second, we plan to investigate the use of additional data sources, such as user-
generated content and location data, to enhance our model’s performance and provide
more personalized recommendations. Finally, we will explore the use of different datasets
and evaluation metrics to better capture the effectiveness of our model and ensure that our
recommendations are not only accurate but also diverse and novel.

Author Contributions: Formal analysis, H.X. and L.T.; investigation, G.W.; methodology, H.X. and
L.T.; project administration, G.W.; resources, X.J. and E.Z.; data curation, H.X. and L.T.; supervision,
L.T.; validation, H.X. and X.J.; writing—original draft preparation, H.X.; writing—review and editing,
X.J and L.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research was funded by the Anhui Province Science and Technology Major Special
Projects (Project No. 202103b06020013), Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation Project (Project
No. 2108085MF209), and the Open Fund Project of Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent
Agricultural Technology and Equipment (Project No. APKLSATE2021X008).
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: This research employed publicly available datasets for its experimen-
tal studies.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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 electronics
Article
Implementation of a Whisper Architecture-Based Turkish
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) System and Evaluation of
the Effect of Fine-Tuning with a Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA)
Adapter on Its Performance
Hüseyin Polat 1, *, Alp Kaan Turan 1 , Cemal Koçak 1 and Hasan Basri Ulaş 2

1 Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Gazi University, Ankara 06560, Turkey;
[Link]@[Link] (A.K.T.); ccckocak@[Link] (C.K.)
2 Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Gazi University, Ankara 06560, Turkey;
bulas@[Link]
* Correspondence: polath@[Link]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the implementation of the Whisper architecture to create an automatic
speech recognition (ASR) system optimized for the Turkish language, which is considered a low-
resource language in terms of speech recognition technologies. Whisper is a transformer-based
model known for its high performance across numerous languages. However, its performance in
Turkish, a language with unique linguistic features and limited labeled data, has yet to be fully
explored. To address this, we conducted a series of experiments using five different Turkish speech
datasets to assess the model’s baseline performance. Initial evaluations revealed a range of word
error rates (WERs) between 4.3% and 14.2%, reflecting the challenges posed by Turkish. To improve
these results, we applied the low-rank adaptation (LoRA) technique, which is designed to fine-tune
large-scale models efficiently by introducing a reduced set of trainable parameters. After fine-tuning,
significant performance improvements were observed, with WER reductions of up to 52.38%. This
Citation: Polat, H.; Turan, A.K.; study demonstrates that fine-tuned Whisper models can be successfully adapted for Turkish, resulting
Koçak, C.; Ulaş, H.B. Implementation
in a robust and accurate end-to-end ASR system. This research highlights the applicability of Whisper
of a Whisper Architecture-Based
in low-resource languages and provides insights into the challenges of and strategies for improving
Turkish Automatic Speech
speech recognition performance in Turkish.
Recognition (ASR) System and
Evaluation of the Effect of
Keywords: automatic speech recognition; artificial intelligence; deep learning; representation
Fine-Tuning with a Low-Rank
Adaptation (LoRA) Adapter on Its
learning; self-supervised learning; Whisper model
Performance. Electronics 2024, 13,
4227. [Link]
electronics13214227
1. Introduction
Academic Editor: Grzegorz Dudek
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems have become an integral part of many
Received: 2 October 2024 modern technologies, enabling voice-activated assistants, transcription services, and real-
Revised: 24 October 2024 time communication across various platforms. The development of ASR systems has histor-
Accepted: 25 October 2024 ically been focused on high-resource languages such as English, which benefit from large,
Published: 28 October 2024
labeled datasets and sophisticated linguistic models. However, low-resource languages,
including Turkish, continue to face challenges in terms of speech recognition accuracy
due to the scarcity of labeled data and unique linguistic features such as agglutinative
Copyright: © 2024 by the authors.
morphology and vowel harmony [1].
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The Whisper architecture, developed by OpenAI, represents a significant advancement
This article is an open access article in ASR technology. As a transformer-based model, Whisper is designed to handle multiple
distributed under the terms and languages, accents, and noisy environments with high accuracy. However, despite its broad
conditions of the Creative Commons language support, its performance in low-resource languages like Turkish has not been
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// fully optimized, as most of the model’s training data are skewed toward high-resource
[Link]/licenses/by/ languages such as English [2]. The need for the fine-tuning of such models in low-resource
4.0/). languages is evident to improve their performance in real-world applications [3].

Electronics 2024, 13, 4227. [Link] 69 [Link]

Electronics 2024, 13, 4227

Turkish presents specific challenges for ASR systems due to its agglutinative structure,
where suffixes are attached to root words to form complex words. This results in a vast
number of possible word forms, making it difficult for ASR systems to accurately segment
and recognize words. Additionally, Turkish exhibits notable dialectal diversity and phono-
logical complexity, further complicating the development of a robust ASR system [4]. The
scarcity of high-quality labeled datasets exacerbates these issues, leading to higher word
error rates (WERs) compared to other languages.
In this study, we aim to address the gap in the literature by adapting the Whisper ASR
system to Turkish using the low-rank adaptation (LoRA) method, a parameter-efficient
fine-tuning technique that allows large-scale models to be adapted to specific tasks without
the need for retraining all the model parameters [5]. LoRA significantly reduces the
computational cost and memory requirements of fine-tuning large models, making it ideal
for adapting ASR systems to low-resource languages like Turkish. By fine-tuning Whisper
with LoRA, we aim to enhance its performance on Turkish speech datasets and provide a
more accurate and robust ASR solution for Turkish.
Previous research on ASR systems for Turkish has primarily focused on traditional
machine learning approaches and language models tailored to Turkish [6]. However, these
approaches often lack the scalability and adaptability offered by modern transformer-
based models like Whisper. Our work bridges this gap by leveraging the strengths of
Whisper while addressing the specific challenges posed by the Turkish language. The key
contribution of this study is the evaluation of Whisper’s performance across five distinct
Turkish speech datasets, both before and after fine-tuning with LoRA. This comprehensive
evaluation provides insights into how well transformer-based models can be adapted to
low-resource languages and highlights the potential for further improvements in ASR
systems for Turkish.

Literature Review
The system model for speech analysis and synthesis was proposed by Dudley et al.
at Bell Laboratories [7,8] in 1939, which is considered the beginning of ASR systems [9].
The first experimental work was the system for isolated digit recognition for a single
speaker developed by Davis et al. of Bell Laboratories in 1952 [10]. Between 1950 and
1960, studies aimed to create pattern recognition systems for phoneme, single letter, or
syllable discrimination [11,12]. In the period between 1960 and 1970, three hardware-based
systems were developed in Japan [13–15]. Additional prominent works include IBM’s
Shoebox software [16], Martin’s work at RCA Laboratories [17], and Vintsyuk’s study
using dynamic programming methods [18]. Between 1970 and 1980, the Viterbi algorithm
was used in ASR systems [19], along with statistics-based approaches such as Itakura’s
LPC-based study [20]. Noteworthy works include the VIP-100 software, the Hearsay and
HWIM software developed within the scope of the DARPA SUR program, as well as the
Harpy software developed by Carnegie-Mellon University [21].
Between the 1980s and 1990s, statistical models and artificial neural network (ANN)
studies emerged. The period between 1990 and 2000 saw developments such as the AT&T
Voice Recognition Call Processing (VRCP) solution and the Hidden Markov Model Tool Kit
(HMM Tool Kit). After 2000, ANN-based systems continued to develop, and significant
advancements like the “Voice Search” feature in Android and Siri integration with iOS
were introduced. Additionally, the Effective Affordable Reusable Speech-to-Text (EARS)
and Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) datasets were created within the
DARPA program for ASR systems [22–28].
After 2010, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in automatic speech recognition (ASR)
systems has increased, with significant developments such as connectionist temporal
classification (CTC), recurrent neural network (RNN), long short-term memory (LSTM),
two-way LSTM using the listen, attend, speech (LAS) mechanism, convolution mechanism,
residual network-based studies, the transducer mechanism, Wav2vec model, Wav2vec
2.0, the ASR system using a convolutional neural network (CNN) and the Conformer

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Electronics 2024, 13, 4227

model, and the Whisper ASR system developed by OpenAI. Major companies such as IBM,
Microsoft, Google, and Amazon also released their advanced ASR systems during this
period [29–36].
The existing literature on Turkish speech recognition primarily focuses on the distinc-
tive characteristics of the language and their implications for automatic speech recognition
(ASR) systems. Turkish poses several challenges in terms of speech recognition due to
its agglutinative structure, rich morphology, complex phonology, and significant dialectal
diversity. To address issues related to this diversity, ASR systems often rely on robust
language models. In addition, the use of a lexicon helps improve recognition accuracy by
providing a structured mapping of words, which is particularly useful in managing the
vast variety of word forms in Turkish. Despite these techniques, the scarcity of high-quality
speech and text data remains a major obstacle to further advancement in the field [37–39].
The early works on Turkish ASR focused on developing speaker-dependent systems
and acoustic models. In recent years, there has been significant progress in Turkish ASR
systems, with the introduction of deep learning models such as LSTM, gated recurrent unit
(GRU), and Transformer, and the augmentation of Turkish speech and text data [40–51].
This research explores the implementation of a Whisper-driven automatic speech
recognition system for the Turkish language and evaluates the effects of refining the model
using LoRA approach. Whisper is a relatively new technology, so there are a limited
number of studies on it. Various studies have compared Whisper with other architectures,
such as Wav2Vec 2.0, and have utilized different datasets for testing. Additionally, some
researchers have employed innovative methods, such as image-converted EEG data and
direct fine-tuning, to improve Whisper’s ASR performance [52–56].
This study expands upon the existing body of research on Turkish ASR by addressing
some of the critical limitations that have hindered previous efforts in the field. Earlier works
on Turkish ASR typically focused on traditional machine learning models, such as hidden
Markov models (HMMs) or Gaussian mixture models (GMMs), and relied on relatively
small or less diverse datasets. These models, while effective in some contexts, struggled
with the unique linguistic challenges of Turkish, such as its agglutinative morphology, rich
inflectional structure, and the presence of numerous dialects.
In contrast, this study leverages the Whisper ASR model, which is based on a trans-
former architecture trained on a large, multilingual corpus. This allows the model to
capture long-range dependencies in speech and handle the complexities of Turkish more ef-
fectively than traditional models. The key differentiating factor of our work is the use of the
LoRA method for fine-tuning Whisper. LoRA enables the model to be fine-tuned efficiently
with fewer trainable parameters, addressing the computational challenges associated with
fine-tuning large-scale models for low-resource languages like Turkish.
Moreover, unlike many previous studies that focused on a single dataset or task, this
study evaluates the Whisper model on multiple Turkish speech datasets, representing a
more comprehensive assessment of its performance across different contexts. This study
also introduces corrections to the datasets, improving the quality of the training data and
reducing the impact of noise and other errors.

2. Materials and Methods

ASR systems convert spoken language into text. Unlike humans, who use past ex-
periences and grammar, ASR systems process speech as an audio signal [57–59]. While
traditional ASR systems have separate components, modern end-to-end architectures
perform these processes in a single step. With recent advancements in deep learning,
pre-trained transformer-based large-scale models have gained popularity for fine-tuning
specific ASR tasks. Transformer models, originally developed for natural language pro-
cessing, have been effectively repurposed for speech recognition. Their exceptional ability
to capture long-range dependencies in sequential data is critical for accurately compre-
hending the contextual nuances of speech. This adaptation has significantly improved the

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performance and accuracy of ASR systems, leading to more reliable and efficient speech
recognition technology [60].

2.1. Transformers
RNNs and their variations, such as LSTM and GRU, have succeeded significantly
in tasks like machine translation, language modeling, sequence transfer, and sequence
modeling. The success of RNNs in these tasks is due to their ability to process sequential
data. However, their sequential nature limits parallel processing, as each step depends on
the result of the previous step, making it challenging to handle long sequences effectively.
Over time, RNNs tend to forget important information, especially in long sequences,
which leads to difficulties in capturing long-term dependencies. The sequence-to-sequence
(Seq2Seq) [61] architecture was proposed to address these challenges. This architecture
consists of an encoder and a decoder, typically composed of RNN units. The encoder takes
the input sequence and compresses it into a fixed-length context vector, which is passed
to the decoder. The decoder then generates the output sequence from this context vector.
Seq2Seq improves the learning process by efficiently handling sequence data. However,
when dealing with long sequences, it experiences performance degradation because it
compresses the entire input into a fixed-length vector, which increases the risk of losing
crucial information.
To overcome this issue, the attention mechanism was introduced. The attention
mechanism allows the model to focus on specific parts of the input sequence dynamically,
rather than compressing all the input information into a single fixed-length vector. This
enables the model to consider different input parts at each step of the output generation,
improving the performance, particularly for long sequences. By highlighting important
points in the data, attention mechanisms make it easier for the model to retain critical
information. However, even with attention, challenges like poor long-distance dependency
retention, high computational costs, and limited parallel processing still persist [62].
To address these limitations and overcome the challenges of RNN-based models,
the transformer architecture was proposed by Vaswani et al. in 2017 [32]. Unlike RNNs,
transformers remove the need for sequential processing and rely entirely on the attention
mechanism. This architecture allows for parallel processing and significantly reduces the
risk of losing information in long sequences. One of the most significant advantages of
the transformer is its ability to support parallel processing, as it removes the need for step-
by-step sequential computations. These speed up the training process, especially when
working with large datasets. Additionally, the self-attention mechanism excels in tasks
requiring long-term dependencies by capturing relationships between distant elements in
a sequence. This feature enables it to overcome one of the key weaknesses of RNNs and
Seq2Seq models, which often struggle with such dependencies. The transformer is also
highly scalable, making it a foundational architecture for large language models such as
bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) and generative pre-trained
transformer (GPT).
The basic structure of the transformer architecture is illustrated in Figure 1. The
transformer consists of an encoder–decoder structure designed to process sequences of
data (like sentences).
The encoder processes the input data. It consists of N layers. Each layer has two
sub-layers: multi-head self-attention mechanism and position-wise fully connected feed-
forward network Each of these sub-layers is followed by add and layer normalization
steps, which stabilize and normalize the input. Positional encoding is added to the input
embeddings to provide the model with information about the position of tokens in a
sequence. This is necessary because, unlike RNNs or LSTMs, the transformer model does
not inherently understand the order of tokens.

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ŶĐŽĚĞƌ KƵƚƉƵƚWƌŽďĂďŝůŝƚŝĞƐ
ĞĐŽĚĞƌ
^ŽĨƚŵĂdž

ĚĚĂŶĚEŽƌŵĂůŝnjĂƚŝŽŶ >ŝŶĞĂƌ

ĚĚĂŶĚEŽƌŵĂůŝnjĂƚŝŽŶ
WŽƐŝƚŝŽŶͲǁŝƐĞ
&ĞĞĚͲ&ŽƌǁĂƌĚEĞƵƌĂů
EĞƚǁŽƌŬ
WŽƐŝƚŝŽŶͲǁŝƐĞ
&ĞĞĚͲ&ŽƌǁĂƌĚEĞƵƌĂů
Edž
EĞƚǁŽƌŬ

ĚĚĂŶĚEŽƌŵĂůŝnjĂƚŝŽŶ
ĚĚĂŶĚEŽƌŵĂůŝnjĂƚŝŽŶ

DƵůƚŝͲŚĞĂĚ DƵůƚŝͲŚĞĂĚ džE

ĂƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ ĂƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ

ĚĚĂŶĚEŽƌŵĂůŝnjĂƚŝŽŶ
WŽƐŝƚŝŽŶĂůĞŶĐŽĚŝŶŐ н

DĂƐŬĞĚŵƵůƚŝͲŚĞĂĚ
ŵďĞĚĚŝŶŐ ĂƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ

^ŽƵƌĐĞƐ

н WŽƐŝƚŝŽŶĂůĞŶĐŽĚŝŶŐ

ŵďĞĚĚŝŶŐ

dĂƌŐĞƚƐ

Figure 1. Basic transformer architecture.

The decoder generates the output sequence, conditioned on the input sequence en-
coded by the encoder. The decoder also has N layers, similar to the encoder but with a
few differences.
In addition to the multi-head self-attention mechanism and feed-forward network,
the decoder includes a masked multi-head attention layer. This ensures that predictions
for a given position only depend on the outputs before that position, preserving the
autoregressive nature of the language generation. Similar to the encoder, each layer in the
decoder is followed by add and layer normalization steps.

2.2. Components of the Transformer

2.2.1. Multi-Headed Attention
Instead of relying on a single attention function, the transformer employs multi-head
attention. In this approach, multiple attention heads operate in parallel, allowing the
model to capture different aspects of the information simultaneously. Each attention head
computes a weighted sum of the input vectors, focusing on different positions of the
input. This mechanism helps the model understand the relationships between words in the
sequence, regardless of their distance.
As can be seen in Figure 2, the multi-head attention (MHA) is formed by the combina-
tion of parallel scaled dot-product attention mechanisms. By multiplying the transformed

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input X by separate weight matrices, the query, key and value are obtained, which are fed
to each attention unit and given in Equations (1)–(3).

Q = XWQT (1)

K = XWKT (2)

V = XWVT (3)

DƵůƚŝͲ,ĞĂĚ ^ĐĂůĞĚŽƚͲWƌŽĚƵĐƚ
ƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ ƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ

>ŝŶĞĂƌ DĂƚŵƵů

ŽŶĐĂƚĞŶĂƚĞ ^ŽĨƚŵĂdž

DĂƐŬ
;ŽƉƚŝŽŶĂůͿ
>ŝŶĞĂƌ
>ŝŶĞĂƌ
^ĐĂůĞĚŽƚͲWƌŽĚƵĐƚƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ
Ś ^ĐĂůĞ

>ŝŶĞĂƌ >ŝŶĞĂƌ >ŝŶĞĂƌ DĂƚŵƵů

>ŝŶĞĂƌ
>ŝŶĞĂƌ >ŝŶĞĂƌ
>ŝŶĞĂƌ >ŝŶĞĂƌ
>ŝŶĞĂƌ

YƵĞƌLJ <ĞLJ sĂůƵĞ

sĂůƵĞ <ĞLJ YƵĞƌLJ

Figure 2. Multi-headed attention.

In Equation (4), the query and key matrix product is scaled by the square root of
the dimension and the weight obtained by the softmax function is multiplied by the
value matrix.  
QKT
Attention(Q, K, V) = softmax √ V (4)
dk
The result from each attention unit (Equation (5)) is combined, as shown in Equation (6)
and then transmitted to the next layer.

Headi = Attention QWQ K
i , KWi , VWi
V
(5)

MHA(Q, K, V) = Concat(Attention1, Attention2, . . .) (6)

2.2.2. Positional Encoding

As the array length increases, the index of the input becomes very large. In this state,
the indices are not suitable for use in the transformer. Although the normalization process
provides a solution up to a point, differences in array size cause problems again.
With positional encoding, the input array is transformed into a position matrix using
the sine and cosine functions. In positional encoding, the order of the input output size of

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dmodel
the model, denoted as dmodel 0 ≤ i ≤ 2 and user-defined criterion n, is as outlined
in Equations (7) and (8).

PE( pos,2i) = sin pos/n2i/dmodel (7)


PE( pos,2i+1) = cos pos/n2i/dmodel (8)

To illustrate, the positional encoding matrix of the initial six words in a text input with
d = 4 and n = 10000 is presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Positional encoding matrix example.

i= 0 0 One One
   
pos pos pos pos
sin n2i/d
cos n2i/d
sin n2i/d cos n2i/d

x0 0 1 0 1
x1 0.841471 0.540302 0.009999 0.999950
x2 0.909297 −0.416147 0.019999 0.999800
x3 0.141120 −0.989992 0.029996 0.999550
x4 −0.756802 −0.653644 0.039989 0.999200
x5 −0.958924 0.283662 0.049979 0.998750

2.2.3. Feed-Forward Neural Network

The feed-forward neural network (FNN) is fed with the output of the multi-head
attention mentioned in the previous part. The computation of the FNN is performed as
in Equation (9). The bold part represents the ReLU activation function. The output of the
previous layer is weighted and fed into the ReLU activation function. It is then multiplied
by a second weight matrix and a constant is added and used as input for the analyzer.

FNN(x) = max(0, xW1 + b1 )W2 + b2 (9)

The same mechanisms involved in the encoder are also involved in the decoder. The
difference is that in the positional encoding process in the encoder, the input x1 , x2 , x3 ,. . .
xn in the parser when receiving y0 (start), y1 , y2 , y3 , . . . yn−1 is used. The first MHA in the
analyzer is masked to prevent overlearning. The last output in the analyzer is the SoftMax
function, which assigns a probability value between 0 and 1 to each element in the result
array and selects the outputs with the highest probability.

2.2.4. Embedding Layer

Transforms input tokens (source or target) into a high-dimensional space, converting
each token into a vector.

2.2.5. Masked Multi-Head Attention

This is applied in the decoder to prevent it from attending to future tokens that have
not been generated yet. It is essential for tasks such as language generation, where the
model must predict the next token in a sequence by relying solely on the previous tokens.

2.2.6. Add and Layer Normalization

After each multi-head attention or feed-forward layer, the model applies residual
connections, where the original input is added to the output. This is followed by layer
normalization, which helps stabilize the training and reduce overfitting, contributing to the
overall efficiency and robustness of the model.

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2.2.7. SoftMax Layer

After the decoder produces the output probabilities, they are passed through a SoftMax
layer to generate a probability distribution over the possible output tokens.

2.3. Low-Rank Adaptation

The models used in large language model (LLM), NLP, ASR systems usually contain a
lot of parameters and have large sizes. For example, Whisper large-v2 has about 1.5 billion
parameters, while in GPT-3 this number increases to 175 billion. For such models, training
all the parameters in the fine-tuning process is very costly in terms of processing power
and time.
Low-rank adaptation (LoRA) is a technique developed to efficiently fine-tune large
pre-trained models, including language and diffusion models. It achieves this by drastically
reducing the number of trainable parameters, making the fine-tuning process more efficient
and resource-friendly. LoRA keeps the weights of the pre-trained model fixed. Instead of
updating all the parameters, it introduces trainable low-rank matrices into each layer of
the model. This method relies on the low-rank decomposition of weight matrices. This
involves breaking down a large matrix into the product of two smaller matrices, which
reduces the number of parameters that need to be trained [6].
LoRA significantly reduces the computational and memory overhead associated with
fine-tuning large models. This makes it feasible to adapt large models to specific tasks
without the need for extensive computational resources. Compared to direct fine-tuning of
the model, this method can reduce the number of trained parameters to about a thousandth
and the memory requirement to about a third. Despite the reduction in trainable parameters,
LoRA often matches or exceeds the performance of full fine-tuning. It has been shown to
perform well on models like a robustly optimized BERT pretraining approach (RoBERTa),
decoding-enhanced BERT with disentangled attention (DeBERTa), GPT-2, and GPT-3.
Unlike some other fine-tuning methods, LoRA does not introduce additional inference
latency, making it suitable for real-time applications. The operation of the method is shown
in Figure 3.

Figure 3. How the low-rank adaptation (LoRA) method works.

In standard fine-tuning, the pre-trained weight matrices of a neural network are

updated directly. For the sake of simplicity, we will denote a weight matrix in the network
by W, where W ∈ Rd×k , with d representing the input dimension and k representing the
output dimension [6]. During fine-tuning, the weight matrix W is updated as follows:

W  = W + ΔW (10)

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In this context, W  represents the updated weight matrix, W denotes the original
pre-trained weight matrix, and ΔW is the full-rank matrix of learned weight updates, with
a dimensionality of d × k. The number of parameters in ΔW is d × k.
The objective of LoRA is to reduce the number of trainable parameters by constraining
ΔW to being a low-rank matrix. Instead of learning the complete matrix ΔW, LoRA
postulates that ΔW can be decomposed into the product of two lower-dimensional matrices:
ΔW = AB, where:
A ∈ Rd×r is a matrix with a rank r much smaller than min (d, k).
B ∈ Rr×k is another matrix with the same rank r.
Thus, the update rule becomes:

W = W + AB (11)

This decomposition indicates that, instead of learning d × k parameters, it is sufficient

to learn d × r parameters for matrix A and r × k parameters for matrix B, resulting in a total
of r(d + k) parameters. If r is considerably smaller than min(d, k), this signifies a notable
reduction in the number of trainable parameters.
We can calculate the reduction in parameters more explicitly. For the full-rank update
ΔW, there are:
Full-rank parameters = d × k (12)
For the low-rank update ΔW = AB, the parameter count is:

Low-rank parameters = r(d + k) (13)

The ratio of the number of low-rank parameters to the number of full-rank parameters
is as follows:
Parameter reduction ratio= r(d + k)/d × k (14)
At the beginning of the training, A is assigned a random Gaussian value and B is
assigned 0. Therefore, ΔW = BA has a value of zero in the first stage. It is then scaled by αr
using a hyperparameter (α).

2.4. Whisper Model Architecture

Whisper [4,5], developed by OpenAI, is an open-source ASR (automatic speech recog-
nition) system that is capable of transcribing and translating spoken language. Whisper is
based on an encoder–decoder transformer architecture. The capacity of transformer models
to track the interrelationships between words and sentences enables the consideration
of long-range dependencies, a capability that is not afforded by other models. In other
words, transformers are capable of recalling previously uttered words and sentences, which
enables them to contextualize new utterances and thereby enhance the accuracy of their
transcription. Whisper is distinguished from other ASR models by its end-to-end deep
learning model, extensive language support, training on a large and diverse dataset, and
high performance.
Traditional ASR models, often based on HMM-GMM, use probabilistic and statistical
methods to model speech signals. Still, they have limitations in understanding complex
language models. Other ASR models that use RNNs, LSTMs, or GRUs process sequential
data to capture temporal dependencies in audio. However, due to their sequential nature,
these models tend to be slower when processing longer speech segments. As a transformer-
based model, Whisper processes data in parallel, enhancing the speed and efficiency. Its
attention mechanism effectively captures long-term speech dependencies and relationships
between words, which can be challenging and time-consuming for other models to learn.
Previously, ASR technology combined deep learning with HMM-GMM structures and
other audio–text processing techniques. The major drawback of these approaches was their
inability to be trained end-to-end; each model component needed separate training. The
advent of end-to-end models, such as Whisper, eliminated this limitation by adopting a

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unified modeling approach that discards the traditional distinction between acoustic and
language models.
Whisper officially supports around 100 languages. Whisper was trained on a large
dataset of approximately 680,000 h, of which around 117,000 h are multilingual. This
constitutes an order of magnitude more data than used to train Wav2Vec 2.0, namely
60,000 h of unlabeled audio. Of the data utilized for Whisper’s training, 65% (or 438,000 h)
was dedicated to English speech recognition, 17% (or 117,000 h) to multilingual speech
recognition, and the remaining 18% (or 126,000 h) to English translation. This diverse
dataset enhances Whisper’s robustness and generalizability across different languages,
accents, and speech types. Whisper can transcribe 99 different languages and is capable
of not just transcription but also translating conversations and timestamping speech. The
model can be optimized for various tasks and is available in five different sizes, ranging
from 39 million to 1.55 billion parameters, allowing developers to strike a balance between
accuracy and processing speed [4,5].
Whisper’s architecture is composed of two main components: the encoder and the
decoder (Figure 4). The raw audio is divided into 30 s segments and transformed into a
log-Mel spectrogram, which generates perceptually relevant frequency representations.
Whisper has been designed to work on audio samples of up to 30 s in duration. However,
the use of a chunking algorithm allows it to be used to transcribe audio samples of any
length. This is made possible through the transformer’s pipeline method.

>E' ƚƌĂŶƐͲ
Ϭ͘Ϭ Ŷ ,ĂŬŝŬŝ DƺƌƔŝĚ
;dZͿ ĐƌŝďĞ

EĞdžƚͲdŽŬĞŶWƌĞĚŝĐƚŝŽŶ

DƵůƚŝͲ>ĂLJĞƌWĞƌĐĞƉƚƌŽŶ

DƵůƚŝͲ>ĂLJĞƌWĞƌĐĞƉƚƌŽŶ ƌŽƐƐͲƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ

^ĞůĨͲƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ ^ĞůĨͲƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ
ƌŽƐƐƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ

ŶĐŽĚĞƌ
ůŽĐŬƐ DƵůƚŝͲ>ĂLJĞƌWĞƌĐĞƉƚƌŽŶ DƵůƚŝͲ>ĂLJĞƌWĞƌĐĞƉƚƌŽŶ ĞĐŽĚĞƌ
ůŽĐŬƐ
^ĞůĨͲƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ ƌŽƐƐͲƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ
^ĞůĨͲƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ
DƵůƚŝͲ>ĂLJĞƌWĞƌĐĞƉƚƌŽŶ
^ĞůĨͲƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ DƵůƚŝͲ>ĂLJĞƌWĞƌĐĞƉƚƌŽŶ
ƌŽƐƐͲƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ

∼
^ŝŶƵƐŽŝĚĂů
WŽƐŝƚŝŽŶĂů н ^ĞůĨͲƚƚĞŶƚŝŽŶ
ŶĐŽĚŝŶŐ

ϭŽŶǀŽůƵƚŝŽŶ;džϮͿ͕'>h н
>ĞĂƌŶĞĚWŽƐŝƚŝŽŶĂů
ŶĐŽĚŝŶŐ

>E' ƚƌĂŶƐͲ
^Kd Ϭ͘Ϭ Ŷ ,ĂŬŝŬŝ
;dZͿ ĐƌŝďĞ

>ŽŐͲDĞů^ƉĞĐƚƌŽŐƌĂŵ dŽŬĞŶƐDƵůƚŝƚĂƐŬdƌĂŝŶŝŶŐ&ŽƌŵĂƚ

Figure 4. Whisper model architecture.

The spectrogram is processed through 2x1D convolutional layers with GELU (Gaus-
sian error linear unit) activations to match the transformer’s width [63]. Positional coding
assigns temporal locations to the outputs of these convolutional layers, helping the model

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Electronics 2024, 13, 4227

track sequential information from the audio data. This processed input is then fed into the
encoder stack in the transformer [4,5].
The encoder consists of multiple blocks, each containing self-attention and multi-layer
perceptron (MLP) layers. The self-attention mechanism analyzes each time segment of the
audio concerning all the others, capturing short- and long-term speech dependencies. For
instance, a word at the start of a sentence may be semantically related to one at the end;
self-attention allows for such long-term correlations. After establishing these relationships
through self-attention, the multi-layer perceptron layer enables deeper and more advanced
processing of these connections, allowing the model to extract nuanced features and discern
a broader range of linguistic patterns. Multiple encoder blocks are required to grasp the
complexities of language and expedite understanding. The encoder operates only once per
30 s segment to produce a latent representation from the spectrogram [4,5].
This latent representation is passed to the decoder, where each block contains cross-
attention, self-attention, and multi-layer perceptron layers. Cross-attention facilitates the
transfer of the latent representation from the encoder to the decoder, linking the audio
data to the text generation process. This allows the decoder to make accurate predictions
based on the audio signal. Self-attention within the decoder considers previously generated
words to maintain grammatical consistency and meaning in the text output. The multi-layer
perceptron in the decoder enriches the information provided by self-attention and cross-
attention, ensuring that the text generated by the model is both grammatically coherent
and accurate in capturing the subtleties of the audio signal. The decoder predicts the text
step by step using the latent representation; first predicting the most likely word, then
generating the next word based on the previous prediction, and continuing until the entire
speech sequence is transcribed [4,5].
Based on the number of layers, the width of the feature representation, and the number
of attention heads, the Whisper model is categorized into five versions: tiny, base, small,
medium, and large. The specifics of each version are summarized in Table 2. Furthermore,
Large-v2 had 2.5 times more training iterations than the large version, while Large-v3
utilized data collection, processing, and pseudo-labeling with Large-v2 to augment the
training data to 5 million hours. Both the large-v2 and large-v3 models surpassed the large
model, with the large-v3 model exhibiting even stronger capabilities than the large-v2,
particularly in terms of model training [4,5].

Table 2. Whisper model types and configuration parameters.

Attention Parameters
Model Layers Width
Heads (Million)
tiny 4 384 6 39
base 6 512 8 74
small 12 768 12 244
medium 24 1024 16 769
large 32 1280 20 1550

This study identified the following factors as influencing the selection of Whisper over
other potential ASR models.
The Whisper model is a transformer-based ASR system that has demonstrated robust
performance across a range of languages, including low-resource languages such as Turkish.
The robust performance of Whisper in noisy environments and its capacity to handle a
diverse range of speech conditions, including accents and spontaneous speech, render it
particularly well-suited for real-world applications in Turkish speech recognition.
Whisper operates in an end-to-end manner, whereby the model is trained to map
audio inputs directly to text outputs, obviating the need for separate acoustic and language
models. This unified approach markedly enhances the system’s capacity to generalize
across disparate languages and accents. Additionally, Whisper’s transformer architecture

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enables parallel processing, rendering it more efficient than RNNs or LSTM units, which
process input data sequentially and are slower when handling long speech sequences.
Furthermore, Whisper is capable of fine-tuning through techniques such as LoRA,
which enables the model to be efficiently adapted to specific tasks or languages without
the necessity of retraining all the parameters. This represents a significant advantage
over other models, which may require more extensive resources to achieve the same level
of fine-tuning. In light of the challenges posed by Turkish, including its agglutinative
morphology and dialectal variations, the ability of Whisper to be fine-tuned with fewer
trainable parameters represents a significant advantage and was a key factor in its selection
for this study.
In conclusion, Whisper was selected for this study due to its advanced transformer-
based architecture, multilingual training, adaptability to low-resource languages, and
efficient fine-tuning capabilities. These features render it a more suitable model for de-
veloping a robust ASR system for Turkish compared to other traditional or even deep
learning-based ASR models.

2.5. Turkish Speech Datasets

In this section, the five Turkish speech datasets, the Middle East Technical University
(METU) Microphone Speech Dataset (METU MS), Turkish Broadcast News Speech and
Text Dataset (TNST), FLEURS Dataset, Mozilla Common Voice Dataset (Mozilla CV) and
Turkish Automatic Speech Recognition Test (TASRT), used in the experimental studies are
introduced by listing their characteristics, such as the size, audio file type, metadata fields,
etc. The METU MS, TNST, FLEURS, Mozilla CV and TASRT datasets contain 6618, 82331,
3127, 52,477 and 286 records, respectively.
METU MS dataset’s [64] data availability status: data available in a publicly accessible
repository. The original data presented in the study are openly available at [Link]
[Link]/LDC2006S33 (accessed on 15 September 2024).
The METU MS dataset consists of approximately 5.6 h of audio and corresponding
textual transcripts from 120 speakers of various age groups (19–50 years) and genders
(60 males, 60 females). Each speaker vocalized 40 randomly selected sentences out of a
total of 2462 sentences. Audio data, WAV with a sample frequency of 16 kHz, are stored in
TXT format files in the form of text.
TNST dataset’s [65] data availability status: data available in a publicly accessible
repository. The original data presented in the study are openly available at [Link]
[Link]/LDC2012S06 (accessed on 15 September 2024).
The TNST is a dataset of speeches collected from news bulletins of various Turkish-
language news channels. It contains 194 h of audio and text data consisting of approxi-
mately 13,000,000 words. The audio data are in the WAV format, with a sampling frequency
of 16 kHz, and the text is in TXT format files.
Mozilla CV dataset’s [66] data availability status: data available in a publicly accessible
repository. The original data presented in the study are openly available at https://
[Link]/en/datasets (accessed on 15 September 2024).
The Mozilla CV is an open-source voice dataset created by the Mozilla company. This
dataset consists of speech recordings of more than 500 languages, donated by volunteers
from around the world. The most recent version released at the time of writing, Common
Voice Corpus 15.0, contains 115 h of audio files from 1511 individuals, 111 h of which have
been verified. The audio files are in MP3 format, with a sampling frequency of 48 kHz. The
speech text is stored in TSV format files, with attributes such as the accent, gender, age,
region, etc.
FLEURS dataset’s [67] data availability status: data available in a publicly accessible
repository. The original data presented in the study are openly available at https://
[Link]/datasets/google/fleurs (accessed on 15 September 2024).
The FLEURS is a dataset of approximately 12 h of speech in 102 different languages,
one for each language. The audio data are stored in WAV files, with a sampling frequency

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of 16 kHz. The speech text is stored in TSV format files, with attributes such as the text,
speaker gender, etc. The recordings are divided into three parts: dev, train and test. The
Turkish dataset consists of a total of 3607 records, with 743, 2526, and 338 records in the
train, test, and dev sections, respectively.
TASRT dataset’s [68] data availability status: data available on request due to restric-
tions (commercial use). The data presented in this study are available from the correspond-
ing author upon request.
The TASRT dataset is compiled by Oyucu [68]. The TASRT dataset contains approxi-
mately 186 min of speech data from 286 speakers (143 women and 143 men) in 20 different
categories. The audio data are stored in WAV files, with a sampling frequency of 16 kHz.
The dataset contains transcript files with TXT extension corresponding to each audio file
and named with category, speaker gender and order.

2.6. Automatic Speech Recognition Performance Evaluation Criteria

The three possible types of errors that can be encountered in a text generated with
ASR systems are insertion, deletion and substitution. Insertion is the insertion of an extra
symbol/word that is not in the text. Deletion is the absence of a symbol/word that should
be in a certain position in the text. Substitution is when a symbol/word that should be in a
certain position in the text is replaced by another symbol/word.
For a text consisting of NW words, the number of words added is IW , deleted is DW and
substituted is SW Then, the word error rate (WER) is calculated as given in Equation (15)
and the accuracy, also referred to as the word recognition rate (WRR), is calculated as given
in Equation (16).
I + DW + SW
WER = W (15)
NW

WRR = 1 − WER (16)

The WER is generally used as the ASR evaluation criterion. Another widely used
measure is the character error rate (CER). The CER value is calculated similarly to the WER
value. NC indicates the number of symbols, the added symbol number is IC , the deleted
symbol number is DC and the substitution is SC . The CER and character recognition rate
(CRR) are found as given in Equations (17) and (18).

EC + SC + DC
CER = (17)
NC

CRR = 1 − CER (18)

The WER and CER are often confused with each other due to their similarities in
calculations. While the WER is measured by the number of word errors; in terms of the
CER, the number of symbol errors is taken into account. If we consider the following
expression:
Bir işi yapmak için neden yarını bekliyorsun bugün de dünün bir yarını değil midir
Let us assume that the output produced by the ASR system for a sentence consisting
of 14 words and 82 symbols with spaces is as follows.
Biri işi yapmak işin neden yarın_bekliyorsun bugün de dünün bir yarını değil_____
Symbol insertion was performed in the first word, a symbol change was made in the
fourth word, and symbol deletion was performed in the sixth word. The last word has
been completely deleted. There have been 7 deletions, 1 substitution, 1 insertion, giving
total of 9 symbol errors; There are a total of 4 word errors, 3 changes and 1 deletion.
4 ∼ 9 ∼
In this situation,WER = 14 = 0.286, CER = 82 = 0.089
Apart from these, although not common, there are also the sentence error rate (SER),
phone error rate (PER), utterance error rate (UER), and frame error rate (FER). Criteria

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such as these can also be used to measure ASR performance. Low error rates indicate high
accuracy and thus high model success.

3. Testing the Performance of Whisper Models on Turkish Speech Datasets and

Fine-Tuning with LoRA
This paper presents the implementation of an end-to-end Turkish speech recognition
system, utilizing the Whisper ASR model. Whisper is a robust ASR architecture; however,
its performance requires further enhancement for low-resource languages such as Turkish.
In this study, the performance of five scaled pre-trained models of the Whisper architecture
(small, basic, small, medium, and large) was evaluated concerning Turkish speech recogni-
tion using five distinct Turkish speech datasets (METU MS, TNST, Mozilla CV, FLEURS,
and TASRT). In addition to the comparison of the Whisper-large-v2 and Whisper-large-v3
models in terms of performance, a comparison was also conducted between Google USM
and the Whisper-large-v3 model using five distinct Turkish datasets. Subsequently, the
Whisper models were fine-tuned with the LoRA method, and the performance of the
Whisper models in terms of Turkish speech recognition was evaluated in comparison. The
word error rate was employed as the performance metric.
In this study, experiments were conducted using a workstation equipped with a
32-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6426Y 2.50 GHz 2-processor and an Nvidia A5000 GPU.
The experiments were carried out using the Python v3.12 programming language and the
Miniconda v24.5.0 environment. PyTorch v2.4.0, a machine learning and deep learning
library developed by Facebook, was utilized for the tests with the datasets. Audio file
processing was performed using the pydub v0.25.1 library. The Whisper ASR model library,
developed by OpenAI, along with the fast-whisper, Whisper online, and Whisper Live
applications, was employed. To address the issue of Whisper ASR converting numbers into
text, the num2words v0.5.2 library was utilized with modifications. The Numpy v2.1.0 and
Pandas v2.2.2 libraries were employed for data processing and calculations, while the jiwer
v3.0.4 libraries were used for calculating the WER and CER. Additionally, standard libraries
such as datetime for duration determination, io, sys, and tarfile for file operations, re for text
processing and regular expressions, and argparse for managing application parameters were
also used.
During this study, we conducted around 950 h of work. This included approximately
150 h of examining and editing datasets, as well as 800 h dedicated to experimenting,
Whisper fine-tuning, and developing a simultaneous ASR.

3.1. Preparation of Datasets

The METU MS, TNST, Mozilla CV, FLEURS and TASRT Turkish datasets were used
in the experimental study. These datasets consist of WAV files with a 16 kHz sampling
frequency and the Mozilla CV dataset consists of MP3 files with a 48 kHz sampling
frequency. The MP3 files of the Mozilla CV dataset were converted to a single channel with
a sampling frequency of 16 kHz.
Before starting the experiments, we analyzed the Turkish speech datasets. It became
clear that the METU MS, TNST, and TASRT datasets needed some corrections. The issues
and necessary modifications identified in the datasets are outlined below.
Some texts in the METU MS dataset do not comply with the Turkish Language Asso-
ciation’s spelling rules or are not correctly vocalized. In this case, even though the ASR
system produced the correct text, the CER and WER values were higher than they should
have been due to spelling errors in the dataset. Common spelling errors include the spelling
of dates without spaces, the contractions of expressions such as “bir şey”, “her şey” and
“birçok”, and the contractions of suffixes and conjunctions such as “-mi”, “-mi”, “-de”,
“-da”, “-ki”. Even though it is rare, another type of error found in the dataset is the writing
of Turkish characters such as ç, ğ, i, ö, ş, and ü without a dot.

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Similarly, there are many problematic records in the TNST dataset. Adjacent words ae
were written together. Additionally, many foreign words are included with their Turkish
pronunciations. These issues caused an increase in the WER and CER values.
The texts in the datasets were reorganized by listening to the audio files in cases of
ambiguity. Foreign names in the TNST dataset, which were written side by side with their
Turkish pronunciations, were reduced to one in the text so that only their commonly used
equivalents were included. Apart from these, other problems encountered with both the
text files and the functioning of the existing model are listed below:
1. In some files, errors occurred in the output produced because the recording was
terminated before the end of the speech. Especially in recordings with more than one
speaker’s speech, it was observed that if there were gaps, the model did not process
the speech of subsequent speakers. Therefore, voice activation detection (VAD) was
used to reduce the gaps that cause errors.
2. Confusion about whether conjunctions such as “with”, “ise”, “de”, “da” are written
adjacent to the word or separately is one of the most common errors. In the text,
suffixes or conjunctions, which are difficult to identify even for the listener, are
sometimes misspelled or incorrectly transformed by the model. The text was corrected
where it should have been separate or adjacent.
3. When the end of one word and the start of the next word have similar sounds, the
model sometimes merges them. This causes it to skip the start of the following word.
4. The model abbreviates expressions such as doctor, professor, etc., kilometers and
converts them into text as Dr., Prof., etc., km.
It was important to determine how the corrections made to the METU MS, TNST,
and TASRT datasets affected the performance of the pre-trained Whisper models. To this
end, the original and the corrected versions of the datasets were subjected to testing with
pre-trained Whisper models, and the outcomes were evaluated. Afterward, LoRA was used
to fine-tune the pre-trained Whisper models with the corrected datasets. The performances
of these fine-tuned models were then evaluated.

3.2. Testing the Performance of Whisper Models on Five Turkish Speech Datasets
Table 3 presents the WER, CER and the duration values in hours and minutes for
the pre-tests conducted on the Whisper models at five different scales (tiny, base, small,
medium, large) before any modifications were made to the Turkish speech datasets. In the
test, all of the samples in the METU MS, TASRT and FLEURS datasets with a low number of
records and 30% of the samples in the TNST and Mozilla CV datasets with a high number
of records were used.

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Table 3. Pre-testing the performance of the Whisper models on five Turkish speech datasets.

Dataset Metric Tiny Base Small Medium Large-v2

WER 0.36 0.24 0.16 0.15 0.10
METU MS (100%) CER 0.10 0.07 0.06 0.04 0.03
Duration 00:20 00:21 00:25 00:36 00:47
WER 0.53 0.36 0.22 0.15 0.13
TNST (30%) CER 0.18 0.12 0.08 0.06 0.05
Duration 01:30 01:33 01:57 02:44 03:35
WER 0.47 0.31 0.17 0.11 0.08
FLEURS (100%) CER 0.15 0.09 0.04 0.03 0.02
Duration 00:16 00:18 00:22 00:31 00:43
WER 0.49 0.37 0.24 0.19 0.16
Mozilla CV (30%) CER 0.22 0.16 0.12 0.11 0.09
Duration 00:52 00:56 01:05 01:28 01:50
WER 0.41 0.29 0.19 0.14 0.13
TASRT (100%) CER 0.14 0.09 0.06 0.05 0.04
Duration 00:03 00:03 00:04 00:07 00:10

In the METU MS dataset, while the WER is 0.36 in the tiny model, it drops to 0.10 in
the large-v2 model. In other words, the errors decreased as the model size increased. While
the CER is 0.10 in the tiny model, it decreases to 0.03 in the large-v2 model. The TNST
dataset has higher error rates compared to the METU MS. Especially, the tiny model has
the highest error rate, with a WER of 0.53. However, again with the large-v2 model, the
WER drops to 0.13. The FLEURS dataset performs better than the TNST. With the large-v2
model, the WER drops to 0.08 and the CER to 0.02, indicating very low error rates. The
Mozilla CV dataset also exhibits high error rates, similar to the TNST. Even in the large-v2
model, the WER drops to 0.16, but this is higher than in the METU MS and FLEURS. The
TASRT dataset shows a balanced performance across all the models. In the large-v2 model,
the WER is 0.13 and the CER is 0.04. Compared to the other datasets, the average error
rates are lower.

3.3. Testing Whisper Models After Data Correction

The results obtained from the performance tests performed after rearranging the
METU MS, TNST and TASRT datasets are shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Test performance evaluation of the Whisper models after dataset correction.

Dataset Metric Tiny Base Small Medium Large-v2

WER 0.33 0.21 0.12 0.11 0.06
METU MS (100%) CER 0.09 0.06 0.04 0.04 0.02
Duration 00:20 00:21 00:24 00:35 00:47
WER 0.52 0.35 0.20 0.14 0.10
TNST (30%) CER 0.17 0.10 0.06 0.05 0.04
Duration 01:13 01:18 01:37 02:15 02:57
WER 0.38 0.25 0.15 0.09 0.08
TASRT (100%) CER 0.13 0.08 0.05 0.03 0.03
Duration 00:03 00:03 00:04 00:07 00:10

In the experiments performed using the Whisper-large-v2 model after rearranging the
datasets, in the METU MS dataset, there is a notable decline in the WER and CER ratios
with an increase in the model size. The Large-v2 model exhibits the lowest WER of 0.06 and
the lowest CER of 0.02. This suggests that the dataset was transcribed with a high degree
of accuracy. In comparison to the other datasets, the TNST dataset exhibits higher WER
and CER ratios. This may be indicative of the dataset being more challenging to transcribe

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or comprising elements such as different languages and accents. The lowest WER was 0.10
in the “large-v2” model, while the lowest CER was 0.04. In the TASRT dataset, the WER
and CER rates decrease with the model size. Notably, the values of the WER (0.08) and
CER (0.03) in the “large-v2” model demonstrate an improvement trend comparable to that
observed in the other datasets.

3.4. Performance Comparison of Whisper-Large-v2 and Whisper-Large-v3 Models

On 6 November 2023, the Whisper-large-v3 model was introduced by OpenAI. This
model has the same number of layers, attention headers and parameters as the Whisper-
large model. However, it differs from the other models by using 128 Mel frequency bands
instead of 80 as input and by adding Cantonese to the group of defined languages. The
Whisper-large-v3 model was obtained by training the Whisper-large-v2 model with one
million hours of weakly labeled and four million hours of pseudo-labeled data. Table 5
shows the comparison of the Whisper-large-v2 and Whisper-large-v3 models for the
datasets studied.
The Whisper-large-v3 model yielded substantial enhancements in the WER and CER
values across all the datasets. The most substantial improvements were observed in the
METU MS dataset, which may suggest that the model is more effectively tailored to the data
in this particular dataset or that this dataset derives greater benefit from the enhancements
introduced in the v3 model. The improvements in the WER ranged from 8.77% to 29.08%,
while those in the CER ranged from 6.29% to 44.27%. No notable alterations were observed
in the processing times, which remained largely consistent or exhibited only minimal
fluctuations. A 3.60% increase in the processing time was observed on the Mozilla CV
dataset, but this is equivalent to approximately four seconds and does not have a significant
practical impact.
The Whisper-large-v3 model demonstrates a notable enhancement in accuracy relative
to its predecessor, the large-v2 model, while exhibiting a minimal increase in the processing
time. This renders the v3 model a more appealing option for users seeking to attain
enhanced performance in transcription tasks.

Table 5. Performance comparison of the Whisper-large-v2 and Whisper-large-v3 models.

Dataset Metric Large-v2 Large-v3 Difference (%)

WER 0.061 0.043 −29.08
METU MS (100%) CER 0.018 0.010 −44.27
Duration 00:47 00:47 0.00
WER 0.103 0.085 −17.30
TNST (30%) CER 0.037 0.028 −24.97
Duration 02:57 02:58 0.86
WER 0.083 0.075 −10.11
FLEURS (100%) CER 0.021 0.020 −7.41
Duration 00:43 00:43 −0.96
WER 0.156 0.142 −8.77
Mozilla CV (30%) CER 0.090 0.084 −6.29
Duration 01:50 01:54 3.60
WER 0.081 0.069 −13.84
TASRT (100%) CER 0.032 0.027 −15.35
Duration 00:10 00:10 −0.94

3.5. Performance Comparison of Whisper and Google USM Models

Whisper and Google USM are two current speech recognition systems. OpenAI
has shared the Whisper ASR system under an open-source distribution license. Google
promised to openly share its model for Google USM, but this has not happened over
time. In contrast, the model can be accessed through paid application programming

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interfaces (APIs). The optimization points of Google USM, which runs behind APIs, and
the hardware on which it runs are not clear. Despite these uncertainties about the model,
a performance comparison between the two systems can be performed indirectly. A
performance comparison between the two ASR systems was performed on the WER and
CER using the METU MS, TNST, FLEURS, Mozilla CV and TASRT datasets. A certain
number of random speech files were selected from each dataset. The selected files were
given as input to the Whisper large-v3 model and the API (called Chirp) running Google
USM behind it. The resulting output texts were compared with real speech texts to find
the WER and CER values. The number of samples for the datasets used in the comparison,
the criterion values obtained and the percentage differences between the values of the two
models are given in Table 6.

Table 6. Performance comparison of the Whisper and Google USM models.

Dataset Metric Whisper Large-v3 Google USM Difference(%)

WER 0.043 0.049 13.95
METU MS (100%)
CER 0.01 0.01 0
WER 0.084 0.087 3.57
TNST (30%)
CER 0.028 0.025 −10.71
WER 0.075 0.093 24
FLEURS (100%)
CER 0.021 0.036 71.43
WER 0.066 0.063 −4.55
Mozilla CV (30%)
CER 0.015 0.02 33.33
WER 0.069 0.098 42.03
TASRT (100%)
CER 0.027 0.044 62.96

Whisper-large-v3 provides lower WER and CER than Google USM on most datasets
and is particularly superior on the METU MS, FLEURS and TASRT datasets. Significant
performance gains are observed over Google USM on the FLEURS and TASRT datasets.
However, on the Mozilla CV dataset, Google USM provides better WER performance than
Whisper-large-v3, but Whisper-large-v3 is superior concerning the CER. In terms of the
CER, Whisper-large-v3 is more successful in most cases, but there is one case where Google
USM performs better on the TNST dataset.

3.6. Fine-Tuning Process on Whisper Models

Whisper can be used with close to a hundred languages and supports multiple down-
stream tasks (translation, speech recognition, etc.). Also, it has a fine-tuning feature. In
the fine-tuning process, the model is retrained with newly labeled data for the relevant
downstream task. The fine-tuning process contributes to the improvement of the model in
three ways:
1. Fitting the model with multiple downstream tasks, but only for a specific task (in the
context of this study, the ASR).
2. Increasing the model’s bias toward a particular language, and hence, its performance
in that language, by training it only with data from a particular language.
3. Strengthening the probabilities of the elements involved in the tokenization process
with the specified training dataset, increasing the bias of the outputs in terms of
the relevant elements. For example, increasing the probability that the model that
produces output with numbers for numbers will produce text output instead of
numbers by fine-tuning the datasets where numbers are shown as text.
Higher models of solutions like Whisper, etc., require high processing power and
memory for fine-tuning. Graphics cards with powerful GPUs are usually used for process-
ing power and memory. Often, however, as the size of the model increases, the top-end
graphics cards become insufficient.

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One of the methods used to overcome these difficulties is LoRA. In this study, the
fine-tuning process is performed using LoRA. With LoRA, the number of target parameters
trained on the Whisper architecture can be reduced to approximately 3/100 and the memory
requirement to approximately 1/3 [6].

3.7. Fine-Tuning Process on Whisper-Medium Model

The Whisper-medium model was fine-tuned using 60% of the Mozilla CV dataset
because it contained more records than the other datasets. The relatively small size of the
Whisper-medium model enables faster training with larger datasets. The hyperparameters
used in the fine-tuning process were as follows: the chunk size was 32, the learning rate
was 5E-6, and the gradient accumulation step was 2. Adam was used as the optimization
function. As a result of the fine-tuning process, which lasted 6500 epochs and a total of
72 h, the test results given in Table 7 were obtained.

Table 7. Test performance comparison after fine-tuning for the Whisper-medium model.

Whisper-Medium
Dataset Metric Whisper-Medium Difference (%)
(Fine-Tuning)
WER 0.109 0.065 −40.37
METU MS (100%)
CER 0.043 0.015 −65.12
WER 0.139 0.136 −2.16
TNST (10%)
CER 0.047 0.036 −23.40
WER 0.118 0.117 −0.85
FLEURS (100%)
CER 0.037 0.034 −8.11
WER 0.210 0.172 −18.10
Mozilla CV (10%)
CER 0.117 0.099 −15.38
WER 0.91 0.106 16.48
TASRT (100%)
CER 0.035 0.042 20.00

After fine-tuning the Whisper-medium model, the most significant decrease in terms
of the WER value was observed in the METU MS dataset. No significant improvement was
observed in the TNST and FLEURS datasets, which contain many foreign words in various
languages. On the other hand, while an 18.1% improvement was achieved in the Mozilla
CV dataset, a 16.48% performance decrease was observed in the TASRT dataset. Similarly,
while a decrease in the CER value occurred in the other four datasets, a 20% increase was
observed in the TOKTT dataset. It was observed that the CER improvement in the TNST
dataset in particular was not reflected in the WER value at the same rate.

3.8. Fine-Tuning Process on Whisper-Large-v2 Model

The Whisper-large-v2 model was fine-tuned using 80% of the FLEURS and Mozilla CV
datasets. The hyperparameters used in the fine-tuning process were as follows: the chunk
size was 32, the learning rate was 5 × 10−6 , and the gradient accumulation step was 2. The
training took about 90 h in five sessions and was completed in 8000 epochs. Adam was
used as the optimization function. Since the LoRA method was used, the training loss was
calculated based on the tokenization success, since a loss calculation cannot be performed
directly on the WER. Table 8 shows the test performance of the Whisper-large-v2 model on
the Turkish datasets comparatively before and after fine-tuning.

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Table 8. Whisper-large-v2 model test performance evaluation after fine-tuning.

Whisper Large-v2
Dataset Metric Whisper Large-v2 Difference (%)
(Fine-Tuning)
WER 0.059 0.050 −15.25
METU MS (100%)
CER 0.020 0.010 −50.00
WER 0.132 0.109 −17.42
TNST (30%)
CER 0.051 0.032 −37.25
WER 0.083 0.047 −43.37
FLEURS (100%)
CER 0.021 0.014 −33.33
WER 0.10 0.051 −49.00
Mozilla CV (30%)
CER 0.021 0.010 −52.38
WER 0.081 0.079 −2.47
TASRT (100%)
CER 0.032 0.030 −6.25

Following the application of the fine-tuning techniques, a reduction in the WER and
CER values was observed across all the datasets. The most substantial enhancements were
observed in the Mozilla CV and FLEURS datasets.
As anticipated, the 43.37% reduction in the WER is indicative of the model’s enhanced
accuracy in transcription on the FLEURS dataset, which constituted 80% of the total fine-
tuning data. The enhancement in character-level accuracy is also reflected in the reduction
in character-level errors.
The test on 10% of the Mozilla CV dataset demonstrated the most substantial improve-
ments in both the WER (49.00%) and CER (52.38%). These results demonstrate the efficacy
of the fine-tuning process on the Mozilla CV dataset.
The 50% improvement in the CER for the METU MS dataset demonstrates that the
model is highly effective in reducing character-level errors. The 15.25% improvement
in the WER is also noteworthy, indicating an enhancement in the overall quality of the
transcription.
Concerning the TNST dataset, the fine-tuning resulted in enhanced transcription
accuracy, particularly a 37.25% improvement in the CER. The 17.42% improvement in the
WER also suggests that the model’s word-level performance has been enhanced.
The impact of fine-tuning on the TASRT dataset was found to be relatively limited.
In the case of the TASRT dataset, which comprises approximately 75% of speech data
exceeding 30 s in duration, the minimal observed improvements of 2.47% in the WER and
6.25% in the WER may be indicative of the model’s inherent suitability for this particular
dataset, or that the fine-tuning was insufficiently effective.

3.9. Fine-Tuning Process on Whisper-Large-v3 Model

In the fine-tuning process conducted with the Whisper-large-v3 model, the incor-
poration of all the linear layers resulted in a two- to fourfold increase in the number of
trained parameters and led to the emergence of hardware bottlenecks. Consequently, the
fine-tuning process was conducted solely on the Q and V structures.
Firstly, due to the reduction in the processing speed and memory requirements, the
fine-tuning process was conducted in the 8-bit integer format. However, this resulted in a
decline in sensitivity and an increase in the hallucination problem of the model. Accordingly,
the 16-bit floating-point format was selected for the fine-tuning process. During the training
phase, the batch size was set to 32, the learning rate was fixed at 5 × 10−6 , and the gradient
accumulation step was set to 2.
Given that the large-v3 model was trained on a vast quantity of data, it was not
possible to achieve a greater degree of success by training on a dataset of approximately
10 h. Despite the expectation that greater training data would facilitate improvement, the
desired progress in the fine-tuning of the large-v3 model could not be achieved due to
the limited number of labeled datasets and the constraints imposed by the hardware and

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runtime. Consequently, the Whisper fine-tuning process concentrated on the lower models,
medium and large-v2.

4. Discussion
The end-to-end, multi-tasking design of modern ASR applications is a testament to the
advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning. By eliminating the need for
separate acoustic and language models, these systems streamline the process of understand-
ing and processing human speech. The integration of automatic translation and speaker
tagging within ASR systems not only enhances the user experience but also broadens
the scope of application for these technologies. The transition from traditional statistical
models, such as HMMs, to advanced deep learning structures is a major development.
This includes the use of transformers with encoders and decoders, marking a significant
milestone in the field. These deep learning models can analyze vast amounts of data and
learn complex patterns, which results in more accurate and efficient speech recognition.
As the complexity of deep learning architectures increases, particularly with the
integration of transformer models, the necessity for extensive training data and substantial
computational resources also rises in parallel. These issues have been addressed through
the development of more advanced GPUs and the ongoing expansion of datasets. The shift
toward creating models with a larger number of parameters reflects the field’s adaptation
to these technological advancements. The training of deep learning models on large-
scale datasets has been demonstrated to enhance their generalization capabilities and to
improve their performance across a wide range of tasks. Incremental improvements in
model components, such as refining the attention mechanism, are often more favored than
overhauling the entire architecture. This approach allows for steady progress and the
optimization of existing frameworks, which can be more efficient than starting from scratch.
The expansion of training datasets also plays a crucial role in this development trajectory,
providing the models with a diverse range of inputs from which to learn. The current
trajectory suggests the focus will remain on scaling up the models in line with the available
computational resources. This scaling is not just in terms of the size of the datasets but also
the complexity of the models’ input attributes [69,70].
This study used the Whisper ASR model, which employs a transformer-based encoder–
decoder architecture, to create a speech recognition system for Turkish. The performance of
the model was evaluated using various Turkish speech datasets, and there were noticeable
enhancements after fine-tuning with the LoRA method.
Initial reviews of the Turkish speech datasets identified the following common errors
and issues.
Problems related to transferring the speech to the text, such as not reading the text com-
pletely and correctly, transferring the speech to the text differently and adding expressions
that are not in the speech to the text.
Spelling errors such as missing or incorrect punctuation in Turkish characters and
words that must be written adjacent or separate according to the spelling rules are trans-
ferred to the text differently.
Ending the recording before the expression in the text is completed, noise, etc., leading
to sound quality problems.
In a carefully written text, it is estimated that there are approximately 1–2% spelling
errors. On the other hand, for quickly written or unchecked texts, this rate is thought to
be approximately 10–15% [71]. Within the scope of this study, the speech voiced at many
points in the METU MS dataset was listened to again and corrections were made. When
the initial and final versions of the texts were compared, it was determined that there were
1.7% character and 5.8% word differences. Considering the deficiencies and problems that
may arise from the correction process, the speaker does not vocalize by the text, words or
letters are pronounced differently, etc., it was observed that there were approximately 1–2%
letter errors and 5% word errors due to errors. This coincides with the predictions given at
the beginning.

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Considering all these issues, it is understood that the current Whisper architecture
is more successful than the error values obtained in terms of the understandability of the
converted text.
By fine-tuning, the performance of the models can be increased in terms of the task
and language. However, for the TNST, METU MS, etc., although the datasets provide the
opportunity to compare different models and architectures, it has been observed that they
are insufficient for the fine-tuning process. Although the TNST dataset is rich in terms of
the number of examples it contains, it is not suitable for fine-tuning in its current form due
to the confusion caused by foreign words in its content. On the other hand, it is considered
that the METU MS dataset is not suitable for use on its own for fine-tuning due to its small
size, even if the errors it contains are eliminated.
In experiments conducted on many Turkish datasets with Whisper’s upper models, a
WER value between 0.05 and 0.15 was obtained. In particular, in the experiments conducted
with the recently released Whisper-large-v3 model, a WER value of 0.04 to 0.10 was reached.
These results show that Whisper is a successful architecture.
We performed a more comprehensive statistical evaluation of the model’s performance
on Turkish datasets. Specifically, we now provide the confidence intervals for the WER
and CER metrics, which allow for a more robust comparison between the baseline and
fine-tuned models.
The calculated confidence intervals (CIs) for the WER both before and after fine-tuning
for the Whisper models provide a 95% confidence level, meaning we are 95% confident
that the true WER lies within these ranges.
Confidence Intervals for Pre-Fine-Tuning WER:
METU MS: Mean = 0.202, CI = (0.152, 0.252)
TNST: Mean = 0.278, CI = (0.208, 0.347)
FLEURS: Mean = 0.228, CI = (0.165, 0.291)
Mozilla CV: Mean = 0.290, CI = (0.227, 0.354)
TASRT: Mean = 0.232, CI = (0.178, 0.286)
Confidence Intervals for Post-Fine-Tuning WER:
METU MS: Mean = 0.166, CI = (0.113, 0.218)
TNST: Mean = 0.262, CI = (0.202, 0.322)
TASRT: Mean = 0.190, CI = (0.137, 0.243)
These confidence intervals show the variability and reliability of the WER values
before and after fine-tuning. The reduction in the WER after fine-tuning is statistically
significant, as seen from the tighter confidence intervals and lower mean values.
Additionally, we used statistical significance tests (e.g., t-tests) to ensure that the im-
provements observed after fine-tuning are not due to random variation but are statistically
significant. This helps solidify the reliability of our results. The results of the paired t-tests,
which compare the WER values before and after fine-tuning for each dataset, are as follows:
METU MS: t-statistic: 5.77, p-value: 0.004
TNST: t-statistic: 4.65, p-value: 0.009
TASRT: t-statistic: 6.24, p-value: 0.003
For all the datasets (METU MS, TNST, and TASRT), the p-values are well below the
common significance threshold of 0.05. This indicates that the reductions in the WER after
fine-tuning are statistically significant. These results confirm that fine-tuning the Whisper
models leads to a significant improvement in performance for Turkish ASR across the
evaluated datasets.
In the fine-tuning process, large datasets are needed to improve the performance of the
model used. In addition to being sufficient in size, the datasets to be used should contain
few errors so as not to reduce the performance in the fine-tuning process. In this respect,
although Turkish has larger datasets than many other languages, these sets are inadequate,
especially in operations such as fine-tuning. As a result of this study, it was seen that there
was a need to develop new Turkish datasets that were large and contained few errors. It is

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thought that in the future, studies should be carried out on the development of datasets
with the above-mentioned features.

5. Conclusions
The integration of machine learning, particularly advanced deep learning techniques,
has had a significant impact on the field of ASR. This influence has led to groundbreaking
advancements in the accuracy and efficiency of ASR systems. In this research, the Whisper
ASR model, employing a transformer-based encoder–decoder architecture, was utilized to
develop a Turkish speech recognition system. The model’s performance was assessed across
diverse Turkish speech datasets, revealing significant improvements following fine-tuning
with the LoRA method.
Challenges and Solutions:
Data scarcity: one of the primary challenges in developing ASR systems for low-
resource languages like Turkish is the limited availability of labeled speech data. This study
addressed this issue by fine-tuning the Whisper model with LoRA, which significantly
reduced the word error rate.
Model adaptation: the transformer architecture of the Whisper model allows for effi-
cient handling of long-range dependencies in speech data, making it suitable for languages
with complex morphological structures like Turkish.
Future Directions:
Enhanced data collection: future research should focus on collecting more diverse and
extensive Turkish speech datasets to further improve the model’s performance.
Advanced fine-tuning techniques: exploring other fine-tuning techniques and hybrid
models could provide additional performance gains and robustness in ASR systems.
By addressing these challenges and leveraging advanced machine learning techniques,
development of robust and accurate ASR systems for low-resource languages such as
Turkish can be significantly accelerated.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, H.P., A.K.T. and C.K.; methodology, H.P. and A.K.T.; soft-
ware, A.K.T.; validation, H.P., A.K.T., C.K. and H.B.U.; formal analysis, H.P. and A.K.T.; investigation,
C.K. and A.K.T.; resources, C.K. and H.B.U.; data curation, A.K.T. and H.B.U.; writing—original
draft preparation, H.P. and A.K.T.; writing—review and editing, H.P., C.K. and H.B.U.; visualization,
H.B.U.; supervision, H.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement: Middle East Technical University (METU) Turkish Microphone Speech,
data availability status: data available in a publicly accessible repository. The original data presented
in the study are openly available in [Link] (accessed on 15
September 2024). Turkish Broadcast News Speech and Text dataset, data availability status: data
available in a publicly accessible repository. The original data presented in the study are openly
available in [Link] (accessed on 15 September 2024). Mozilla
Common Voice dataset, data availability status: data available in a publicly accessible repository. The
original data presented in the study are openly available in [Link]
datasets (accessed on 15 September 2024). FLEURS dataset, data availability status: data available
in a publicly accessible repository. The original data presented in the study are openly available in
[Link] (accessed on 15 September 2024). Turkish Automatic
Speech Recognition Test (TASRT), data availability status: data available on request due to restrictions
(commercial use). The data presented in this study are available from the corresponding author
upon request.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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 electronics
Article
GGTr: An Innovative Framework for Accurate and Realistic
Human Motion Prediction
Biaozhang Huang 1,2 and Xinde Li 1,2, *

1 Key Laboratory Measurement and Control of CSE, Ministry of Education, School of Automation,
Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China; bzhuang@[Link]
2 Nanjing Center for Applied Mathematics, Nanjing 211135, China
* Correspondence: xindeli@[Link]

Abstract: Human motion prediction involves forecasting future movements based on past observa-
tions, which is a complex task due to the inherent spatial-temporal dynamics of human motion. In
this paper, we introduced a novel framework, GGTr, which adeptly encapsulates these patterns by
integrating positional graph convolutional network (GCN) layers, gated recurrent unit (GRU) net-
work layers, and transformer layers. The proposed model utilizes an enhanced GCN layer equipped
with a positional representation to aggregate information from body joints more effectively. To
address temporal dependencies, we strategically combined GRU and transformer layers, enabling the
model to capture both local and global temporal dependencies across body joints. Through extensive
experiments conducted on Human3.6M and CMU-MoCap datasets, we demonstrated the superior
performance of our proposed model. Notably, our framework shows significant improvements in
predicting long-term movements, outperforming state-of-the-art methods substantially.

Keywords: human motion prediction; graph convolutional network; gated recurrent unit; transformers

1. Introduction
Human motion prediction, the task of forecasting future human movements based on
past observations, plays a critical role in various domains such as robotics, computer vision,
Citation: Huang, B.; Li, X. GGTr: An healthcare, and sports analysis. Accurately predicting human motion is instrumental for
Innovative Framework for Accurate facilitating effective human-robot collaboration [1,2], ensuring system security [3,4], analyz-
and Realistic Human Motion ing human behavior and emotions [5,6], and supporting sports performance analysis [7].
Prediction. Electronics 2023, 12, 3305. However, predicting human motion presents significant challenges due to the complexity
[Link] and diversity of human behaviors. First, human motion exhibits high variability and
electronics12153305 uncertainty. This is evident at the 3D skeletal level, due to the diversity in human body
Academic Editor: Grzegorz Dudek sizes, and at the movement level, due to individual idiosyncrasies. In scenarios with rapid
changes, such as sudden reactions or motions, it is exceedingly difficult for predictive
Received: 6 July 2023 models to adapt quickly. Second, the interplay between different body parts and their
Revised: 29 July 2023
coordinated movements further complicates the task. For instance, a motion initiated by
Accepted: 30 July 2023
one body part can propagate to other body parts in complex and often non-intuitive ways.
Published: 1 August 2023
So, it becomes essential to capture both spatial and temporal features, as illustrated
in Figure 1. Numerous research efforts have been made to address the challenges of
modeling human motion. Traditional methods and machine learning methods such as
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
hidden Markov models (HMM) [8], Gaussian processes (GP) [9], and restricted Boltzmann
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. machine [10]. However, these methods may not fully capture the complex interdepen-
This article is an open access article dencies and non-linear dynamics present in human motion. More recently, deep learning
distributed under the terms and approaches, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) [11], graph convolutional net-
conditions of the Creative Commons works (GCN) [12–15], temporal modules such as recurrent neural networks (RNNs) [16–21],
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// and transformers [22–24] have been used. While existing RNN and deep learning-based
[Link]/licenses/by/ models have significantly improved the prediction performance, they still have limita-
4.0/). tions. These methods often struggle to capture the dynamic and complex interactions

Electronics 2023, 12, 3305. [Link] 95 [Link]

Electronics 2023, 12, 3305

between different body parts. The relations among body joints cannot be simply modeled
by static spatial proximity; instead, they are influenced by various factors such as the
individual’s physical attributes, the current body state, and the motion context. Moreover,
these models frequently encounter challenges in effectively capturing both local and global
temporal dependencies.

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Figure 1. The process of human motion prediction. The historical sequences of human motion are
subjected to feature extraction in terms of both space and time. This involves the analysis of the
spatial configuration of the body, as well as the timing and sequence of these movements. The derived
spatial and temporal features constitute the foundation for building a comprehensive understanding
of the motion patterns.

To address these challenges, we proposed a novel approach for human motion predic-
tion that combines positional graph convolutional network (GCN) layers, gated recurrent
unit (GRU) network layers, and transformer layers, termed as GGTr. This combination
allows us to better capture the complex spatial-temporal patterns in human motion data.
In summary, the primary contributions of this paper include:
(1) The introduction of a novel GCN layer with positional representation, enabling better
aggregation of information from adjacent body joints;
(2) The strategic combination of GRU and transformer layers to capture both local and
global temporal dependencies across body joints;
(3) The conduction of extensive experiments on the Human3.6M and CMU-MoCap
datasets, demonstrating the effectiveness and advantages of our proposed frame-
work, our model shows significant improvements in predicting short-term movements.
Experiments reveal that our model significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods .
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 reviews related work.
In Section 3, we first introduce some preliminary concepts and formalize the human motion
prediction problem and the overall framework of the spatial temporal network model. Then,
we discuss in detail the three model components to deal with the spatial and temporal
dependencies, separately. In Section 4, experiments were conducted on two large-scale
datasets, comparing the performance of the proposed method with baselines. Section 5
provides a summary and conclusion, as well as a discussion of future work.

2. Related Work
Human motion prediction is a challenging task due to the complexity and variability
of human movements. This complexity arises from the intricate interplay of various factors
such as the individual’s physical characteristics, the environment, and the task at hand.
Over the years, several approaches have been proposed to tackle this problem, each with
its own strengths and limitations.
Traditional methods primarily rely on data statistical approaches or prior knowledge,
such as Markov prediction models [8], Gaussian process dynamical models [9] and re-
stricted Boltzmann machine [10], which can only tackle simple human motion patterns.
Although these methods have achieved some success in certain scenarios, they still face
challenges in capturing complex spatial and temporal dependencies.

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Chiu et al. [25] used LSTM units to model the underlying structure of human motion
hierarchically, but did not adequately utilize spatial information of human motion data.
Martinez et al. [18] introduced a residual structure using GRU to model the velocity of
human motion sequences, Their model focused on short-term temporal modeling, ignoring
long-term dependencies and spatial structure. Jain et al. [17] combined LSTM and fully
connected (FC) layers in a structural RNN model to encode high-level spatio-temporal
structures in human motion sequences. Guo et al. [26] employed FC layers and GRU to
model local structures and capture long-term temporal dependencies, but they did not
take into account the interactions between different human body limbs. The transformer
model with a self-attention mechanism has been proved to be more effective than recurrent
networks in various domains [23,27,28]. It applies a multi-head attention mechanism
to directly learn dependencies between each pair of input and output positions without
any latency.
Graph convolutional networks (GCN) have become widely used for modeling the
underlying relationships of non-Euclidean data. Kipf et al. [29] proposed a layer-wise prop-
agation rule for nodes inspired by first-order approximation of spectral convolutions on
graphs. However, this approach is limited by the characteristics of the graph. Yuan et al. [30]
proposed a more flexible approach by learning node connectivity based on node neigh-
borhood. Velickovic et al. [31] introduced self-attention to determine the neighborhood
structure to be considered, providing more flexibility to the network. This approach has
been applied to action recognition [32] by using a GCN to capture the temporal and spatial
dependencies of human body joints via a graph defined on temporally connected kinematic
trees. These techniques have been applied to human motion prediction by building the
human pose as a graph and using GCN to encode the spatial connectivity of human joints.
Ma et al. [33] proposed two variants of GCN to extract spatial and temporal features. They
built a multi-stage structure where each stage contains an encoder and a decoder and, dur-
ing training, the model is trained with intermediate supervision to learn to progressively
refine the prediction. References [12,13,34] extended the graph of the human pose to multi-
scale the version across the abstraction levels of the human pose. However, as these models
aggregate body joint features based on an input adjacency matrix, the relation between
body parts is fixed and may limit the model’s ability to adapt to complex human motions.
The transformer [35] has become the dominant approach in natural language process-
ing (NLP). The key component of the transformer is a multi-head self-attention mechanism
that captures long-range dependencies. Building upon the success of the transformer
in various tasks [36–38], researchers have increasingly focused on exploring its potential
applications in 3D human motion prediction [22–24]. Cai et al. [22] employed a transformer-
based architecture with discrete cosine transform (DCT) to capture the long-range spatial
correlations and temporal dependencies in human motion dynamics. Another notable
advancement is the spatio-temporal transformer (ST-Trans) mechanism proposed by Ak-
san et al. [23], which effectively captures the spatio-temporal dependencies of decomposed
3D human motions. However, the ST-Trans method overlooks the importance of ensuring
consistency between spatial and temporal information, which is a crucial factor when deal-
ing with time-varying data. To address this limitation, a cross-transformer approach [24]
has been developed to explore effective interaction between spatial and temporal branches.
This approach is designed to learn the coherence of spatial and temporal information and
simultaneously enhance the model’s predictive capacity. Despite these advancements,
transformer-based methods may overlook local information when dealing with human
motion data, warranting further investigation into this aspect.
In summary, with the development of human motion prediction in recent years,
GCN/GRU/transformer-based architectures have been well explored and results have
significantly improved. In this paper, we proposed a new spatial-temporal graph convo-
lutional network framework to address the human motion prediction problem. We used
graph convolutional networks with a position-wise attention mechanism to capture the
spatial dependencies of the human body joints. A gated recurrent neural network with

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transformer layers was used to capture both local and global information of human motion
sequences in the temporal dimension.

3. The Proposed Framework

Problem Fromulation. In the realm of human motion prediction, the objective is
to forecast future human movements utilizing historical motion data. Specifically, these
historical motion data can be expressed as a time series within a 3D skeletal structure. This
structure can be denoted as G = (V, E), where V = {v1 , v2 , . . . , v M } represents a set of M
joints in the human body, and E is a set of edges that represent the physical connections
between these joints. The relationships between joints can be demonstrated by a symmetric
adjacency matrix A ∈ R M× M , where the i, j-th element, Aij , represents the biomechanical
correlation between joints vi and v j . This correlation is typically gauged by the physical
linkage or common motion patterns shared between two joints. Note that Aij = 0 if there is
no substantial correlation between the two respective joints. The historical motion data can
be represented in a sequence Z = (z1 , z2 , . . . , zτ ) on the 3D skeletal structure, where each
zt ∈ R M×1 signifies the motion status of M joints at time t. With the above notations, we
can formally state the problem as follows.
Given the 3D skeletal structure G = (V, E) and the historical motion data Z =
(z1 , z2 , . . . , zτ ), the aim was to formulate a model f that can accept a new sequence X =
( x1 , x2 , . . . , x T ) of length T as an input and predict the motion status for the subsequent T 
time steps, denoted as:

X pred = f ( G; X | Z ) = ( x T +1 , . . . , x T +T  ). (1)

Moreover, during the training phase, we employed a sliding window of length T + T 

over the historical motion sequence Z to generate the training samples. These samples
serve to train the model f .
Overview. The conceptual framework of the proposed GGTr network, illustrated in
Figure 2, is primarily composed of three crucial components. The spatial graph convolu-
tional network (GCN) layers were designed to model the spatial correlation between the
human body joints graph. These layers were applied to the input representations of the
gated recurrent unit (GRU), which modeled the sequential temporal relations, also referred
to as local temporal dependencies. The framework also includes a transformer layer that is
specifically designed to directly apprehend the long-range or global temporal dependencies
within the motion sequence. The GRU and transformer layers work in tandem to capture
the temporal dependencies for each joint independently, albeit from distinct perspectives.
Subsequently, we delve into the spatial dependency modeling with the GCN, followed
by an explanation of how the GRU layer and the transformer layer function to capture
temporal dependencies, leading to a comprehensive summary of the complete framework.

3.1. Spatial Dependence Modeling

Acquiring the complex spatial dependence is a crucial problem in human motion
prediction. The traditional convolutional network (CNN) can grasp local spatial features,
but its application is primarily confined to Euclidean space, such as images or regular grids.
However, the human body essentially forms a graph, not a two-dimensional grid. A graph
is a structure composed of nodes and edges. In the context of human motion prediction,
nodes can represent joints in the human body, and edges can represent connections between
joints. Graphical models can effectively represent the complex relationships between
human joints, which is useful for human motion prediction. This means the CNN model
cannot reflect the complex topological structure of the human body and thus cannot
accurately capture spatial dependence. Recently, generalizing the CNN to the graph
convolutional network (GCN), which can handle arbitrary graph-structured data, has
received widespread attention.

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In the human motion prediction problem, if two body joints are connected or in close
proximity, their movements are likely to mutually influence each other. Thus, to capture
these spatial relationships, we employed the graph convolutional networks model proposed
in [29,31]. This model is used to transform and propagate motion information through the
graph structure. Specifically, given input motion information X l ∈ R M×d on the structure,
l

l +1
where dl represents the input dimension, the output X l +1 ∈ R M×d can be computed,
with dl +1 denoting the output dimension.

X l +1 = σ ( D̃ −1/2 Ã D̃ −1/2 X l W l ), (2)

where σ(.) is a non-linear activation function. In our work, we adopted ReLU (·), standing
for REctified Linear Unit, which is advantageous for its ability to speed up the convergence
of stochastic gradient descent compared to sigmoid and tanh functions. Ã = A + I M
is the adjusted adjacency matrix with I M as the M-dimensional identity matrix, and D̃
is the modified degree matrix, with D̃ii = ∑ j Ãij . W l are the parameters to be learned.
For convenience, we represent the operation in Equation (2) as follows:

X l +1 = GCN0 ( X l , A). (3)

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Figure 2. The whole architecture of our suggested solution for motion prediction, which employs an
end-to-end framework. We encode human poses x1:T and feed them to GGTr. The GCN layer aids
in understanding spatial relationships among body joints within the human motion network. Fol-
lowing the GRU is a transformer layer, designed to grasp global temporal dependencies. Ultimately,
the transformer’s output is harnessed to predict future motion states.

In the aforementioned formulation, the operation relies solely on the human body
joints structure information, which is premised on the physical proximity between body
parts. However, the interplay between body joints can be significantly more intricate.
Various factors such as muscle constraints, physical capabilities, motion style, and ongoing
actions can impact the motion of body parts. Therefore, the information from neighboring
joints should not be aggregated equally to a given central joint when performing the aggre-
gation in Equation (2). Recently, GaAN [39] attempted to employ the attention mechanism
to model the complex relationships between graph nodes. Ideally, the aforementioned fac-
tors could be used to calculate the attention score, but these factors are not always available.
Furthermore, there may be other factors influencing the relations between joints that we are

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not aware of. Therefore, in this paper, we proposed learning a positional representation to
capture these factors for each joint. Specifically, for joints vi , v j , we aimed to learn two latent
positional representations hi , h j ∈ R M . We then modeled the pairwise relations between
any body joints as:
eij = a([Whi ||Wh j ])
exp( LeakyReLU ( a(hi , h j ))) (4)
αij = ,
∑k=1 exp( LeakyReLU ( a(hi , h j )))
M

where a(.) is a relation score function modeled with dot product as follows:

a(hi , h j ) = (Whi ) T Wh j , (5)

where W is a transformation matrix to be learned. We further employed a mask to sparsify

the relation matrix α in order to reduce computational complexity:

αij , if Ãij > 0
mask(α) = (6)
0, otherwise.

Subsequently, the GCN operation can be applied to the newly learned relation matrix
mask(α):
X l +1 = σ( D̃α−1/2 α̃ D̃α−1/2 X l W l ), (7)
where α̃ = mask(α) + I M and D̃α is the degree matrix for α̃. For simplicity, we represent
the operation in Equation (7) as:

X l +1 = GCNN ( A, X l ). (8)

Instead of the operation in (2), the operation in (8) was used to capture the spatial
relations. This approach allowed us to learn a positional representation for each joint,
capturing various factors that influence their relationships. By using these learned repre-
sentations in combination with an attention mechanism and a sparsified relation matrix,
we can effectively model complex spatial relationships between different body joints and
improve the accuracy of human motion prediction.

3.2. Temporal Dependence Modeling

The gated recurrent unit (GRU) is a variant of a traditional RNN and can effectively
capture the semantic association between long sequences and alleviate the problem of
gradient vanishing or explosion. Its core structure can be divided into two parts for
analysis: update gate and reset gate, illustrated in Figure 3. To capture the temporal
dependency in human motion sequences, we adopted the gated recurrent unit (GRU) [40]
to process the sequence information.
For each time step, we maintained a hidden representation that served as the output
for the current step and influenced the information flow to the subsequent step. It is
important to note that the GRU operation was applied individually to each joint in the body,
and the parameters were shared for all joints. To incorporate spatial relations in human
motion while processing the sequence, we applied a modified graph convolutional network
(GCN) operation, as described in Equation (8), to the input representations of the GRU.
Specifically, at each time step t, with input xt and previous step’s hidden representations
ht−1 , we applied the modified GCN operation:

x̃t = GCNN ( A, xt )
(9)
h̃t−1 = GCNN ( A, ht−1 ).

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For a body joint vi at time step t, the history observation xt [i ] contains the dynamic
features for joint vi at t-th time step. The update gate and reset gate are denoted as follows:

zt = σ (Wz x̃t [i ] + Uz h̃t−1 [i ] + bz )

(10)
rt = σ(Wr x̃t [i ] + Ur h̃t−1 [i ] + br ),

where Wz , Wr , Wh , Uz , Ur , bz , br are the trainable parameters.

We then calculated the candidate hidden state and the updated hidden state ht [i ] as
follows:
h̃t [i ] = tanh(Wh x̃t [i ] + rt  Uh h̃t−1 [i ] + bh )
(11)
ht [i ] = (1 − zt )h̃t−1 [i ] + zt  h̃t [i ],
where  denotes the element-wise multiplication, Uh ,bh are the parameters to be learned,
and ht [i ] serves as extracted features of joint vi at the next time step.

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Figure 3. Architectural elements in a GRU layer.

The above are the fundamental equations and steps of GRU. By controlling the update
and reset gates, GRU can dynamically update and adjust the hidden state based on different
patterns in the sequence, enabling it to better capture the local temporal information.
However, in the human body motion prediction problem, the temporal information may
not only be sequentially dependent. Hence, it is important to capture the global temporal
information for accurate human motion prediction. Thus, after processing with the GRU
layer, we adopted a transformer layer [35] to capture the global dependencies following
the GRU.
The transformer layer, similar to the GRU layer, was applied to each joint individually.
For joint vi , the output sequence (h1 [i ], . . . , h T [i ]) from GRU was taken as the input for the
transformer. Figure 4 illustrates that a transformer layer consists of a multi-head attention
layer, a shared feed-forward neural work layer, and normalization layers between them.
Inputs of model. The input of the model is the spatial dependency embedding se-
quence of each joint. Let us consider the i-th joint’s spatial dependency embedding sequence
(h1 [i ], h2 [i ], . . . , h T [i ]). Although the self-attention mechanism is effective in capturing hid-
den dependency relationships in the sequence, it fails to maintain location information.
Hence, we incorporated position encoding et as proposed by [35], between GRU and the
transformer layer. This choice was motivated by the ability of this approach to facilitate the

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model’s learning to attend to relative positions in a sequence. The new representations ht [i ]
were computed as follows:
ht [i ] = ht [i ] + et , (12)
where et is defined as

sin(t/100002i/dmodel ), if i = 0, 2, 4. . .
et = (13)
cos(t/100002i/dmodel ), otherwise.

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Temporal multi-head attention. In our model, we defined a matrix hvi ∈ R T ×d by

arranging (h1 [i ], h2 [i ], . . . , h T [i ]) in a row-wise manner across the temporal axis. The multi-
head attention mechanism is composed of several attention heads, which process the
input in parallel and whose outputs are then combined. This concept can be represented
mathematically as follows:

MultiHead(hvi ) = Concat(head1 , . . . , heads )W O . (14)

This signifies that the output of multi-head attention is the concatenation of s single
head attention blocks, each one being projected with the matrix W O . Each single head
attention block, heads , can be given by:

heads = Attention(hvi )
Qs K T (15)
= so f tmax ( √ s )Vs ,
dk

where WsQ , WsK , and WsV denote the queries, keys, and values of the s-th single head
attention for joint vi , respectively. We obtained the Qs , Ks , and Vs by a linear projection
with W Q , W K , and W V :

Qs = hvi WsQ , Ks = hvi WsK , Vs = hvi WsV , (16)

where WsQ ∈ Rd×dk , WsK ∈ Rd×dk , and WsV ∈ Rd×dv are the trainable projection matrices for
the s-th attention head and are shared by all the joints.

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Feed-forward Layer. After the multi-head attention layer, the output states are then
processed by a feedforward neural network layer. This layer is identical for all joints, which
includes two linear transformations and a ReLU activation function in between:

FFN ( X ) = max (0, XW1 + b1 )W2 + b2 , (17)

where W1 , W2 are the trainable parameters of the feed-forward neural network and b1 and
b2 are bias terms.
Residual connection and normalization. As shown in Figure 4, the residual connection
and normalization operators appear in each layer. The residual connection was introduced
to tackle the difficulty in training deep network optimization algorithms, and normalization
was applied to prevent overfitting. Given the embedded feature Zin , the process of the
residual connection and normalization layer is denoted as follows:

Zin = LayerNorm( Zin + MultiHead( Zin ))
  (18)
hout = LayerNorm( Zin + FFN ( Zin )),

where LayerNorm(.) denotes the normalization function.

Lastly, after each sub-layer in the transformer, such as the temporal multi-head at-
tention layer and the feed-forward network layer, a layer normalization operation and a
residual connection were applied. The final output of the transformer layer for joint vi can
be denoted as hout
vi
∈ RT ×d .
In summary, this approach combines both the local and global temporal information
through the GRU and transformer layers, which can be highly beneficial for accurate
human motion prediction. The individual sequence of movements and the overall pattern
of movements are both considered, making this method a versatile and robust choice for
this task.

3.3. Loss Function

To train our model, we employed an end-to-end training technique. The mean position
per joint error (MPJPE) loss [41] function between the anticipated motion sequence and the
ground truth motion sequence was used to analyse the difference between the predicted
outcomes and the true pose, which is defined as follows:
M T
1
L=
M×T ∑ ∑ ||x̂t [i] − xt [i]||22 , (19)
i =1 t =1

where M is the number of joints in human pose, T is the number of time steps in the future
series, x̂t [i ] is the predicted joint position at the t-th time step of the i-th joint, and xt [i ] is
the corresponding ground truth.
We optimised the loss function using the improved Adam method (AdamW [42] ),
which mitigates the overfitting problem by adding a weight decay term and can significantly
improve the robustness of the model.

4. Experiments
In this section, we present experiments on two large-scale human motion capture
benchmark datasets (Human3.6M and CMU-MoCap) to demonstrate the effectiveness
of the GGTr network for human motion prediction. We first introduced the experimen-
tal settings, including datasets, baselines, and parameter settings. Then, we conducted
experiments to compare the performance of the GGTr with other baselines. Finally, we de-
signed comprehensive ablation studies to evaluate the impact of the essential architectural
components.

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4.1. Datasets
Human3.6M [41] is the largest existing human motion analysis database, consisting
of seven actors (S1, S5, S6, S7, S8, S9, and S11) performing 15 actions such as walking,
eating, smoking, discussing, and directions. Each pose includes 32 joints, represented
in the form of an exponential map. Following the data processing of [18], by converting
these into 3D coordinates, eliminating redundant joints, global rotation, and translation,
the resulting skeleton retains 17 joints that provide sufficient human motion details. These
joints include key ones that locate major body parts (e.g., shoulders, knees, and elbows).
We downsampled the frame rate to 25 fps and used S5 and S11 for testing and validation,
while the remaining five actors were used for training.
CMU-MoCap (Available at [Link] accessed on 5 July 2023) is a
3D human motion dataset, released by Carnegie Mellon University, that used 12 Vicon
infrared MX-40 cameras to record the positions of 41 sensors attached to the human body,
describing human motion. The dataset can be divided into six motion themes, including
human interaction, interaction with environment, locomotion, physical activities and sports,
situations and scenarios, and test motions. We adopted the same data preprocessing method
as described in the literature [43], simplifying each human body and reducing the motion
rate to 25 frames per second. Furthermore, seven actions were selected from the dataset to
evaluate the model’s performance. No hyperparameters were adjusted on this dataset. We
used only the training and testing sets, with the splitting method consistent with common
practice in the literature [43].

4.2. Implementation Details

All experiments in this paper were implemented using the PyTorch deep learning
framework. The experimental environment was Ubuntu 20.04, utilizing an NVIDIA A100
GPU. During the training process, a batch size of 16 was used and the number of atten-
tion heads was set to 4. The number of GRU and transformer layers were both set to
1. The model was optimized using the AdamW optimizer. The initial learning rate was
set to 0.003, with a 5% decay every 5 epochs. Training was conducted for 800 epochs,
and each experiment was repeated three times to obtain an average result, ensuring a more
robust evaluation of the model’s performance. For the input motion prediction, a length
of 25 frames (1000 ms) was considered, and the prediction generated 25 frames (1000 ms).
The choice and configuration of related hyperparameters are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. The choice and configuration of related hyperparameters.

Hyperparameter/Config Value
Optimizer AdamW
Base learning rate 5 × 10−3
Weight decay 10−2
Batch size 16
Warmup epochs 5
Epochs 800

4.3. Evaluation Metrics and Baselines

The evaluation metrics employed in our study were consistent with those utilized in
existing algorithms [33,43]. The mean per joint position error (MPJPE) [41] was adopted as
the standard measurement, which computed the average Euclidean distance (in millime-
ters, mm) between the predicted joint 3D coordinates and the ground truth. In addition,
to further illustrate the advantages of the proposed method, a comparative analysis was
conducted with several state-of-the-art approaches [15,18,22,23,33,34,43].
Res. sup. [18] is an early RNN-based method. LTD [43], MSR [34], ST-DGCN [33],
and LCDC [15] utilize GCN-based methodologies. Meanwhile, LPJP [22] and STCT [23] em-
ploy transformer-based approaches. We compared the proposed method with all the above
approaches on the Human3.6M dataset, and with approaches [15,18,22,34,43] on CMU-
MoCap. By comparing the proposed method with these existing approaches, this study

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aimed to demonstrate its effectiveness and highlight its advantages in terms of accuracy
and performance.

4.4. Experimental Results and Analysis

Human3.6M. Table 2 presents quantitative comparisons of our method and other
approaches in predicting short-term (80 ms, 160 ms, 320 ms, 400 ms) and long-term move-
ments (560 ms, 1000 ms) on the Human3.6M dataset. The final column provides the average
performance across all tested time intervals for 15 actions.

Table 2. Prediction of 3D joint positions on Human3.6M for all actions. The best results are marked
in bold.

Time(ms) 80 160 320 400 560 1000 80 160 320 400 560 1000
Action Walking Eating
Res. sup. [18] 29.4 50.8 76.0 81.5 81.7 100.7 16.8 30.6 56.9 68.7 79.9 100.2
LTD [43] 12.3 23.0 39.8 46.1 54.1 59.8 8.4 16.9 33.2 40.7 53.4 77.8
ST-Trans [23] 8.9 15.5 32.1 38.5 - - 9.4 21.1 36.4 42.3 - -
MSR [34] 12.2 22.7 38.6 45.2 52.7 63.0 8.4 17.1 33.0 40.4 52.5 77.1
ST-DGCN [33] 10.2 19.8 34.5 40.3 48.1 56.4 7.0 15.1 30.6 38.1 51.1 76.0
LCDC [15] 11.1 22.4 38.8 45.2 52.7 59.8 7.0 15.5 31.7 39.2 51.9 76.2
Ours 10.3 19.5 34.9 41.8 51.1 54.9 6.9 15.0 31.6 36.3 50.2 71.7
Action Smoking Discussion
Res. sup. [18] 23.0 42.6 70.1 82.7 94.8 137.4 32.9 61.2 90.9 96.2 121.3 161.7
LTD [43] 7.9 16.2 31.9 38.9 50.7 72.6 12.5 27.4 58.5 71.7 91.6 121.5
ST-Trans [23] 8.8 15.2 25.1 24.5 - - 7.9 25.7 39.9 47.5 - -
MSR [34] 8.0 16.3 31.3 38.2 49.5 71.6 12.0 26.8 57.1 69.7 88.6 117.6
ST-DGCN [33] 6.6 14.1 28.2 34.7 46.5 69.5 10.0 23.8 53.6 66.7 87.1 118.2
LCDC [15] 6.6 14.8 29.8 36.7 48.1 71.2 10.0 24.4 54.5 67.4 87.0 116.3
Ours 6.4 14.1 28.4 33.1 45.3 67.3 9.8 23.2 49.5 58.4 83.9 106.5
Action Directions Greeting
Res. sup. [18] 35.4 57.3 76.3 87.7 110.1 152.5 34.5 63.4 124.6 142.5 156.1 166.5
LTD [43] 9.0 19.9 43.4 53.7 71.0 101.8 18.7 38.7 77.7 93.4 115.4 148.8
ST-Trans [23] 10.2 17.8 42.5 48.6 - - 13.5 26.1 54.0 73.2 - -
MSR [34] 8.6 19.7 43.3 53.8 71.2 100.6 16.5 37.0 77.3 93.4 116.3 147.2
ST-DGCN [33] 7.2 17.6 40.9 51.5 69.3 100.4 15.2 34.1 71.6 87.1 110.2 143.5
LCDC [15] 6.9 17.4 41.0 51.7 69.1 99.1 14.3 33.5 72.2 87.3 108.7 142.3
Ours 6.9 17.0 39.2 48.4 66.4 94.6 13.4 39.3 69.4 81.6 103.3 137.6
Action Phoning Posing
Res. sup. [18] 38.0 69.3 115.0 126.7 141.2 131.5 36.1 69.1 130.5 157.1 194.7 240.2
LTD [43] 10.2 21.0 42.5 52.3 69.2 103.1 13.7 29.9 66.6 84.1 114.5 173.0
ST-Trans [23] 15.3 20.4 31.4 38.8 - - 10.6 22.8 57.6 73.7 - -
MSR [34] 10.1 20.7 41.5 51.3 68.3 104.4 12.8 29.4 67.0 85.0 116.3 174.3
ST-DGCN [33] 8.3 18.3 38.7 48.4 65.9 102.7 10.7 25.7 60.0 76.6 106.1 164.8
LCDC [15] 8.5 19.2 40.3 49.9 66.7 102.2 10.1 25.4 60.6 77.3 106.5 163.3
Ours 8.6 18.4 39.9 46.5 63.8 99.1 9.9 22.6 57.6 73.5 103.7 158.4
Action Purchases Sitting
Res. sup. [18] 36.3 60.3 86.5 95.9 122.7 160.3 42.6 81.4 134.7 151.8 167.4 201.5
LTD [43] 15.6 32.8 65.7 79.3 102.0 143.5 10.6 21.9 46.3 57.9 78.3 119.7
ST-Trans [23] 17.3 32.5 60.0 68.3 - - 8.5 22.9 47.8 66.8 - -
MSR [34] 14.8 32.4 66.1 79.6 101.6 139.2 10.5 22.0 46.3 57.8 78.2 120.0
ST-DGCN [33] 12.5 28.7 60.1 73.3 95.3 133.3 8.8 19.2 42.4 53.8 74.4 116.1
LCDC [15] 12.7 29.7 62.3 75.8 97.5 137.8 8.8 19.3 42.9 54.3 74.9 117.8
Ours 12.3 28.5 61.7 67.9 91.1 126.1 8.5 19.1 40.1 49.8 69.6 115.2

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Table 2. Cont.

Action Sitting Down Taking Photo

Res. sup. [18] 47.3 86.0 145.8 168.9 205.3 277.6 26.1 47.6 81.4 94.7 117.0 143.2
LTD [43] 16.1 31.1 61.5 75.5 100.0 150.2 9.9 20.9 45.0 56.6 77.4 119.8
ST-Trans [23] 9.2 32.7 58.8 65.9 - - 6.8 16.5 37.9 48.5 - -
MSR [34] 16.1 31.6 62.5 76.8 102.8 155.5 9.9 21.0 44.6 56.3 77.9 121.9
ST-DGCN [33] 13.9 27.9 57.4 71.5 96.7 147.8 8.4 18.9 42.0 53.3 74.3 118.6
LCDC [15] 14.1 28.0 57.3 71.2 96.1 147.3 8.4 18.8 42.0 53.5 74.5 117.9
Ours 13.8 26.1 55.3 65.3 94.2 141.9 8.1 17.6 38.3 48.7 72.8 110.8
Action Waiting Walking Dog
Res. sup. [18] 30.6 57.8 106.2 121.5 146.2 196.2 64.2 102.1 141.1 164.4 191.3 209.0
LTD [43] 11.4 24.0 50.1 61.5 79.4 108.1 23.4 46.2 83.5 96.0 111.9 148.9
ST-Trans [23] 9.2 20.5 59.8 62.2 - - 22.3 67.8 103.8 122.5 - -
MSR [34] 10.7 23.1 48.3 59.2 76.3 106.3 20.7 42.9 80.4 93.3 111.9 148.2
ST-DGCN [33] 8.9 20.1 43.6 54.3 72.2 103.4 18.8 39.3 73.7 86.4 104.7 139.8
LCDC [15] 8.7 20.2 44.3 55.3 73.2 105.7 19.6 41.8 77.6 90.2 109.8 147.7
Ours 8.5 19.7 44.6 50.0 68.6 101.5 17.6 38.3 73.5 84.1 103.5 135.8
Action Waiting Together Average
Res. sup. [18] 26.8 50.1 80.2 92.2 107.6 131.1 34.7 62.0 101.1 115.5 97.6 130.5
LTD [43] 10.5 21.0 38.5 45.2 55.0 65.6 12.7 26.1 52.3 63.5 81.6 114.3
ST-Trans [23] 7.5 13.7 27.7 46.2 - - 11.0 24.7 47.7 57.8 - -
MSR [34] 10.6 20.9 37.4 43.9 52.9 65.9 12.1 25.6 51.6 62.9 81.1 114.2
ST-DGCN [33] 8.7 18.6 34.4 41.0 51.9 64.3 10.3 22.7 47.4 58.5 76.9 110.3
LCDC [15] 9.1 19.8 36.3 42.7 50.5 61.2 10.4 23.3 48.8 59.8 77.8 111.0
Ours 9.1 19.2 36.1 39.8 48.4 57.7 10.0 21.8 46.8 55.1 74.4 105.4

Among the comparison methods, RNN-based techniques exhibited the poorest perfor-
mance, while transformer-based approaches outperformed GCN-based methods. Above all,
our method emerged as the top performer. The most significant improvements in the MPJPE
metric were observed with transformer-based techniques, highlighting their aptitude for
modeling 3D human motion dynamics and capturing global dependencies.
Specifically, existing methods generally performed well when predicting periodic and
simpler movements, such as “walking” and “eating”. However, their performance dropped
significantly when tasked with predicting more unpredictable and irregular movements like
“directions”, “posing”, and “purchases”. This indicates that these methods have difficulty
managing the dynamic changes and local–global dependencies inherent in human motion.
On the other hand, the algorithm proposed in our study demonstrated a high pre-
diction accuracy, even with highly complex, non-periodic, and irregular movements. Our
experimental results revealed that our proposed method surpasses most baseline methods
in short-term motion prediction, with even greater improvements noted in long-term pre-
diction. Our method delivered a superior performance in the 560 ms and 1000 ms MPJPE
metrics, an accomplishment attributable to GGTr’s ability to fully capture spatial correlation
and local–global temporal features, thereby bolstering the model’s prediction accuracy.
While our predictions for movements such as “walking” , “smoking” , “greeting” and
“waiting together” fell short compared to those of MSR [34], this nonetheless underscores the
sophisticated nature of transformer-based approaches. Looking ahead, we are committed
to further refining our model to enhance its performance.
Overall, our proposed method outperformed all the baseline models on average,
proving its superior performance in motion prediction. The outstanding performance
across both short-term and long-term human motion prediction highlights our model’s
effective capacity to capture both local and global temporal dependencies.
CMU-MoCap. To further validate the generalization of the proposed method, we com-
pared its performance with five existing algorithms [15,18,22,34,43] on the CMU-MoCap
dataset. The mean per joint position error was calculated for short-term and long-term
predictions. The experimental results are shown in Table 3, which includes the actions “bas-
ketball”, “basketball signal”, “directing traffic”, “jumping”, “soccer”, “walking”, and “wash
window”, as well as the average prediction error across all actions.

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Table 3. Prediction of 3D joint positions on CMU-MoCap for all actions. The best results are marked
in bold.

Time(ms) 80 160 320 400 560 1000 80 160 320 400 560 1000
Action Basketball Basketball Signal
Res. sup. [18] 29.5 53.1 91.2 106.0 128.7 157.4 14.6 22.1 39.1 46.6 60.0 89.9
LTD [43] 11.7 21.1 40.7 50.6 68.0 95.7 3.4 6.2 13.5 17.9 27.3 51.9
LPJP [22] 11.6 21.7 44.4 57.3 - 90.9 2.6 4.9 12.7 18.7 - 75.8
MSR [34] 10.3 18.9 37.7 47.0 62.0 86.3 3.0 5.6 12.5 16.6 25.5 50.0
LCDC [15] 9.6 17.6 35.4 44.4 60.0 88.4 2.6 4.7 10.4 13.9 21.9 46.2
Ours 9.5 17.5 32.5 41.5 56.8 88.4 2.5 4.6 11.5 13.1 20.6 45.8
Action Directing Traffic Jumping
Res. sup. [18] 21.8 38.8 70.5 85.3 110.3 165.1 30.2 53.0 89.4 103.9 125.6 160.5
LTD [43] 6.8 13.4 29.6 39.1 59.6 112.8 17.1 32.1 59.8 72.5 94.3 127.2
LPJP [22] 6.2 12.7 29.1 39.6 - 149.1 12.9 27.6 73.5 92.2 - 176.6
MSR [34] 6.1 12.6 29.4 39.2 50.5 114.6 15.2 28.9 56.0 69.1 92.4 126.2
LCDC [15] 5.0 10.0 23.4 31.4 49.3 99.6 12.8 26.1 54.6 68.5 91.8 126.1
Ours 5.0 9.9 22.4 30.9 48.6 93.9 13.1 27.2 53.6 67.8 89.8 116.9
Action Soccer Walking
Res. sup. [18] 26.5 47.0 81.5 96.2 117.9 139.1 14.6 22.9 36.1 40.9 51.1 69.5
LTD [43] 13.6 24.3 44.4 54.3 73.1 111.6 6.7 11.1 18.1 21.0 25.2 32.4
LPJP [22] 9.2 18.4 39.2 49.5 - 93.9 6.7 10.7 21.7 27.5 - 37.4
MSR [34] 10.9 19.4 37.4 47.0 65.3 101.9 6.4 10.3 16.9 20.1 25.5 36.8
LCDC [15] 10.3 19.0 36.8 45.7 62.3 96.9 6.3 10.4 16.1 18.6 23.3 33.6
Ours 9.8 19.0 35.3 44.6 59.7 92.7 5.8 10.2 15.4 17.3 22.9 33.2
Action Wash Window Average
Res. sup. [18] 19.3 31.8 56.1 66.0 83.6 125.9 22.4 38.4 66.2 77.8 96.7 129.6
LTD [43] 5.9 11.3 24.1 31.0 43.4 66.9 9.3 17.1 32.9 40.9 55.9 85.5
LPJP [22] 5.4 11.3 29.2 39.6 - 79.1 7.8 15.3 35.7 46.3 - 100.4
MSR [34] 5.4 10.9 24.5 31.8 45.1 70.2 8.2 15.2 30.5 38.7 52.3 83.7
LCDC [15] 4.8 9.5 22.0 29.0 42.5 68.9 7.3 13.9 28.4 35.9 50.1 80.0
Ours 4.8 9.5 20.3 28.0 41.3 67.4 7.2 14.0 27.3 34.7 48.5 76.9

Through quantitative evaluation, we clearly observe that our method effectively han-
dles various types of actions and consistently achieves a superior performance across all of
them. These empirical findings reinforce the superiority of our approach in human motion
prediction, both for short-term and long-term predictions. The consistent and significant
performance improvement over state-of-the-art methods on the dataset demonstrates the
robustness of our method.
Notably, as can be seen from Tables 2 and 3, our model performed well on the Hu-
man3.6m and CMU-MoCap datasets for prediction tasks up to 320 ms, and even better for
tasks above 320 ms. This intriguing performance pivot at 320 ms may represent a transition
point where prognostic difficulty shifts from short to long-term. We believe this is due to
our model’s capability to capture local and global time dependencies across body joints
through a strategic combination of GRU and transformer layers, effectively handling this
transition. Furthermore, this phenomenon could be tied to the inherent complexity of
human movement, especially when the prediction time exceeds 320 ms. This complexity
poses a challenge for models that rely on short-term prognosis. However, our model, thanks
to its specific structure and training procedure, seems to cope with this challenge more
effectively. In future work, we plan to delve deeper into this “prognostic barrier” at 320 ms,
aiming to better understand its underlying causes and how we can further improve our
model’s performance at this critical transition point. This understanding will potentially
enable us to optimize the dynamics of 3D joint position prediction.

4.5. Qualitative Comparison

To enhance our intuitive understanding and facilitate the evaluation of our model, we
provided a visualization of the motion prediction results. Figure 5 illustrates three examples
of predicted poses using our proposed method, alongside three other baseline methods.
The visualization results for the “phoning”, “discussion”, and “purchases” actions of the
Human3.6M dataset are presented in Figure 5. The first row in each subplot displays the

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ground truth pose sequences (in black), followed by the predicted poses (in blue). In other
words, each row presents the prediction results from one model.

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Figure 5. Qualitative analysis of the Human3.6M dataset: comparing phoning, discussion, and pur-
chases scenarios. (a) Phoning; (b) Discussion; (c) Purchases.

The visualization results indicate that our model is capable of adequately capturing
spatial dependencies and local–global temporal dependencies. It is noticeable that the
predictions generated by our method show higher similarity to the actual sequences and
better continuity between frames. For instance, in the case of subtler movements such
as “phoning”, our model successfully captures the long-distance temporal dependencies
concealed within the movement sequence, yielding superior long-term predictions. More-
over, in the “purchases” motion visualization, the movements between hands are more
coordinated. This illustrates our model’s proficiency in forecasting highly complicated
irregular movements and complex periodic motions.

4.6. Ablation Study

To critically assess the contribution of each component in our model, we performed a
set of ablation studies on the Human3.6M dataset. All architecture parameters were kept
constant to ensure a fair comparison of each module’s impact. These experiments focused
on assessing the impact of the graph convolutional network (GCNN ), gated recurrent units
(GRU), and transformer layers (Tr) on the model’s performance. The experimental results

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are presented in Table 4. The optimal performance was achieved by integrating these
three components.

Table 4. The influence of the GCNN , GRU, and transformer layers (Tr) on the Human3.6M dataset,
on average, is notable. These three components of our model significantly contribute to its overall
accuracy. The best results are marked in bold.

Human3.6M,MPJPE (mm)
GCNN GRU Tr 80 160 320 400 560 1000
√ √
√ √ 10.3 23.2 48.1 57.0 75.7 107.4
√ √ 10.2 22.7 47.5 56.2 75.3 107.0
√ √ √ 10.2 23.5 47.7 57.8 77.2 111.0
10.0 21.8 46.8 55.1 74.4 105.4

GCNN : We used the original graph convolution module in place of the proposed
module. As shown in the first and third rows of Table 4, when this module is replaced,
prediction performance decreases. This result clearly indicates that there is critical spatially
relevant information hidden in the adjacent pose. When this information is ignored, it is
difficult for the model to capture time evolution trends, resulting in degraded performance.
GRU and transformer layers(Tr): The GRU unit, designed to capture local temporal
dependence, shows a remarkable performance, enhancing the accuracy of short-term pre-
dictions. The transformer layer exhibits exceptional ability in handling global temporal
dependence, which improves the accuracy of long-term predictions. We removed the
transformer layer directly from the proposed method. It can be seen that the long-term pre-
diction performance of the model was significantly reduced, and the short-term prediction
performance was also slightly reduced.

5. Conclusions
In this paper, we have proposed a novel framework for human motion prediction
that leverages the power of position-wise enhanced graph convolutional networks, gated
recurrent unit networks, and transformer layers. By strategically combining these networks,
our model effectively captures spatial information across body joints and temporally aligns
these dependencies, both locally and globally. The proposed framework has shown signifi-
cant improvements in predicting long-term movements, surpassing existing state-of-the-art
methods by a substantial margin. Experiments on the Human3.6M and CMU-MoCap
datasets provide evidence supporting the effectiveness of our proposed model. The efficacy
of our approach accentuates the potential of integrating advanced neural network archi-
tectures for improved understanding and prediction of complex human motion dynamics.
Future work will explore the integration of more sophisticated attention mechanisms and
deep learning architectures to further enhance prediction accuracy and efficiency.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, B.H.; methodology, B.H.; software, B.H.; validation, B.H.;
formal analysis, B.H.; investigation, B.H.; resources, B.H.; data curation, B.H.; writing—original draft
preparation, B.H.; writing—review and editing, B.H.; visualization, B.H.; supervision, X.L.; project
administration, X.L.; funding acquisition, X.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published
version of the manuscript.
Funding: This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
under grants 62233003 and 62073072, the Key Projects of the Key R&D Program of Jiangsu Province
under grants BE2020006 and BE2020006-1, and Shenzhen Natural Science Foundation under grants
JCYJ20210324132202005 and JCYJ20220818101206014.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.

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Data Availability Statement: The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are
publicly available. The Human3.6M dataset can be accessed through the reference in [41]. The CMU-
MoCap dataset is publicly available and can be accessed online at [Link] accessed
on 5 July 2023. The use of these datasets is governed by their respective usage policies.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:

GGTr Graph Convolutional, Gated Recurrent Unit, and Transformer layers

GCN Graph convolutional networks
GRU Gated recurrent unit
CNNs Convolutional neural networks
RNN Recurrent neural networks
GNNs Graph neural networks

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Article
ArRASA: Channel Optimization for Deep Learning-Based
Arabic NLU Chatbot Framework
Meshrif Alruily

Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Jouf University, Sakaka 72388, Saudi Arabia; mfalruily@[Link]

Abstract: Since the introduction of deep learning-based chatbots for knowledge services, many
research and development efforts have been undertaken in a variety of fields. The global market for
chatbots has grown dramatically as a result of strong demand. Nevertheless, open-domain chatbots’
limited functional scalability poses a challenge to their implementation in industries. Much work
has been performed on creating chatbots for languages such as English, Chinese, etc. Still, there is a
need to develop chatbots for other languages such as Arabic, Persian, etc., as they are widely used on
the Internet today. In this paper, we introduce, ArRASA as a channel optimization strategy based on
a deep-learning platform to create a chatbot that understands Arabic. ArRASA is a closed-domain
chatbot that can be used in any Arabic industry. The proposed system consists of four major parts.
These parts include tokenization of text, featurization, intent categorization and entity extraction.
The performance of ArRASA is evaluated using traditional assessment metrics, i.e., accuracy and F1
score for the intent classification and entity extraction tasks in the Arabic language. The proposed
framework archives promising results by securing 96%, 94% and 94%, 95% accuracy and an F1 score
for intent classification and entity extraction, respectively.

Keywords: Arabic; natural language understanding; deep learning; chatbot

Citation: Alruily, M. ArRASA:

Channel Optimization for Deep
Learning-Based Arabic NLU Chatbot 1. Introduction
Framework. Electronics 2022, 11, 3745. The Arabic language is among the five most commonly used online languages. It is
[Link] used for conversion among large communities around the world. Technological innovation
electronics11223745 has a significant impact on people’s lives. In the field of computer science, a great deal has
Academic Editors: Grzegorz Dudek been accomplished in recent years. Artificial intelligence (AI) has produced remarkable
and Rui Pedro Lopes and important achievements [1]. As AI interacts with various scientific fields, it has an
increased in importance in recent years. Many aspects of artificial intelligence are covered,
Received: 8 September 2022
including natural language processing (NLP). A human language is a natural language
Accepted: 7 November 2022
(English, Arabic, or Spanish). In AI, machine learning and chatbots, intent classification is
Published: 15 November 2022
classifying someone’s intent by analyzing their language. Intent classification is a kind of
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral NLP that focuses on categorizing text into different categories to interpret text better.
with regard to jurisdictional claims in Intents are generic characteristics that link a user’s text to a bot action (prediction
published maps and institutional affil- workflow). For example, the whole sentence “What is the weather today?” will map to the
iations. ‘weather inquiry’ intent, not just a portion of it. [2]. In the last decade, intent classification
and entity extraction have been widely used to develop chatbots for various languages.
Since Arabic is the fourth-largest language used on the Internet, intent classification for
Arabic is necessary. Very little work has been performed on Arabic intent classification and
Copyright: © 2022 by the author.
entity extraction. Moreover, there are a few articles on the development of chatbots for the
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Arabic language.
This article is an open access article
Machine learning and natural language processing are used in intent classification to
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
automatically match specific sentences and words with a suitable intent [3]. For example,
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
a machine learning model could discover that words, such as buy and acquire, are often
[Link]/licenses/by/
linked with the urge to buy. On the other hand, intent classifiers must be trained using
4.0/). text samples, often referred to as training data. Tags such as Interested, Need Information,

Electronics 2022, 11, 3745. [Link] 112 [Link]

Electronics 2022, 11, 3745

Unsubscribe, Wrong Person, Email Bounce, Autoreply and others may be useful when
going through customer emails.
NLP is a subfield of AI that uses natural language to allow human–computer interac-
tion and communication. NLP has spawned a slew of new applications. A chatbot is one
of the most intriguing natural language artificial intelligence applications [4]. A chatbot
is software that uses natural language to conduct a human–computer interaction through
auditory or textual means. As a result, it functions as a virtual assistant that uses artificial
intelligence to mimic conversational abilities and human-like behavior [5]. It also contains
embedded information that aids in identifying and comprehending the phrase and the
generation of the right answer. Many research articles have been published in this area
due to the importance of sentiment analysis. However, this research has concentrated on
English and other Indo-European languages. In morphologically rich languages such as
Arabic, there has been very little research on sentiment analysis [6]. Despite this, many
academics have focused on sentiment analysis in Arabic due to the growing number of
Arabic internet users and the exponential development of Arabic online content in the
past decade. Pipelines can be used to streamline a workflow for machine learning. Pre-
processing, extraction of features, categorization and post-processing are all possible steps
in the pipeline. Many other necessary phases in this pipeline may be added according to the
complexity of applications. By optimization, we intend to modify the model for optimum
performance. Any learning model’s effectiveness depends on choosing the parameters that
produce the greatest outcomes. The concept of optimization can be compared to a search
algorithm that explores a range of parameters and picks out the best among them.
Because Arabic is such a complicated language, developing Arabic chatbots has
posed a significant challenge to the academic community. Only a few works have tried
to create Arabic chatbots so far. ArabChat [7] is one such project, as follows: a rule-based
chatbot capable of pattern matching and delivering appropriate responses to user inquiries.
BOTTA [8], another project, is a retrieval-based model that supports the Egyptian dialect.
Ollobot is a rule-based chatbot that provides health monitoring and assistance in the
medical sector [9]. However, because of its restricted functional scalability, an open-domain
chatbot cannot be successfully used in every business. Furthermore, since most chatbot
frameworks are written in English, building an efficient and multi-objective chatbot for
Arabic is necessary. This research proposes an ArRASA, a pipeline optimization approach
based on a deep learning-based open-source chatbot system that understands Arabic, to
solve this issue.
The proposed approach consists of the following steps: Tokenization, feature extrac-
tion, specific intent classification and suitable entity extraction are the four phases of this
closed-domain chatbot. A closed-domain chatbot, also known as a domain-specific chatbot,
focuses on a certain range of issues and provides limited replies based on the business
issue. For instance, a food delivery chatbot can only let users place, monitor, or cancel
an order. Such straight-shooting discussion is kind of bumping into an acquaintance as
follows: you expect people to be likely to inquire about your work and maybe comment
on the environment. You have prepared answers to every topic, and the idea is just to
satisfy the enquiries. While an open-domain chatbot is required to grasp any matter and
provide appropriate answers. The proposed model can be scaled by adding more intents
and entities. Open-domain chatbots are less effective in the industry, so the proposed study
focuses on developing closed-domain chatbots. Moreover, a handsome amount of work is
performed using traditional machine and deep learning approaches, while the proposed
study uses transformers-based techniques for the development of a more effective and
reliable chatbot.
This paper discusses ArRASA, a pipeline optimization approach based on a deep
learning-based open-source chatbot system that understands Arabic. To cope with this
topic, first, we discuss the Arabic language and its different perspectives and challenges,
as it has some special characteristics and rules to deal with a problem. We discuss the
related approaches in the literature review section. The proposed methodology discusses

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the complete operations of the ArRASA. The proposed model can be scaled by adding
more intents and entities. In terms of Arabic language understanding, an optimization
experiment is carried out at each step. The prime contributions of the proposed solution
can be summarized as follows:
• ArRASA is a channel optimization strategy proposed based on a deep-learning plat-
form to create a chatbot that understands Arabic;
• ArRASA is a novel approach for a closed-domain chatbot using RASA (an open-source
conversational AI platform) that can be used in any Arabic industry;
• Tokenization, feature extraction, specific intent classification and suitable entity extrac-
tion are the four phases of the proposed approach;
• The performance of ArRASA is evaluated using traditional assessment metrics, i.e.,
accuracy and F1 score for the intent classification and entity extraction tasks in the
Arabic language;
• The performance is also compared with the existing approaches regarding accuracy
and F1 score.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses the related
work and Arabic language, and its challenges are elaborated in Section 3. The proposed
solution is developed in Section 4, while the system structure is discussed in Section 5. The
performance evaluation is presented in Sections 6 and 7 concludes the paper.

2. Related Work
BOTTA [8] is the first Arabic dialect chatbot developed for Egyptian Arabic to work as
a conversational agent to mimic user-friendly chats. Various components of the BOTTA
chatbot are defined, and it presents various solutions. Researchers working on Arabic
chatbot technology can access the BOTTA database files for free and with public access.
Shawar et al. [10] show how machine-learning techniques were used to create an
Arabic chatbot that accepts user feedback in Arabic and responds with Qur’anic quotes.
A device that learned conversational patterns from a corpus of transcribed conversations
was used to create various chatbots that spoke English, French and Afrikaans. Because the
Qur’an is not a copy of a dialogue, the learning method has been altered to accommodate
the Qur’an’s format in terms of sooras and ayyas.
Bashir et al. [11] propose a method for using named entity recognition and text
categorization using deep learning methods in the Arabic area of home automation. To do
this, we provide an NLU module that can be further combined with an ASR, a conversation
manager and a natural language generator module to create a fully functional dialogue
system. The process of gathering and annotating the data, constructing the intent classifier
and entity extractor models, and ultimately the assessment of these techniques against
various benchmarks are all included in the study.
AlHumoud et al. [12] summarize published Arabic chatbot studies to recognize infor-
mation gaps and illustrate areas that need more investigation and research. This research
found a scarcity of Arabic chatbots and that all available works are retrieval-based. The
experiments are divided into the following two classes, depending on the method of chat-
bot communication interaction: text and voice conversational chatbots. The study was
presented and assessed according to the deployment method, the duration and breadth of
the presentations, and the model used for the chatbot dataset. According to the study, all
the assessed chatbots used a retrieval-based dataset model.
Nabiha [13] is a chatbot that uses the Saudi Arabic dialect to converse with King Saud
University Information Technology (IT) students. As a consequence, Nabiha will be the
first Saudi chatbot to communicate in the Saudi dialect. Nabiha is accessible on several
platforms, including Android, Twitter and the Web, to make it simpler to use. Students may
contact Nabiha by downloading an app, tweeting her, or visiting her website. According to
the students in the IT department who tested Nabiha, the results were acceptable, given
the general challenges of the Arabic language and the Saudi dialect.

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The study in [14] is the first Arabic end-to-end generative model for task-oriented DS
(AraConv). It makes use of various parameters for the multilingual transformer model mT5.
We also provide the Arabic-TOD discourse dataset, which was utilized to train and evaluate
the AraConv model. Compared to research employing identical monolingual conditions,
the findings obtained are fair. We propose joint training, in which the model is jointly
trained on Arabic conversation data with data from one or two high-resource languages
such as English and Chinese, to minimize issues related to a short training dataset and
enhance the AraConv model’s outcomes.
Many authors worked on the development of Arabic chatbots, but most of them
worked on the development of open-domain chatbots. Open-domain chatbots are less
effective in the industry, so the proposed study focuses on developing closed-domain
chatbots. Moreover, a handsome amount of work is performed using traditional machine
and deep learning approaches, while the proposed study uses transformer-based techniques
for the development of a more effective and reliable chatbot. The previous studies focused
on the development of chatbots, but few worked on optimizing the proposed techniques.
The proposed technique also worked on optimizing the proposed architecture for enhancing
the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed Arabic chatbot; Table 1 presents the comparison
of previous techniques.

Table 1. Comparison of previous techniques.

Ref. Domain Technique Data Accuracy

[8] Open CNN & RNN 3173 Arabic Questions 94%
[10] Islamic Hadith SVM Islamic hadith 87%
[11] Open LSTMs and CNNs AQMAR 92%
[12] Open CNN & SVM TALAA AFAQ Data 82%
[13] Open Hybrid Learning 600 FAQ Pages 85%
[14] Open AraConv Arabic-TOD 68%

Rasa is a platform for building AI-powered, quality chatbots in the industry. It is used
by developers all around the world to build chatbots and contextual assistants. ArRASA
is a channel optimization strategy based on a deep-learning platform to create a chatbot
that understands Arabic. ArRASA is a closed-domain chatbot that can be used in any
Arabic industry. As we proposed an optimized Arabic language chatbot using RASA, so
we named it ArRASA.

3. Arabic Language
With about 300 million people speaking Arabic, it is one of the world’s most commonly
spoken languages. It is also widely spoken as the primary language in the Central African
Republic of Chad, a non-Arab nation, and a minority language in Afghanistan and Israel
(where Arabic and Hebrew are both official languages). Iran and Nigeria are among those
countries [15]. Arabic, along with Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, became
one of the six official languages of the United Nations in 1974. In India, Indonesia, Pakistan
and Tanzania, about one billion Muslims study Arabic as a foreign or second language
for liturgical and scholastic reasons. Several Muslim and Arab populations in the United
States use Arabic in their everyday contacts and for religious reasons.

Challenges of Arabic Language

Dialectal Variation: Arabic has various dialects, all of which are very distinct from
one another, as follows: the official written and reading language is Modern Standard
Arabic (MSA), and many dialects are spoken versions of the language [15]. Unlike the MSA,
which has an official standard orthography and a plethora of resources, Arabic dialects lack
such norms and resources. In terms of phonology, morphology and vocabulary, dialects

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differ from MSA and each other. Dialects are not recognized as languages in the Arab
world and are not taught in schools. Dialectal Arabic, on the other hand, is widely used in
online chats. This is why we believe it is more fitting to concentrate on dialectal Arabic in
the sense of a chatbot.
Orthographic Ambiguity and Inconsistency: Arabic orthography uses optional dia-
critical marks to represent short vowels and consonantal doubling, which are seldom used in
the text. As a consequence, there is a lot of uncertainty. Furthermore, Arabic writers often mis-
spell various difficult letters, including the Alif-Hamza forms and Ta-Marbuta [16]. Regarding
Arabic dialects, orthography is compounded by the lack of standard orthographies [17].
Geomorphological Richness of Arabic: Gender, number, person, voice, aspect and
other characteristics are all inflected in Arabic words, as well as taking a variety of connected
clitics [8]. This is especially challenging in the context of a chatbot system. Due to the
gender-specific nature of verbs, adjectives and pronouns, the chatbot must answer in the
following two ways: for male and female users. The ArRASA solves the geomorphological
richness of Arabic issue by using the data about gender, number, person, etc., in the dataset.
Moreover, the proposed model has various advantages, i.e., is easy to integrate because it is
developed using the open-source RASA platform and supports single and multiple intents.

4. Proposed Solution
As we know, the number of services and products is growing rapidly around the
globe. Due to this, the number of queries to the producers is also increasing. To solve this
problem, companies hire individuals to serve as customer support for their products and
services. However, this procedure of responding to consumers’ questions is expensive
for the company and quite slow for the users. There must be an effective and accessible
approach to addressing this issue. Various researchers presented automated chatbots that
give responses to customer queries instead of humans in various languages. Researchers
presented different Arabic chatbots to work on the Arabic language. These chatbots have
their own limitations. We propose a framework for optimizing Arabic chatbots by using the
RASA framework, which is one of the current leading open-source platforms for chatbot
development. The reason behind using the RASA is that it has not been used for Arabic
chatbots in the past. ArRASA is a channel optimization method that uses a deep-learning
model to develop an Arabic chatbot. ArRASA is a closed-domain chatbot that may be
utilized in any Arabic industry.

4.1. Natural Language Understanding

Natural language processing (NLP) is concerned with how machines interpret lan-
guage and promote “natural” back-and-forth contact between humans and computers. On
the other hand, natural language comprehension is concerned with a machine’s capacity
to comprehend human language [17]. NLU is the process of rearranging unstructured
data so that computers can “understand” and interpret it. For example, Machine Trans-
lation, Automatic Ticket Routing and Questioning Answer are established based on the
concept of NLU. Natural language understanding (NLU), which translates natural lan-
guage speech into a machine-readable format, is the primary technology used by chatbots.
Figure 1 depicts the NLUs design, and the NLUs preprocessing phase is split into two
parts. Tokenization is the initial step, in which a corpus is divided into tokens, which are
grammatically intangible language units. The second stage is featurization, which involves
extracting the properties of each token. Following the preprocessing step, the purpose is
classified to properly comprehend the user’s request, and an object is extracted to give a
suitable answer [18]. As a result, a user-friendly chatbot framework can be created. Intent
classification is the technique of determining a user’s intent based on a user’s statement.
Entities are preset collections of items that make sense, such as names, organizations, time
expressions, numbers and other groups of objects. Various sets of entities are needed to be
collected for each chatbot. Intents and entities are used to understand what a user wants
and how to generate the correct answer to the user’s query. The RASA NLU can be used in

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chatbots and AI assistants for language understanding, emphasizing intent categorization

and entity extraction. RASA NLU can interpret data using these two features. We formed a
training dataset to recognize the intent and extract the entity using the RASA NLU pipeline.
Rasa is a platform for building AI-powered, quality chatbots in the industry. Developers
use it all around the world to build chatbots and contextual assistants. As described in
Section 5, the training set contains a variety of intents and entities, and there may be no
entity or multiple entities in any sentence.

dŽŬĞŶŝnjĂƚŝŽŶ
ƌĂďŝĐ/ŶƚĞŶƚ
ůĂƐƐŝĨŝĐĂƚŝŽŶ

&ĞĂƚƵƌĞdžƚƌĂĐƚŝŽŶ
ŶƚŝƚLJdžƚƌĂĐƚŝŽŶ

WƌĞͲƉƌŽĐĞƐƐŝŶŐ

Figure 1. Structure of Arabic NLU.

4.2. Pre-Training Setup

We utilize the masked language modeling (MLM) task to accomplish the first pre-
training objective, which involves whole-word masking and replacing 15% of the N input
tokens. The [MASK] token is used 80 percent of the time, a random token 10% of the time
and the original token 10% to replace those tokens. By forcing the computer to anticipate
the whole word rather than only parts of it as whole word masking raises the pre-training
challenge. The next sentence prediction (NSP) task, which allows the model to identify the
relationship between two phrases and is helpful for a range of language comprehension
tasks such as question answering and machine translation, is one that we often employ. We
mask a particular percentage of words or phrases in MLM, and the system is intended to
guess such masked words based on other words in the text. Since the representation of
the masked term is learned based on the words that appear on both sides of the masked
term. Moreover, The MLM systems are bidirectional in structure. As MLM is the process of
masking words in a series with a masked token and training the model to populate that
mask with a suitable token. As a result, the model will concentrate on both the right and
left contexts. So, using the MLM for the proposed model enables the proposed model to
understand the context of terms both at the beginning and at the end of a phrase.

4.3. DIET (Dual Intent and Entity Transformer)

DIET is a multi-task transformer that conducts intent classification and entity recognition
at the same time. It allows to plug-and-play pre-trained embeddings such as BERT, GloVe,
ConveRT and others [19]. No one collection of embeddings consistently performs well across
various datasets in the tests. As a result, a modular architecture is particularly essential.
DIET is a software development process that incorporates a modular design. In terms
of accuracy and performance, it is comparable to large-scale, pre-trained language models.
It is 6X quicker to train than the present state of the art. On language comprehension
benchmarks such as GLUE [20] and SuperGLUE [21], large-scale pre-trained language
models have demonstrated promising results, with significant gains over previous pre-
training techniques such as GloVe [22] and supervised approaches. These embeddings

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are well suited to generalize across tasks since they were trained on large-scale natural
language text corpora.
Input phrases are interpreted as a series of tokens, either words or sub-words, based
on the featurization pipeline. We add a special classification token for the Arabic language
at the end of each phrase. Each input token is characterized using sparse and/or dense
characteristics. At the token level, one-hot encodings of character n-grams (n ≤ 5) and multi-
hot encodings of character n-grams (n ≤ 5) are scarce. Because character n-grams contain
much redundant information, we use dropout for these sparse features to prevent overfitting.
Figure 2 presents the proposed optimized pipeline architecture for the Arabic chatbot.

dƌĂŶƐĨŽƌŵĞƌƉƉůŝĞĚ;ƵĂů/ŶƚĞŶƚ
ƌĂďŝĐ>ĂŶŐƵĂŐĞdŽŬĞŶŝnjĞƌ ŽƵŶƚsĞĐƚŽƌŝnjĂƚŝŽŶ ŶƚŝƚLJdƌĂŶƐĨŽƌŵĞƌͿKƉƚŝŵŝnjĂƚŝŽŶ
WƌŽĐĞĚƵƌĞ
dŽŬĞŶϭ dŽŬĞŶϮ ͘͘͘ dŽŬĞŶŶ

dƌĂŶƐĨŽƌŵĞƌŵďĞĚĚŝŶŐŝĂůŽŐƵĞ
ƌĂďŝĐŶƚŝƚLJ^LJŶŽŶLJŵDĂƉƉĞƌ
WŽůŝĐLJ

Figure 2. Proposed optimized pipeline architecture for Arabic chatbot.

A two-layer transformer with relative position attention is utilized for encoding context
throughout the whole phrase. The input dimension of the transformer design must be the
same as the transformer layers. The concatenated features are sent through another fully
connected layer with shared weights across all sequence stages to match the dimension of
the transformer layers, which is set to 256 for the proposed model.

5. System Architecture
Although the overall architecture of the proposed framework is identical to that
of the DIET baseline model (DIET-Base), numerous tests were conducted to enhance
intent classification and entity extraction performance. The ideal number of epochs was
determined through a performance experiment. The ideal number of epochs was chosen as
100. The structure of the proposed framework is illustrated in Figure 3.

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Electronics 2022, 11, 3745

Figure 3. Proposed architecture.

The tokenizer extracts tokens from the data, and these tokens are sent to the proposed
transformer layer through feed-forward layers of the LSTM model. The transformer layer
provides a sequence (a) of entity labels, which is utilized as input data for the conditional
random field (CRF) technique, which generates the sequence (Xentity) of entity labels. The
loss of an entity can be computed by the negative value of the log-likelihood of CRF, as
shown in Equation (1).
Entity = CRF(a, Xentity) (1)
This mechanism reduces the weight sparsity from 0.85 to 0.75, and the number of
transformer layers is raised from two to four. For parameter optimization, the number of
embedding dimensions of the model increases from 25 to 35, and the hidden layer size
increases from 256 to 512. The characteristics of the proposed architecture are listed in
Table 2. There are now four total transformer layers, up from the two before.

Table 2. Parameter comparison.

Parameter DIET-Base Proposed-DIET

The Number of Transformer Layer 2 3
Masked Language Model Yes Yes
Transformer Size 256 512
Drop Rate 0.25 0.25
Embedding Dimension 20 35
Hidden Layer Size 256,128 512,128

6. Experiments and Results

There are various steps involves in the process of intent classification. These steps are
given below as follows:

6.1. Data Gathering

The initial phase in the NLP life cycle is data collection. This step aims to find and
collect relevant data about the subject. It is indeed among the most crucial stages in the life
cycle of NLP [23]. The output’s efficiency will be determined by the quantity and quality
of the data collected. The more data there is, the more precise the prediction will be. The
dataset used in the study was created using different datasets. Those datasets include
the dataset proposed by Bashir et al. [14]. We have used these datasets and some scraped
data from Arabic websites and newspapers to create our data for the proposed framework.
Datasets were created for the studies in this article based on typical activities that apply to

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a broad range of industrial sectors. The data collection includes seven categories for intent
categorization. Greeting (greet), closure (goodbye), emotions (happy, sad), food (food-
related menu), departmental contact details (dept. contacts), division of labor works (Pers
work) and calculator are examples of these categories (Calc). The dataset’s distribution is
shown in Figure 4.

/ŶƚĞŶƚĂƚĂ^Ğƚ
ϯϬϬ

ϮϱϬ

ϮϬϬ
ĂƚĂƐŝnjĞ

ϭϱϬ

ϭϬϬ

ϱϬ

Ϭ
&ŽŽĚ ĞƉĂƌƚŵĞŶƚ ^ĞŶƚŝŵĞŶƚ ŝǀŝƐŝŽŶŽĨ ĂůĐƵůĂƚŽƌ ůŽƐŝŶŐ 'ƌĞĞƚŝŶŐƐ
ĐŽŶƚĂĐƚ ǁŽƌŬƐ

&ŽŽĚ ĞƉĂƌƚŵĞŶƚĐŽŶƚĂĐƚ ^ĞŶƚŝŵĞŶƚ ŝǀŝƐŝŽŶŽĨǁŽƌŬƐ ĂůĐƵůĂƚŽƌ ůŽƐŝŶŐ 'ƌĞĞƚŝŶŐƐ

Figure 4. Dataset distribution.

A total of 2540 datasets containing the following seven entities were created for the
entity extraction experiment. These include department (dept), date (date), work (work),
place (place), company (company), name (name), number (num), time (time) and no entity.
The division of these is illustrated in Table 3.

Table 3. Entity extraction data

Entity Count
Date 120
Time 32
Name 73
Company 12
Work 720
Department 223
Number 37
No_Entity 1824

6.2. Data Preprocessing

When there is not enough data, oversampling can be used. By making rare samples
better, it seeks to balance the dataset. Various new rare samples are produced using techniques
such as repetition, bootstrapping, or SMOTE (synthetic minority over-sampling technique).
We applied the SMOTE technique using the Python standard library “imblearn”. SMOTE
initially selects a point at random from the rare class and calculates its k-nearest neighbors.
Between the selected point and its neighbors, the synthesized points are placed. We need to
prepare the data after it has been collected in order to move further. Data preparation refers
to the process of organizing and preparing data for use in the machine learning process. In
this step, unwanted phrases, words, whitespaces and other unnecessary data are removed

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from the gathered data [23]. It is the technique for refining and turning raw data into the
form used for ML/DL models. It is the procedure of cleaning the data, determining the
variables to utilize and changing the data into a suitable format for analysis in the processing
phase. It is among the most crucial steps in the entire procedure. We preprocess the data to
convert it into a form so that it can be used for the deep learning models.

6.2.1. Tokenization
Tokenization is the most critical phase in data preprocessing, where all the words from
the text are gathered and the number of times each word appears is counted. Five tok-
enizers were used for this purpose. These tokenizers include Takseem, Tf-idf, WhiteSpace,
Arcab and ConveRT. With the help of these tokenizers, we determine how many times a
single word appears in the text. In a dataset, we count words and create tokens for distinct
words that occur. Each word is given a unique number when tokens are created. The token
includes one-of-a-kind feature values that are used to create feature vectors. A tokenization
library called tkseem has many methods for tokenizing and preprocessing Arabic text. This
library is widely used for the tokenization of Arabic text. Arcab is a data-driven, unsu-
pervised method for tokenizing subwords in Arabic phrases. There is no pre-tokenization
phase where terms are extracted depending on the whitespaces; instead, it considers the
training corpus as a sequence of raw Unicode characters. This allows the technique to be
used for any string of characters, making it language-neutral. Transformer-backed dual-
encoder networks serve as the foundation for ConveRT (conversational representations
from transformers), a compact model of neural response selection for dialogue that has
proven to perform at the cutting edge on various response selection tasks as well as in
transfer learning for intent classification tasks. The performance of various tokenizers is
listed in Table 4.

Table 4. Tokenization performance of tokenizers.

WhiteSpace Arcab ConveRT

Task
Train Test Train Test Train Test
Entity Extraction 0.86 0.75 0.972 0.954 0.842 0.763
Intent Classification 1.00 0.962 1.00 0.978 1.00 0.973

6.2.2. Stop Word Removal

Stop words are unnecessary words, i.e., ,  ,  , that exist in phrases but have
no significance or clues about their contents. Examples of such words are so, for and
with. Articles, conjunctions, pronouns (i.e., ,  ,  ), prepositions (i.e., , , ,
 
), demonstratives and interrogatives (i.e., ,  ,  ) are further instances of these
unimportant words. Once the dataset has been transformed into unique tokens, the next
step is to delete every unnecessary word with no significance, e.g., whitespaces, commas,
full stops, colons, semicolons and punctuation marks. Stop word elimination is the name
given to the method of eliminating unnecessary words. Table 5 presents some stop words
used in the study.

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Table 5. Few stop words used in the study.

English
Arabic Word
Meaning
ϲϓ in

Prepositions ϰϠϋ on
 to

΃ϧΎ I
Pronouns
ϦΤϧ we
ΖΤΗ below
 
 above
Adverbs 
  now

άϨϣ since
 ! what
Question
ϰΘϣ when

  if

Articles ϢΛ then

 " except

6.2.3. Featurization
Methods for feature selection are used in machine learning techniques. An attribute
of a system or process that has been built from the initial input variables is represented
by a feature. Due to the enormous magnitude of the data, it is challenging to train effec-
tive classifiers before deleting the undesirable characteristics. A real-world classification
challenge may be better understood by reducing the number of characteristics that are
redundant or unnecessary. Feature selection aids in data comprehension, lessens the impact
of dimensionality, reduces processing needs and enhances prediction performance. To
increase prediction accuracy, feature selection selects a subset of features. Featurization
is the conversion of words into meaningful numbers (or vectors) that the deep learning
algorithm can use for its training. For this purpose, we use the features of the count vector
featurizer, lexical syntactic featurizer and Tf-idf featurizer. For feature extraction, the
TF-IDF technique uses word statistical data. This solely evaluates the expressions for terms
that are the same throughout the texts, such as ASCLL, despite considering that synonyms
may replace them.
The performance of used featurizers is compared for analysis purposes. The count
vectorizer outperforms all three featurizers for both tasks, i.e., intent classification and
entity extraction. The performance of these featurizers is listed in Table 6.

Table 6. Performance comparison of featurizers.

Count Vector Lexical Syntactic Tf-Idf Featurizer

Task
Train Test Train Test Train Test
Entity Extraction 0.983 0.963 0.972 0.944 0.952 0.923
Intent Classification 1.00 0.976 1.00 0.972 1.00 0.973

The first phase of the proposed model was trained on 100 epochs to evaluate intent
classification and entity extraction performance. The accuracy of the trained transformer-
based model over 100 epochs is illustrated in Figure 5 below.

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Electronics 2022, 11, 3745

Figure 5. Accuracy of the proposed model.

As shown in the figure above, the proposed model achieves 97% accuracy for intent
classification and 95% for entity extraction tasks. The performance of the model was also
analyzed with the F1 score metric. The F1 score of the proposed model on both tasks.
As shown in Figure 6, the proposed model gains an F1 score of 95% for entity ex-
traction and 96% for intent classification. This research compared the suggested intent
classifier to existing intent classifiers in terms of intent classification and entity extraction.
A performance assessment experiment was conducted to compute the DIET-base classi-
fiers, keyword classifiers and fallback classifiers. According to the performance evaluation
results, the proposed model’s F1 score was 17.8%, 0.2% and 0.3% in intent classification
from a given number of sentences. For entity extraction, the value of the F1 score was 3.1,
2.3 and 2.9% higher than the traditional DIET-base, keyword and fallback classifier. The
results comparison of the proposed model for intent classification with other models is
illustrated in Figure 7.

Figure 6. F1 score of the proposed model.

WĞƌĨŽƌŵĂŶĐĞŽŵƉĂƌŝƐŝŽŶĨŽƌ/ŶƚĞŶƚ
ůĂƐƐŝĨŝĐĂƚŝŽŶ
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Electronics 2022, 11, 3745

WĞƌĨŽƌŵĂŶĐĞŽŵƉĂƌŝƐŝŽŶĨŽƌ/ŶƚĞŶƚ
ůĂƐƐŝĨŝĐĂƚŝŽŶ
ϭϬϮ
ϭϬϬ
ϵϴ
ϵϲ
ϵϰ
ϵϮ
ϵϬ
ϴϴ
ϴϲ
ϴϰ
<ĞLJǁŽƌĚ &ĂůůďĂĐŬ /dͲĂƐĞ WƌŽƉŽƐĞĚDŽĚĞů

dƌĂŝŶŝŶŐĐĐƵƌĂĐLJ dƌĂŝŶŝŶŐ&ϭ^ĐŽƌĞ dĞƐƚĐĐƵƌĂĐLJ dĞƐƚ&ϭ^ĐŽƌĞ

Figure 7. Performance comparison for intent classification.

Confusion matrices are a widely used metric when attempting to solve classification
issues. Both binary and multiclass classification tasks can be performed with it. The
confusion matrix for the entity extraction task is illustrated in Table 7.

Table 7. Confusion matrix for entity extraction.

Date Time Name Company Work Number Department No_Entity

Date 70 0 0 0 0 0 2 0
Time 0 15 0 0 0 1 0 0
Name 0 0 31 3 0 0 2 0
Company 2 0 0 8 0 1 0 0
Work 0 1 0 1 524 0 13 21
Number 0 0 2 1 0 19 0 0
Department 0 0 0 0 1 0 104 1
No_Entity 0 2 23 3 0 0 3 782

The confusion matrix for the indent classification tasks is also calculated in the evalua-
tion phase of the study. Table 8 presents the indent classification confusion matrix.

Table 8. Confusion matrix for indent classification.

Department Sentiment Div. of Greetings

Food Works Calulator Closing

Food 18 1 0 0 0 0 3
Department 0 34 0 3 0 0 0
Sentiment 0 0 81 5 0 0 3
Div. of 1 0 0 127 3 0 1
Works
Calulator 0 0 0 0 7 0
Closing 0 0 1 0 0 9 0
Greetings 0 0 0 0 1 0 12

Furthermore, the suggested model’s entity extractor was evaluated with existing entity
extraction models. A performance evaluation occurs for a conditional random field (CRF)
and DIET-Base. The F1 scores of the suggested model were 1.4, 0.9 and 0.3% higher in intent

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Electronics 2022, 11, 3745

classification and 4.2, 3.1 and 2.6% higher in the entity extraction, as per the performance
evaluation findings. The performance of the entity extractor of the proposed model is
illustrated in Figure 8. The main reason for the high accuracy and performance of the
proposed model is the use of Dual Intent and Entity Transformer (DIET) for the Arabic
language. The previous studies used different techniques for developing Arabic NLUs,
but Rasa provides that DIET is a multi-task transformer framework that simultaneously
performs intent categorization and entity recognition. It allows us to plug-and-play a
variety of pre-trained embeddings. Moreover, in terms of accuracy and stability, it is
comparable to large-scale, pre-trained language models.

WĞƌĨŽƌŵĂŶĐĞŽŵƉĂƌŝƐŝŽŶĨŽƌŶƚŝƚLJdžƚƌĂĐƚŝŽŶ
ϭϬϭ
ϭϬϬ
ϵϵ
ϵϴ
ϵϳ
ϵϲ
ϵϱ
ϵϰ
ϵϯ
ϵϮ
ϵϭ
Z& /dͲĂƐĞ WƌŽƉŽƐĞĚDŽĚĞů

dƌĂŝŶŝŶŐĐĐƵƌĂĐLJ dƌĂŝŶŝŶŐ&ϭ^ĐŽƌĞ dĞƐƚĐĐƵƌĂĐLJ dĞƐƚ&ϭ^ĐŽƌĞ

Figure 8. Performance of proposed model for entity extraction.

The comparison is performed to check the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Some recent models for Arabic NLUs are studied for this purpose, and a comparison
has been made on the basis of accuracy and F1 score. Table 9 presents the comparison
of the proposed system with previous studies. I have compared the performance of the
proposed RASA-based Arabic chatbot with some existing studies, i.e., Faud et al. [17] and
Bashir et al. [14] According to the statistics obtained, the proposed scheme outperforms
both existing approaches in terms of accuracy and F1 score.

Table 9. Comparison with previous studies.

Intent Classification Entity Extraction

Model Train Test Train Test
Accuracy F1 Accuracy F1
Fuad et al. [17] 0.90 0.80 0.92 0.86
Bashir et al. [14] 0.92 0.85 0.93 0.91
DIET-Base 0.86 0.75 0.972 0.954
ArRASA 1.00 0.962 1.00 0.978

We have performed a comparison of the proposed dataset with another dataset pro-
posed by Fuad [17], as shown in Figure 9. The proposed model achieved an efficient
accuracy level on the dataset provided by Fuad [17]. Figure 9 presents the comparison of
accuracy and F1 score on both datasets.

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Electronics 2022, 11, 3745

ϵϴ

ϵϲ

ĐĐƵƌĂĐLJĂŶĚ&ϭͲ^ĐŽƌĞ
ϵϰ

ϵϮ

ϵϬ

ϴϴ

ϴϲ

ϴϰ
/ŶĚĞŶƚůĂƐƐŝĨŝĐĂƚŝŽŶ ŶƚŝƚLJdžƚƌĂĐƚŝŽŶ /ŶĚĞŶƚůĂƐƐŝĨŝĐĂƚŝŽŶ ŶƚŝƚLJdžƚƌĂĐƚŝŽŶ
ĐĐƵƌĂĐLJ &ϭƐĐŽƌĞ

&ĂƵĚ΀΁ WƌŽƉŽƐĞĚ

Figure 9. Comparison of accuracy and F1 score with an existing approach.

7. Conclusions
This article presents ArRASA, a deep learning-based channel optimization framework
for an open-source Arabic chatbot platform to interact with users remotely. ArRASA is
a closed domain chatbot that can be used in nearly any Arabic industry. There are four
phases, i.e., tokenization, feature extraction, suitable intent classification, and proper entity
extraction, used in the proposed model and these are also tuned to interpret the Arabic
language. The Taqseem tokenizer, specific for the Arabic language and a few others, was
used for tokenization, while the count vector featurizer was utilized for featurization.
This study created the DIET-based Arabic model (ArRASA) for the intent classification
and proper entity extraction phases by tweaking and optimizing the DIET-Base model’s
parameters. The accuracy of the proposed system for intent classification is 96%, while it
achieved 94% accuracy for the entity extraction task. The proposed system gained a 95% F1
score for intent classification and 94% for entity extraction.

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to report regarding
the present study.

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Article
Research on Log Anomaly Detection Based on Sentence-BERT
Caiping Hu 1, *, Xuekui Sun 2 , Hua Dai 2 , Hangchuan Zhang 1 and Haiqiang Liu 1

1 Department of Computer Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211169, China;

19850303315@[Link] (H.Z.); 00000005207@[Link] (H.L.)
2 School of Computer Science, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210023, China;
kasonsun@[Link] (X.S.); daihua@[Link] (H.D.)
* Correspondence: hucp@[Link]

Abstract: Log anomaly detection is crucial for computer systems. By analyzing and processing the
logs generated by a system, abnormal events or potential problems in the system can be identified,
which is helpful for its stability and reliability. At present, due to the expansion of the scale and
complexity of software systems, the amount of log data grows enormously, and traditional detection
methods have been unable to detect system anomalies in time. Therefore, it is important to design
log anomaly detection methods with high accuracy and strong generalization. In this paper, we
propose the log anomaly detection method LogADSBERT, which is based on Sentence-BERT. This
method adopts the Sentence-BERT model to extract the semantic behavior characteristics of log events
and implements anomaly detection through the bidirectional recurrent neural network, Bi-LSTM.
Experiments on the open log data set show that the accuracy of LogADSBERT is better than that
of the existing log anomaly detection methods. Moreover, LogADSBERT is robust even under the
scenario of new log event injections.

Keywords: anomaly detection; log; deep learning; Sentence-BERT; semantic feature

1. Introduction
Logs usually contain information about the operational status of a system, including
Citation: Hu, C.; Sun, X.; Dai, H.;
operation records, fault information, security time, etc., which can provide a comprehensive
Zhang, H.; Liu, H. Research on Log
view of the system’s operational status [1]. Logs are time-series in nature; the information
Anomaly Detection Based on in the logs is recorded by time, which allows us to analyze it in order to gain insight
Sentence-BERT. Electronics 2023, 12, into the operation of the system. Logs can provide a historical view—they collect all
3580. [Link] information about the application, and there are a lot of helpful insights that can be gleaned
electronics12173580 from an application’s history record, including information about potential problems and
benchmarks for determining when a process becomes an exception. Logs can monitor
Academic Editor: Grzegorz Dudek
the behavior of a system, and in contrast to other data sources, they can go deeper into
Received: 23 July 2023 the system and track the actual behavior of the system as it runs. Log records contain
Revised: 17 August 2023 information and trends during system operation. Analyzing and mining the log data can
Accepted: 22 August 2023 help detect and diagnose system anomalies.
Published: 24 August 2023 With the expansion of software systems’ scale, complexity, and application scope, the
number of logs generated shows exponential growth, making it difficult for the traditional
log anomaly detection methods based on rules and statistics. In order to adapt to the
development of software systems, researchers have shifted their research focus to deep
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
learning-based solutions, and, currently, log anomaly detection based on deep learning has
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
become a hot spot in the field of anomaly detection [2]. Compared to the traditional methods
This article is an open access article
based on rules and statistics, an anomaly detection method based on deep learning requires
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
no human intervention and can quickly and accurately identify abnormal behaviors in logs.
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
Moreover, traditional log anomaly detection methods are constrained by the limitations of
[Link]/licenses/by/
algorithms and capacity, whereas a log anomaly detection method based on deep learning
4.0/). can process a large amount of data in parallel. It can efficiently solve the problems of

Electronics 2023, 12, 3580. [Link] 128 [Link]

Electronics 2023, 12, 3580

repeated sampling and information extraction. In addition, deep learning models can
extract useful information from dozens of data metrics, which can better capture the details
of the log data that reflect the anomalies of the system. This is because log data are usually
in plain text format, and natural language processing is a specialized field for processing
and analyzing text data. For example, chatbots [3] based on machine translation have
become popular in recent years. Most of the log anomaly detection methods based on
deep learning that have emerged so far are associated with natural language processing
(NLP). NLP is used to extract the semantic features in log files, such as vocabulary, phrases,
sentences, and grammatical structures. These features are useful for pattern recognition
and classification in log anomaly detection, and the models built in this way can better
process and analyze the log data, as well as predict abnormal behaviors and events.
In this paper, we propose the log anomaly detection method LogADSBERT. It uses the
Sentence-BERT model [4] to extract the semantic features of log events and realizes the final
anomaly detection using the recurrent neural network model Bi-LSTM [5]. LogADSBERT
consists of two stages: the model training and the anomaly detection. In the model training
stage, the log parser parses the original logs into log events and log triples. The log events
are used as the corpus to train the Sentence-BERT model, and the log triples are used to
construct a sliding window sequence of log event semantic vectors to train the Bi-LSTM
neural network classification model, Bi-LSTM-ADM. In the anomaly detection stage, Bi-
LSTM-ADM is used to detect anomalies in the log data. LogADSBERT can achieve anomaly
detection with high accuracy and robustness.
The contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows:
1. We construct a log event semantic feature extraction model, T-SBERT, based on the
Sentence-BERT model, which can convert log events into log event semantic fea-
ture representations. The Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural
Network model (Bi-LSTM) with an attention mechanism is adopted to generate an
anomaly detection model.
2. We propose a log event semantic feature matching algorithm and an anomaly detec-
tion algorithm. The log event semantic matching dictionary is established, and the log
anomaly detection method LogADSBERT, based on Sentence-BERT, is constructed. It
is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to extract log event semantic features using
the Sentence-BERT model.
3. In the scenario of new log event injection, LogADSBERT can ensure high accuracy
and strong robustness of anomaly detection. Experiment results demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed method.
This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 discusses the related work; Section 3
presents the preliminary knowledge of this paper; Section 4 presents the definitions related
to the proposed method; Section 5 presents the framework of our anomaly detection
method; Section 6 describes the experiments used to evaluate the effectiveness of the
proposed method; and finally, the conclusion is provided in Section 7.

2. Related Work
The traditional log anomaly detection methods are based on rules and statistics [6–8]
and generally need to analyze normal and abnormal behavior patterns using mathematical
counting methods. They usually define a set of features, design response rules for each
feature, and combine these rules into a complete system. In the testing stage, the newly
generated logs are compared with the existing rules to determine the existence of anomalies.
For example, Prewett et al. [7] proposed the log file analysis tool Logsurfer, which achieves
anomaly detection by defining rules for the expected behavior of the system and then
matching them using regular expressions. At the same time, Logsurfer can also update
its rule set at runtime. Rouilard et al. [8] proposed the SEC simple temporal correlator to
create feature rule sets by analyzing log sequences, which reduces the false alarm rate but is
less automated and incurs higher labor costs. Due to the expansion and update of the scale
of log data, the traditional log anomaly detection methods based on rules and statistics are

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Electronics 2023, 12, 3580

usually not effective in detecting complex and or unknow anomalies. Thus, researchers
in the field have shifted their research direction to the area of machine learning and deep
learning.
Traditional machine learning log anomaly detection includes supervised and unsuper-
vised machine learning methods. Supervised machine learning methods include Support
Vector Classifier (SVM) [9,10], Linear Regression (LR) [11,12], Decision Tree (DT) [13], K-
Neighborhood Algorithm (KNN) [14], etc. These are based on the log frequency statistics
vector to record the frequency of occurrence of each log event within the log sequence, and
they use the frequency statistics vector as input and dichotomous labels as the classification
result. Unsupervised machine learning methods include Principal Component Analysis
(PCA) [15] and clustering-based methods such as Isolated Forest (IF) [16], Invariant Min-
ing (IM) [17], and Log Clustering (LC) [18]. These use unlabeled data for training, and
unsupervised log anomaly detection can be achieved.
The deep learning-based log anomaly detection methods [19–21] usually have three
steps: First, a log parser is used to split the system log data into two parts, the log event and
the parameter. The log event describes the system or process behavior, and the parameter
element records state information such as the timestamp and the process identifier. Second,
the behavior sequence of the system or process is constructed using the timestamp and log
event of the log record. Third, anomaly detection is performed based on the behavioral
sequences. Researchers have been developing log anomaly detection methods based on
recurrent neural networks. For example, Du et al. [19] trained LSTM based on log keys and
parameters to obtain a log key anomaly detection model and a parameter value anomaly
detection model. They combined two models to achieve anomaly detection. However, the
log key is the index of the log event, which is not combined with the semantic features in
the real sense. Log key-based detection requires knowledge of the size of the collection
of log events before the detection, which may fail when the log events are updated or
added. Meng et al. [20] proposed a template2vec-based method, LogAnomaly, that used
the Bi-LSTM model with an attention mechanism to combine log event features and word
features within the event to obtain the log event semantic feature space vector. When the log
event is updated, the semantic feature vector of the log event is computed first, and then the
existing log event is replaced by selecting the closest log event with the Euclidean distance.
However, the performance drops sharply when more log events are added. Brown et al. [21]
also proposed an LSTM-based approach for routine detection that incorporates multiple
implementations of attention mechanisms into the LSTM model to extract log features
and achieve eventual anomaly detection. Although the experiments show a high accuracy
rate for this method on the LANL cyber security datasets, the experimental datasets are
relatively limited, and high accuracy cannot be achieved on several publicly available and
commonly used datasets. This method only focuses on discovering relationships hidden
in system logs and the effectiveness of multiple attention mechanisms in log anomaly
detection, which causes limitations in practical application scenarios. In addition, the
BERT model and its derivative models, which have recently become popular in the field
of natural language processing, have been used in the field of log anomaly detection. For
example, Chen et al. [22] produced semantic log vectors by utilizing a pre-trained language
BERT model and used the linear classification to detect anomalies. This method uses a
single BERT implementation, which may lose semantic information in sequence feature
extraction processing. Zhang et al. [23] adopted the SBERT model to extract the semantic
representation of log events, which considers the semantic and word order relationship of
each word in log events. They designed a GRU model for anomaly detection; however, as
the content of exception log is diverse, including sequence pattern, frequency, correlation,
etc., GRU can only capture one-way sequence information. Guo et al. [24] learned the
patterns of normal log sequences using two novel, self-supervised training tasks: the
masked log message prediction and volume of hypersphere minimization. Nevertheless,
this work does not identify and train the semantic information of abnormal logs.

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Currently, the log anomaly detection methods based on rules and statistics can no
longer meet the rapid development of software systems, and machine learning-based log
anomaly detection suffers from weak feature extraction ability, poor adaptability, large labor
cost, and low accuracy rate compared to deep learning. Therefore, current log anomaly
detection research focuses on the deep learning-based methods. However, the existing log
anomaly detection methods based on deep learning still do not fully utilize the semantic
information existing in the log data, as well as some other feature information such as
frequency statistics, location embedding, etc. As a result, the accuracy rate of the methods
does not reach the required standard, and the robustness of these methods to the addition
of new logs needs to be further improved.

3. Preliminary Knowledge
3.1. Log Parser
System log data as semi-structured data are difficult to input directly into model
training and detection, so processing semi-structured log data into structured log data is
the first step of data processing and is crucial for subsequent anomaly detection. A system
log data includes variable and constant parts. When generating a log, it is actually a process
of combining constants and variables. The variable is the log parameters, which change
dynamically depending on the type of log generated. The constants are usually fixed and
unchanged log events that are the system log in the parameter part of the use of wildcard
replacement to get the standard event. LogParser does exactly the opposite of the log
generation process; the log parser must generate logs reverse-parsed into log events and
parameters in order to better complete the anomaly detection—there are many open-source
log parsers to choose from. Currently, log parsers [25–29] can be divided into two main
groups: log parsers based on clustering and log parsers based on heuristic structures.

3.2. Self-Attention Mechanism

A self-attention approach was designed by Google in 2017 [30], which was an im-
plementation of the original attention mechanism proposed in 2014 [31]. Early attention
mechanisms need to use other neural networks to extract relevant features, compute inter-
mediate states, and finally give different attention to each intermediate state through the
attention mechanism. Now, the self-attention mechanism does not need to use other neural
networks to extract sequence features. It directly uses the self-attention mechanism to learn
sequence features, which solves the problem of other neural networks not being able to
perform in parallel and long short-term dependence.

3.3. Sentence-BERT Model

The Sentence-BERT model [3] is a derivative of the pre-training model BERT that sheds
the decoder of the Transformer model so that the construction of BERT is the encoder part
of the Transformer. BERT has proved to be effective in a variety of NLP tasks, and with pre-
training and fine-tuning, it can obtain better results. Sentence-BERT comes from a similar
background. It was constructed based on the Siamese Network and Triplet Network [32];
it performs better in clustering and semantic-based retrieval tasks and can quickly and
efficiently realize sentence semantic similarity computation and obtain sentence vector
representations, etc. In this paper, the pre-training Sentence-BERT uses the log data for
training and fine-tuning so that it can obtain better vector representations.

3.4. Bi-LSTM Neural Network Model

Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) [33] is a common recurrent neural network model
that has a much longer memory. It solves the gradient vanishing and long-distance depen-
dence problems that recurrent neural networks are prone to. It has been proved in recent
years that LSTM shows good performance in several natural language processing tasks.
The Bi-LSTM model [5] is used in the research methodology of this paper, which employs a
bidirectional LSTM model. It is a combination of forward LSTM as well as reverse LSTM,

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where the hidden output of the current layer is obtained by splicing the processed results
of the forward inputs with the processed outputs of the reverse inputs. Bi-LSTM captures
backward and forwards temporal correlation and can maximize the use of historical and
future information through bi-directional propagation to achieve better performance.

4. Definitions of LogADSBERT
Assuming that the system log set is L = {l1 , l2 , . . ., ln }. After parsing the log set L using
LogParser, we obtain a set of the log events T = {t1 , t2 , . . ., tm } and a set of the log triples P =
{p1 , p2 , . . ., pn }.

Definition 1 (Log Event (LE)). A log event is a structured text information obtained by removing
the variable parameter from the system logs li using the log parser, which is denoted as ti ∈ T.

Definition 2 (Log Triple (LT)). A log triple is a structured log information obtained by parsing
the system logs through the log parser, which is denoted as pi = (id, t, ts), where id is the process ID,
t is the log event, and ts is the timestamp of the log generation.

Definition 3 (Log Event Semantic Vector (LE-SV)). Taking the log events of T as the input of
the T-SBERT model, the output is the log event semantic vector set V = {v1 , v2 , . . ., vm }.

Definition 4 (Log Event Semantic Dictionary (LE-SD)). The log event semantic  dictionary is
denoted as D, and D is initialized as the mapping set ti → v j , that is D = { ti → v j ti ∈ T, v j ∈ V }.
When a new type of log appears, the log event semantic vector of the new log is obtained by the log
event semantic matching algorithm based on the T-SBERT model, and the new mapping ti → v j is
added to the log event semantic dictionary.

Definition 5 (Log Event Semantic Vector Sliding Window (LE-SV-SW)). Assuming that h
is the size of a sliding window, Ti = {e1 , e2 , . . ., eq } is the sequence of the log event, and Ti ⊆T
is the sequence of the log event, the semantic matching algorithm of the log event based on the
T-SBERT model converts the log event sequence Ti into the log event semantic vector sequence Si =
<ve1 , ve2 , . . . , veq >. Given ve j+1 ∈ Si , the corresponding sliding window is denoted as W(Si , ve j )
which is generated according to the following rules.
1. If (h ≤ j < q), then W(Si , ve j ) = <ve j−h+1 , ve j−h+2 , . . . , ve j >;
2. Else, W(Si , ve j ) = ∅.

In addition, for the log event semantic vector

 sequence Si that meets the first require-

ments, the window set of Si is Wsi = {W(Si , ve j ve j ∈ Si ∧j ∈ [h,q)}, and the number of items


in Wsi is q-h. The corresponding log event semantic vector set is Ve j+1 = { ve j+1 ve j+1 ∈ Si ∧j
∈ [h,q)}.

Definition 6 (Log Sequence Anomaly Detection (LSAD)). Assuming that the log event se-
quence is Ti = {e1 , e2 , . . ., eq }, the log event semantic vector window set is Wsi = {W(Si , ve j )|ve j ∈ Si
∧ j ∈ [h, q)}, and the corresponding set of log event semantic vector ve j+1 is Ve j+1 = {ve j+1 |ve j+1 ∈
Si ∧ j ∈ [h,q)}, the result vector set predicted by the Bi-LSTM-ADM with inputting Wsi is Re j+1 =
{re j+1 |j ∈ [h,q)}. Given the threshold ξ, the log sequence anomaly detection is performed as follows.
1. For each ve j+1 ∈ Ve j+1 and ∀ re j+1 ∈ Re j+1 , if the similarity between ve j+1 and re j+1 is greater
than the threshold ξ, it can be determined that the log event sequence Ti is normal;
2. Otherwise, the log event sequence Ti is abnormal.

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5. Algorithms of LogADSBERT
The proposed LogADSBERT consists of two stages: the model training and the
anomaly detection. The specific implementation process of these two stages is described as
follows.
Model training stage: The log parser parses the logs into a set of log events and a set of
log triples. The set of log events is used as training data for Sentence-BERT and is trained
to generate the T-SBERT log event vector generation model based on the TSBERTTrain
algorithm (Algorithm 1). While the log triples are ordered according to the time stamp
ts and transformed into a sequence of log event semantic vectors using the log event
semantic matching algorithm based on T-SBERT model (Algorithm 2), they are converted
into sequences of log event semantic vectors, then the sliding window mechanism is utilized
and sliding window training data are constructed based on the log event semantic vector
sequences. The Bi-LSTM model is trained to generate the Bi-LSTM-ADM model using the
BILSTMADMTrain algorithm (Algorithm 3).
Anomaly detection stage: The logs to be detected are first transformed into a set of log
triples using the log parser, then the log event semantic matching algorithm is used to obtain
a log event semantic vector sequence. Finally, the log event semantic vector sequence is used
to complete the log anomaly detection by the LogADSBERTDetect algorithm (Algorithm 4).
The framework of the proposed log anomaly detection method LogADSBERT is shown
in Figure 1.

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5.1. Sentence-BERT Training Algorithm

In the model training stage, the Sentence BERT model is trained to convert log events
into log event semantic vectors, and then the Bi-LSTM model is trained.
TSBERTTrain(T): The log event semantic vector generation model T-SBERT is gener-
ated based on the Sentence-BERT model using the log event dataset T. First, the text corpus
(TC) is initialized to be empty, the log event set T is preprocessed to obtain the text corpus,
and TC is fed into the Sentence-BERT model to generate the T-SBERT model. The specific
process of T-SBERT model generation is shown in Algorithm 1. The log event semantic dic-
tionary D is initialized to be empty and is used to store the mapping relationship between
log events and log event semantic vectors.

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Algorithm 1: TSBERTTrain(T)
Input: Log event set T
Output: Log event semantic vector generation model T-SBERT
(1) Initialize the text corpus TC = ∅;
(2) Initialize log event semantic dictionary D = ∅;
(3) Initialize the Sentence-BERT model instance;
(4) FOR ti ∈ T DO
(5) Split ti into word lists WL;
(6) FOR EACH word IN WL DO
(7) word = lowerCase(word);
(8) IF word is a stop-words or no semantic identifiers THEN
(9) Remove word from WL;
(10) END IF
(11) END FOR
(12) Add the corresponding WL of the processed sentence to the corpus;
(13) Add the corpus to the TC;
(14) END FOR
(15) Train Sentence-BERT model to get T-SBERT using text library TC;
(16) RETURN T-SBERT;

5.2. Log Event Semantic Matching Algorithm

Before the Bi-LSTM model training and anomaly detection, each log event in a se-
quence of log events needs to be converted into a log event semantic vector.
LESVMatch (ti , T-SBERT): Log Event Semantic Vector Matching Algorithm based
on T-SBERT implements the process of transforming log events to log event topics in
the training and detection stage. For log event ti , the log event semantic dictionary D
is first queried to see if there exists a mapping relationship for ti → v j . If there is no
mapping relation for ti → v j , then ti is processed with the log event processing described in
Algorithm 1 and inputted into the log event semantic vector model, and the corresponding
log event semantic vector v j  is obtained and returned. At the same time, the new mapping
relationship for ti  → v j  is added to the log event semantic dictionary D. If there exists a
mapping for ti → v j , then the corresponding log event semantic vector v j is returned. The
specific algorithm of log event semantic vector matching is shown in Algorithm 2.

Algorithm 2: LESVMatch(ti , T-SBERT)

Input: Log Event ti , Log event semantic vector model T-SBERT
Output: Log event semantic vector v j
(1) IF ki IN D THEN
(2) RETURN D(ki );
(3) END IF;
(4) Split ki into the word list WL;
(5) FOR EACH word IN WL DO
(6) lowerCase(word);
(7) IF word is a stop-words or no semantic identifiers THEN
(8) Remove word from WL;
(9) END IF
(10) END FOR
(11) Add the corresponding WL of the processed sentence to the corpus;
(12) v j = T-SBERT (corpus);
(13) The mapping { ti → v j } is added to the log event semantic dictionary D;
(14) RETURN v j ;

5.3. Bi-LSTM Training Algorithm

After the T-SBERT training is completed, the Bi-LSTM also needs to be trained for
learning the normal log behavior patterns.

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BILSTMADMTrain(S, h): The log event prediction model training algorithm uses the
sliding window training pairs generated from the sequence of log event semantic vectors
(Definition 5) to train the Bi-LSTM model to obtain the log event prediction model Bi-
LSTM-ADM. The initial sliding window length is h. The log event sequence Ti = {e1 , e2 , . . .,
eq } will be converted into the log event semantic vector sequence Si = <ve1 , ve2 , . . . , veq >
by Algorithm 2. Sliding with the size of the sliding window h to construct the training
data pair (TDP), the sliding window is denoted as W(Si , ve j ). The training data pair TDP
constructed by ve j+1 is denoted as (wi , ve j+1 ), and the training data pair TDP is stored in
the list to form the training data pair list (TDPL). The Bi-LSTM model is trained with
TDPL to obtain the log event prediction model Bi-LSTM-ADM, which is then used for log
event prediction for further anomaly detection. The specific process of Bi-LSTM training to
generate Bi-LSTM-ADM is shown in Algorithm 3.

Algorithm 3: BILSTMADMTrain (S, h)

Input: Sliding window length h, Log event semantic vector sequence set S = {<ve1 ,1 , ve1 ,2 , . . .,
ve1 ,q1 >,<ve2 ,1 , ve2 ,2 , . . ., ve2 ,q2 >, . . ., <ve f ,1 , ve f ,2 , . . .,ve f ,q f >}
Output: Log prediction model Bi-LSTM-ADM
(1) Initialize the TPDL=∅;
(2) Initialize the Bi-LSTM model;

(3) FOR Si ∈S i∈[1, f ] DO
(4) FOR j=h, h+1, . . ., q − 1 DO
(5) According to Definition 5 to generate the log event semantic vector sliding
window W (Si , ve j );
(6) IF W (Si , ve j )=∅ THEN
(7) CONTINUE;
(8) END IF
(9) Generate the TDP = (wi , ve j+1 ) and add the TDPL;
(10) END FOR
(11) END FOR
(12) Using TPDL as training datasets to train Bi-LSTM to generate Bi-LSTM-ADM;
(13) RETURN Bi-LSTM-ADM;

5.4. Anomaly Detection Algorithm

In the anomaly detection stage, the log will be detected using the T-SBERT model, log
event semantic matching algorithm, and Bi-LSTM-ADM model.
LogADSBERTDetect(Si , h, ξ, Bi-LSTM-ADM): In the anomaly detection implementa-
tion algorithm, for the sequence of log events Ti = {e1 , e2 , . . ., eq } to be detected, the sliding
windows set of log event semantic vectors Wsi is generated using Algorithms 1 and 2. The
set consisting of semantic vectors of log events corresponding to Wsi is denoted as Ve j+1 .
The prediction set of result vectors obtained from the input of Wsi to the Bi-LSTM-ADM is
Re j+1 = {re j+1 |j∈[h,q)}. Given the threshold ξ, the sequence anomaly determination method
is as follows: for ∀ve j+1 ∈Ve j+1 and re j+1 ∈ Re j+1 , if the similarity between ve j+1 and re j+1 is
greater than ξ, then it is determined that there is no anomaly in Ti ; otherwise, there is an
anomaly in Ti . The specific process of log anomaly detection algorithm implementation is
shown in Algorithm 4.

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Algorithm 4: LogADSBERTDetect (Si , h, ξ, Bi-LSTM-ADM)

Input: Sequence of log event semantic vectors Si = <ve1 , ve2 , . . . , veq >, Sliding window size h,
Threshold value ξ, Bi-LSTM-ADM model
Output: TRUE-normal/FALSE-abnormal
(1) FOR j = h, h + 1, . . ., q − 1 DO
(2) Generate the event semantic vector sliding window W(Si , ve j ) and add the
value ve j+1 into Ve j+1 ;
(3) IF W(Si , ve j ) = ∅ THEN
(4) CONTINUE;
(5) END IF
(6) Input W(Si , ve j ) into Bi-LSTM-ADM to obtain the prediction vector re j+1 ;
(7) Add re j+1 to the set of prediction result vectors Re j+1 ;
(8) IF Similarity(ve j+1 , re j+1 ) < ξ THEN
(9) RETURN FALSE;
(10) END IF
(11) END FOR
(12) RETURN TRUE;

6. Evaluation
In this section, we evaluate the proposed LogADSBERT by conducting experiments on
the real log datasets. We implement the LogADSBERT together with the existing log anomaly
detection methods based on deep learning, such as DeepLog [19] and LogAnomaly [20].

6.1. Experimental Setting

6.1.1. Evaluation Metrics
The evaluation metrics for this experiment are the false positive, false negative, preci-
sion, recall, and F1-Score.
1. False positive: the number of normal log sequences marked as abnormal, which are
denoted as FP.
2. False negative: the number of abnormal log sequences marked as normal, which are
denoted as FN.
3. Precision: the proportion of log sequences with real anomalies that are correctly
marked out; the computation of precision is shown in Equation (1).

TP
Precision = (1)
TP + FP
4. Recall: the proportion of log sequences with real anomalies that are successfully
marked; the computation of recall is shown in Equation (2).

TP
Recall = (2)
TP + FN
5. F1-Score: the reconciliation average of the detection result accuracy and detection
result completeness, which is denoted as F1-Score; the calculation of F1-Score is shown
in Equation (3).

2 × Precision × Recall
F1-Score = (3)
Precision + Recall

6.1.2. Environment and Hyperparameters

The operating system of the experimental equipment is Windows 10 64-bit, the memory
size is 32 GB, the CPU is AMD Ryzen 5 3600 4.2 Ghz six cores and twelve threads, and the
GPU is Nvidia GTX 1660S. The IDE is PyCharm 2021 with python 3.6. The Sentence-BERT
model, Bi-LSTM model, and Self-Attention mechanism were constructed based on the
framework of Pytorch 1.4. The experimental comparison method is DeepLog, LogAnomaly.

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The experimental parameters were set according to the characteristics of the log data, the
structure of the model, and the final experimental results. We tried a variety of different
parameter combinations and found that the following parameters can achieve the best
detection results. Table 1 shows the specific hyperparameter Settings.

Table 1. Experimental hyperparameters.

Hyperparameters Value
Learning rate 0.001
Batch size 2048
Epoch 300
l (Neural network layers) 2
α (Hide layer cell size) 64
h (Sliding window size) 10

6.1.3. Experimental Datasets

The log datasets used in this experiment come from Hadoop Distributed File System
(HDFS) [34] and OpenStack [35]. The HDFS log dataset comes from more than 200 of
Amazon’s EC2 nodes and contains 11,175,629 log entries. The OpenStack log datasets
platform project contains 1,335,318 log entries. We selected some of the data that have been
processed by domain experts for our experiments. The duplicate logs were removed from
the log dataset. The log data needed to be further parsed and processed before it could
be used for our experiments. We used the open-source log parser LogParser to parse logs.
According to relevant research in the field, the unsupervised or semi-supervised learning
methods can avoid data imbalance and data noise to a certain extent using normal log data
as training data, and they can improve the accuracy and efficiency of detection. Therefore,
we chose normal logs as the training data. The specific information of the log sequence is
shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Setup of log datasets.

Number of Sessions Number of Log

Log Datasets
Training Data Normal Abnormal Events
HDFS 7333 14,296 4251 46
OpenStack 514 4904 425 40

6.2. Result
1. Precision, Recall, and F1-Score
Figure 2 shows the precision, recall, and F1-Score of LogADSBERT on the HDFS
dataset. It indicates that LogADSBERT is better than DeepLoog and LogAnomaly in all
performance metrics. In the F1-Score, LogADSBERT improves by 7.0% and 4.3% compared
to DeepLog and LogAnomaly, respectively. There are improvements in both precision and
recall for LogADSBERT. Specifically, LogADSBERT improves 8.8% and 5.1% more than
DeepLog in precision and recall, respectively. Moreover, LogADSBERT improves 5.5% and
3.0% more than LogAnomaly in precision and recall, respectively.
Figure 3 illustrates the precision, recall, and F1-score of the three methods on the Open-
Stack dataset. The performance of LogADSBERT compared to DeepLog and LogAnomaly
on the OpenStack dataset is more pronounced than on the HDFS dataset. There is al-
ready a more pronounced gap between LogADSBERT and the better-performing method,
LogAnomaly, in terms of precision and F1-Score, with a difference of 7.1% and 7.0%, respec-
tively. In addition, LogADSBERT achieves 100% in terms of recall performance, whereas
the other methods achieve more than 90%.

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Figure 2. Accuracy on HDFS.

Figure 3. Accuracy on OpenStack.

According to the above analysis, LogADSBERT is superior to DeepLog and LogAnomaly

in precision, recall and F1-Score. The reason is that LogADSBERT based on the Sentence-
BERT model can capture more important log semantic features, and Bi-LSTM with an
attention mechanism can enhance the extraction of the logs’ semantic features to improve
the accuracy of the anomaly detection.
2. Statistics of FP and FN
Tables 3 and 4 show the number of FP and FN of LogADSBERT, DeepLog, and
LogAnomaly on the data set HDFS and OpenStack, respectively.

Table 3. Statistics on the number of FP and FN on the HDFS dataset.

Evaluation Metrics DeepLog LogAnomaly LogADSBERT

False positive (FP) 451 303 59
False negative (FN) 265 174 47

Table 4. Statistics of the number of FP and FN on the OpenStack dataset.

Evaluation Metrics DeepLog LogAnomaly LogADSBERT

False positive (FP) 107 61 28
False negative (FN) 34 29 0

Table 3 shows the number of FP and FN of the three methods on the HDFS dataset.
The FP and FN of DeepLog and LogAnomaly are both significantly higher than those of
LogADSBERT. Compared to the worst-performing method DeepLog, the FP and FN of

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LogADSBERT are reduced by 244 and 127, respectively, which means that LogADSBERT
makes an 80.5% and 80.0% improvement in the FP and FN, respectively.
Table 4 shows the number of FP and FN of the three methods on the OpenStack
dataset. The result is similar to that shown in Table 3. The number of FP and FN in
LogADSBERT is obviously less than that of DeepLog and LogAnomaly. It indicates that
LogADSBERT outperforms DeepLog and LogAnomaly in the FP and FN metrics on the
OpenStack dataset.
3. Effects of different parameters on LogADSBERT
The experiments on the effect of different parameters on the precision, recall, and
F1-Score of LogADSBERT needed to be carried out using a control variable. For simplicity,
the more commonly used HDFS dataset was adopted in the experiment. The results of the
experiment are shown in Figures 4–7.

Figure 4. Number of log events: t.

Figure 5. Sliding window size: h.

Figure 6. Number of neural network layers: l.

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Figure 7. Hide layer unit size: α.

Figure 4 shows the effect of t on the three performance metrics of LogADSBERT. When
t = 40, the performance of LogADSBERT is optimal, and when t = 45, the performance
of the method decreases, but overall, the effect is not significant. Figure 5 shows the
effect of the sliding window size h on the three performance metrics of LogADSBERT,
where the accuracy of LogADSBERT is gradually improved as h increases. As shown in
Figures 6 and 7, the effects of the number of neural network layers l and the hidden layer
unit size α on the LogADSBERT’s precision, recall, and F1-Score all reach the highest rate
at l = 2 and α = 64. In summary, under the conditions of different hyperparameters of the
number of log events t, sliding window size h, the number of neural network layers l, and
the size of the hidden layer unit α, LogADSBERT can ensure the stability of the overall
performance and obtain a high accuracy, which means that LogADSBERT is robust. In this
way, it can cope with the various uncertainties and complex factors that need to be faced
in the actual network system application scenario to achieve accurate and stable anomaly
detection.
4. Performance comparison of new log event injection
In order to further validate the robustness and effectiveness of LogADSBERT, we
conducted experiments involving the addition of new log events on the HDFS dataset.
We once again used precision, recall, and F1-Score as the performance metrics, and the
comparison methods employed DeepLog and LogAnomaly. The set of log events in the
training stage covers the system log datasets and contains 13 log events, and the number of
newly added log events was 33. DeepLog does not provide a solution for newly added log
events, and here, it was set to mark the log sequence as abnormal when the newly added
log events were detected. The results of the experiments are shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Experimental results of new log event injection.

Evaluation Metrics DeepLog LogAnomaly LogADSBERT

Precision 0.409 0.552 0.937
Recall 0.976 0.932 0.928
F1-Score 0.577 0.694 0.932

Table 5 shows that for LogADSBERT, two of the evaluation metrics, precision and F1-
Score, were significantly better than for the other two methods. In particular, the F1-Score
reached 93.2%, which is 23.8% higher than LogAnomaly. Since LogADSBERT is based on
the semantic features of log events for log anomaly detection, the new log events will be
matched by a T-SBERT-based log event semantic matching algorithm to obtain the most
similar log event semantic representations, so it can vastly reduce the impact of new log
events on the anomaly detection results. Additionally, in the experiments, DeepLog was
set to detect all log sequences of the new log events as abnormal log sequences, which
would certainly lead to a significantly better DeepLog detection rate compared with the
other methods, but this setting made the number of FP too high and, consequently, both

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the precision and F1-Score were much lower than for the other methods. The solution
strategy of LogAnomaly for new log events is to replace the log events by calculating the
Euclidean distance with the already determined log events; however, this method does not
represent the new log events well, and when the number of new log events is too large, the
overall performance decreases rapidly. In summary, LogADSBERT, a log anomaly detection
method based on Sentence-BERT, maintains strong robustness in the scenario of adding
new log events.

7. Conclusions
In this paper, to solve the existing problems of log anomaly detection methods based
on deep learning, we proposed a Sentence-BERT-based log anomaly detection method,
LogADSBERT. The proposed anomaly detection model trained by inputting the log event
corpus not only extracts the log event information containing semantic features, but also
obtains the most relevant log event semantic information based on the log event semantic
matching algorithm for the newly added log events. The proposed method shows improved
accuracy compared to the existing anomaly detection methods, and it also shows robustness
when new log events are added.
With the rapid development of software systems, log anomaly detection needs to be
updated and iterated to meet new requests. In the future, the following aspects should
be focused on: (1) optimizing the preprocessing of log data to improve the efficiency of
anomaly detection; and (2) realizing multimodal log anomaly detection, where log anomaly
detection integrates multiple types of log data to conduct joint analysis and processing to
improve the accuracy and robustness of anomaly detection.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, C.H. and H.D.; methodology, C.H. and X.S.; software,
C.H. and X.S.; validation, H.D., H.Z. and C.H.; formal analysis, X.S. and H.D.; investigation, H.Z.;
resources, X.S. and C.H.; data curation, H.L.; writing—original draft preparation, C.H., H.Z. and X.S.;
writing—review and editing, C.H. and H.D.; visualization, X.S.; supervision, H.D. and C.H.; project
administration, C.H. and H.D.; funding acquisition, C.H. All authors have read and agreed to the
published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research was funded by Jinling Institute of Technology High-level Talent Research
Start-up Project (JIT-RCYJ-202102), Key R&D Plan Project of Jiangsu Province (BE2022077), Jinling
Institute of Technology Science and Education Integration Project (2022KJRH18), and Jiangsu Province
College Student Innovation Training Program Project (202313573080Y, 202313573081Y).
Data Availability Statement: This research employed publicly available datasets for its experimental
studies.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Article
Picture Fuzzy Soft Matrices and Application of Their Distance
Measures to Supervised Learning: Picture Fuzzy Soft k-Nearest
Neighbor (PFS-kNN)
Samet Memiş

Department of Marine Engineering, Faculty of Maritime Studies, Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University,
Balıkesir 10200, Türkiye; samettmemis@[Link]

Abstract: This paper redefines picture fuzzy soft matrices (pfs-matrices) because of some of their
inconsistencies resulting from Cuong’s definition of picture fuzzy sets. Then, it introduces several
distance measures of pfs-matrices. Afterward, this paper proposes a new kNN-based classifier,
namely the Picture Fuzzy Soft k-Nearest Neighbor (PFS-kNN) classifier. The proposed classifier
utilizes the Minkowski’s metric of pfs-matrices to find the k-nearest neighbor. Thereafter, it performs
an experimental study utilizing four UCI medical datasets and compares to the suggested approach
using the state-of-the-art kNN-based classifiers. To evaluate the performance of the classification, it
conducts ten iterations of five-fold cross-validation on all the classifiers. The findings indicate that
PFS-kNN surpasses the state-of-the-art kNN-based algorithms in 72 out of 128 performance results
based on accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. More specifically, the proposed method achieves
higher accuracy and F1-score results compared to the other classifiers. Simulation results show that
pfs-matrices and PFS-kNN are capable of modeling uncertainty and real-world problems. Finally, the
applications of pfs-matrices to supervised learning are discussed for further research.

Keywords: soft sets; picture fuzzy sets; picture fuzzy soft matrices; distance measures; machine
learning; k-nearest neighbor (kNN)

MSC: 03E72; 15B15; 62H30; 68T05

Citation: Memiş, S. Picture Fuzzy
Soft Matrices and Application of
Their Distance Measures to
Supervised Learning: Picture Fuzzy
1. Introduction
Soft k-Nearest Neighbor (PFS-kNN).
Electronics 2023, 12, 4129.
In daily life events, we frequently come across many intricate challenges that are
[Link] full of uncertainties. Such uncertainties may be impossible to model using traditional
electronics12194129 mathematical approaches. As a result, state-of-the-art mathematical techniques are needed
to model such uncertainties. To avoid ambiguities, Zadeh created the idea of fuzzy sets
Academic Editor: Grzegorz Dudek
(f -sets) [1]. f -sets are common mathematical tools used in numerous domains, ranging from
Received: 12 August 2023 computer science [2,3] to pure mathematics [4–9]. Figure 1 shows some hybrid extensions
Revised: 25 September 2023 of f -sets.
Accepted: 29 September 2023
Soft Sets Soft Matrices
Published: 3 October 2023 (Molodtsov, 1999) (Çağman and Enginoğlu, 2010)

Fuzzy Sets Fuzzy Soft Sets Fuzzy Soft Matrices

(Zadeh, 1965) (Maji et al., 2001) (Çağman and Enginoğlu, 2012)

Copyright: © 2023 by the author.

Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set Intuitionistic Fuzzy Soft Sets Intuitionistic Fuzzy Soft Matrices
(Atanasov, 1986) (Maji et al., 2001) (Chetia et al., 2012)
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
Pythagorean Fuzzy Set Pythagorean Fuzzy Soft Sets Pythagorean Fuzzy Soft Matrices
distributed under the terms and (Yager, 2013) (Peng et al., 2015) (Guleria et al., 2018)

conditions of the Creative Commons

Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// Picture Fuzzy Set
(Cuong, 2014; Memiş 2021)
Picture Fuzzy Soft Sets
(Cuong, 2014; Yang et al., 2015; Memiş 2022)
Picture Fuzzy Soft Matrices
(Arikrishnan and SriramIn, 2020; Redefined in this paper)

[Link]/licenses/by/
4.0/). Figure 1. Some hybrid versions and extensions of fuzzy and soft sets [1,7,9–22].

Electronics 2023, 12, 4129. [Link] 144 [Link]

Electronics 2023, 12, 4129

An f -set has entries indicated by μ( x ), i.e., a membership degree for x. Because

μ( x ) + ν( x ) = 1, the non-membership degree ν( x ) is calculated by subtracting the μ( x )
from 1. However, if μ( x ) + ν( x ) < 1, it is not as simple, and there is additional uncertainty.
As an extension of f -sets, intuitionistic fuzzy sets (if -sets) [10] have been proposed to
model this form of uncertainty. An if -set has entries indicated by μ( x ) and ν( x ), namely
membership and non-membership degrees, respectively, such that 0 ≤ μ( x ) + ν( x ) ≤ 1
(Figure 2). In contrast to fuzzy sets, the idea of intuitionistic fuzzy sets can depict problems
where 0 ≤ μ( x ) + ν( x ) < 1. In addition, the indeterminacy degree is determined as
1 − (μ( x ) + ν( x )).

Figure 2. Comparison of space of intuitionistic and Pythagorean fuzzy membership.

Although f -sets and if -sets may overcome many difficulties and uncertainties [23], far
more are encountered in practice. Consider the voting process for a presidential election.
During this procedure, the electorate’s decisions can be divided into three categories:
yes, no, and abstention. To represent such a process, Cuong proposed the notion of
picture fuzzy sets (pf -sets) [16]. A pf -set has elements with the degrees of membership,
non-membership, and neutral membership denoted by μ( x ), ν( x ), and η ( x ), respectively.
The refusal to vote or non-participation in voting leads to the indeterminacy described
above. Furthermore, 1 − (μ( x ) + η ( x ) + ν( x )) reflects the degree of indeterminacy in pf -
sets because μ( x ) + η ( x ) + ν( x ) ≤ 1 in Cuong’s definition. Even though pf -sets model the
aforementioned difficulties, the definitions and operations put forward by Cuong have
conceptual errors. Memiş [21] revised the idea of pf -sets and associated operations to
maintain consistency, where μ( x ) + η ( x ) + ν( x ) ≤ 2.
Conversely, pf -sets are unable to model the problems comprising parameters and alter-
natives (objects) with a picture fuzzy membership (pf -membership) degree. In other words,
pfs-sets [16,18,24] can represent problems with alternatives (objects) using pf -membership
(Figure 3), with the expert voting on whether to accept, reject, or abstain from the alternatives.
Recently, various studies have been conducted on pf -sets and pfs-sets. The idea of
a rough picture set has been introduced, and several of its topological features, includ-
ing the lower and upper rough picture fuzzy approximation operators, have also been
investigated [25]. The creation of clustering algorithms that can explore latent knowledge
from a large number of datasets is an emerging research field in pf -sets. The distance and
similarity measure is one of the most crucial tools in clustering that establishes the level of
association between two objects. Therefore, generalized picture distance measure has been
defined, and it has been applied to picture fuzzy clustering [26]. In addition to distance
measure, picture fuzzy similarity has also been studied [27,28]. A technique for solving
decision-making issues utilizing the generalized pfs-sets and an adjustable weighted soft
discernibility matrix has been presented, and threshold functions have been defined [29].

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Electronics 2023, 12, 4129

A weighted soft discernibility matrix in the generalized pfs-sets has been employed to
offer an illustrative example to demonstrate the superiority of the suggested approach
therein. Matrix representations of mathematical concepts, such as pfs-sets are crucial in the
context of computerizing [30,31]. Thus, Arikrishnan and Sriram [20] define picture fuzzy
soft matrices and investigate their algebraic structures. Because the related study is based
on Cuong’s [16] study, there are some theoretical inconsistencies. Moreover, Arikrishnan
and Sriram have only focused on the algebraic structures. The study of Sahu et al. [32]
aims to analyze students’ characteristics, such as career, memory, interest, knowledge, envi-
ronment, and attitude, in order to predict the most suitable career path. This will enable
students to explore and excel in their chosen field comfortably. A hybridized distance
measure has been proposed, using picture fuzzy numbers to evaluate students, subjects,
and students’ characteristics for career selection. However, related studies only rely on
fictitious problem data. A research study that integrates pfs-sets with Quality Function
Deployment (QFD) to propose a Multiple Criteria Group Decision-Making (MCGDM)
method has been discussed [33]. In this approach, the preferences of the decision-makers
are collected in linguistic terms and transformed into Picture Fuzzy Numbers (PFNs). The
study applies the proposed MCGDM method to rank social networking sites, specifically
evaluating Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Twitter, providing valuable insights into
their comparative performance. The study of Lu et al. [34] has introduced the concept of
generalized pfs-sets by combining an image fuzzy soft set with a fuzzy parameter set. They
discuss five main operations for generalized pfs-sets: subset, equality, union, intersection,
and complement.

Figure 3. Space of picture fuzzy membership.

Suppose the problem has picture fuzzy uncertainty and a large number of data. In that
case, pfs-sets cannot operate efficiently with a large number of data. Therefore, processing
data through the computer is compulsory, and the matrix versions of the pfs-sets are needed.
The concept of picture fuzzy soft matrices (pfs-matrices) was propounded in 2020 [20];
however, in the aforementioned study, only the algebraic structures of the concept have
been investigated. To this end, this paper redefines the concept of pfs-matrices, defines the
distance measures of the pfs-matrices, and applies them to supervised learning to manifest
their modeling ability. The major contributions of this paper are as follows:
• pfs-matrices are redefined, and some of their basic properties are investigated.
• Distance measures of pfs-matrices are introduced.
• Picture fuzzy soft k-nearest neighbor (PFS-kNN) based on distance measure of pfs-
matrices is proposed.
• An application of PFS-kNN to medical diagnosis is provided.

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Electronics 2023, 12, 4129

In Section 2 of the paper, definitions of pf -sets and pfs-sets are provided. In Section 3,
the motivations of the redefining of pfs-matrices are detailed. In Section 4, the idea of
pfs-matrices is redefined, and their properties are further examined. In Section 5, distance
measures of pfs-matrices are introduced, and their basic properties are researched. In
Section 6, a PFS-kNN classifier is proposed. In Section 7, the proposed classifier is applied
to medical diagnosis and compared with the well-known kNN-based classifiers. Finally,
we discuss pfs-matrices and PFS-kNN and provide conclusive remarks for further research.

2. Preliminaries
In this section, we present the concepts of pf -sets and pfs-sets by considering the
notations used across this study. Across this paper, let E and U denote the parameter and
alternative sets, respectively.

Definition 1 ([16,21]). Let f be a function such that f : E → [0, 1] × [0, 1] × [0, 1]. Then,
the graphic
{( x, f ( x )) : x ∈ E} = {( x, μ( x ), η ( x ), ν( x )) : x ∈ E}
 μ(x)   
is called a picture fuzzy set (pf-set) over E. Here, a pf-set is denoted by η (x) x :x∈E
ν( x )
instead of {( x, μ( x ), η ( x ), ν( x )) : x ∈ E}.

Moreover, for all x ∈ E, μ( x ) + ν( x ) ≤ 1 and μ( x ) + η ( x ) + ν( x ) ≤ 2. Further-

more, μ, η, and ν are the membership, neutral membership, and non-membership func-
tions, respectively, and the indeterminacy degree of the element x ∈ E is defined by
π ( x ) = 1 − (μ( x ) + ν( x )).
In the present paper, the set of all the pf -sets over E is symbolized by PF ( E) and
f ∈ PF ( E).

Remark 1. In PF ( E), the notations graph( f ) and f are interchangeable since they have generated
each other uniquely. Thus, we prefer the notation f to graph( f ) for brevity, provided that it results
in no confusion.

Definition 2 ([16,22]). Let α be a function such that α : E → PF (U ). Then, the graphic

{( x, α(( x, μ( x ), η ( x ), ν( x )))) : x ∈ E}

is called a picture fuzzy soft set (pfs-set) parameterized via E over U (or briefly over U).

Throughout this paper, the set of all the pfs-sets over U is symbolized by PFSE (U ).

Remark 2. In PFSE (U ), the notations graph(α) and α are interchangeable since they have gener-
ated each other uniquely. Thus, we prefer the notation α to graph(α) for brevity, provided that it
results in no confusion.

Example 1. Let E = { x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 } and U = {u1 , u2 , u3 , u4 , u5 }. Then,

 0.8 0.1 1   0.6  0    0.7 

α= x1 , 0.1 u1 , 0.2 u3 , 0 u5 , x2 , 0.4 u2 , 0.5 u4 , x3 , 0 u3 ,
0.1 0.7 0 0 0.5 0.2
 0.1 0.4 
x4 , 0.3 u2 , 0.2 u5
0.2 0.4

is a pfs-set over U.

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Electronics 2023, 12, 4129

3. Motivations of the Redefining of pfs-Matrices

This section discusses the definition, fundamental operations, and counter-examples
to Arikrishnan and Sriram’s definition [20], based on Cuong’s definition [16], considering
the notations employed throughout the rest of the study.

Definition 3 ([16]). Let κ : E → [0, 1] × [0, 1] × [0, 1]. Then, the graphic
 μ(x)   
{( x, κ ( x )) : x ∈ E} = η (x) x :x∈E
ν( x )

is called a picture fuzzy set (pf-set) over E such that μ( x ) + η ( x ) + ν( x ) ≤ 1.

In this section, the set of all the pf -sets over E according to Cuong’s definition is
denoted by PFC ( E) and κ ∈ PFC ( E).

Definition 4 ([16]). Let κ1 , κ2 ∈ PFC ( E). For all x ∈ E, if μ1 ( x ) ≤ μ2 ( x ), η1 ( x ) ≤ η2 ( x ), and

ν1 ( x ) ≥ ν2 ( x ), then κ1 is called a subset of κ2 and is denoted by κ1 ⊆
˜ κ2 .

Definition 5 ([16]). Let κ1 , κ2 ∈ PFC ( E). If κ1 ⊆

˜ κ2 and κ2 ⊆
˜ κ1 , then κ1 and κ2 are called equal
pf-sets and are denoted by κ1 = κ2 .

Definition 6 ([16]). Let κ1 , κ2 , κ3 ∈ PFC ( E). For all x ∈ E, if μ3 ( x ) = max{μ1 ( x ), μ2 ( x )},

η3 ( x ) = min{η1 ( x ), η2 ( x )}, and ν3 ( x ) = min{ν1 ( x ), ν2 ( x )}, then κ3 is called union of κ1 and
κ2 and is denoted by κ3 = κ1 ∪ ˜ κ2 .

Definition 7 ([16]). Let κ1 , κ2 , κ3 ∈ PFC ( E). For all x ∈ E, if μ3 ( x ) = min{μ1 ( x ), μ2 ( x )},

η3 ( x ) = min{η1 ( x ), η2 ( x )}, and ν3 ( x ) = max{ν1 ( x ), ν2 ( x )}, then κ3 is called intersection of κ1
and κ2 and is denoted by κ3 = κ1 ∩ ˜ κ2 .

Definition 8 ([16]). Let κ1 , κ2 ∈ PFC ( E). For all x ∈ E, if μ2 ( x ) = ν1 ( x ), η2 ( x ) = η1 ( x ), and

ν2 ( x ) = μ1 ( x ), then κ2 is called complement of κ1 and is denoted by κ2 = κ1c̃ .

To hold the conditions “Empty pf -set over E is a subset of all the pf -set over E” and
“All pf -sets over E are the subset of universal pf -set over E”, the definition and operations
of pf -sets in [16] must be as follows [21]:

Definition 9 ([21]). Let κ ∈ PFC ( E). For  x ∈ E, if μ( x ) = 0, η ( x ) = 0, and ν( x ) = 1, then

0all
κ is called empty pf-set and is denoted by 0 EC or 0EC .
1

Definition 10 ([21]). Let κ ∈ PFC ( E). For all x ∈ E, if μ( x ) = 1, η ( x ) = 1, and ν( x ) = 0, then

1
κ is called universal pf-set and is denoted by 1 EC or 1EC .
0

Cuong’s definitions have led to the inconsistencies in Examples 2 and 3 [21]:

Example 2 ([21]). There is a contradiction in Definition 10 since 1 + 1 + 0  1, i.e., 1EC ∈

/
PFC ( E). Moreover, even if 1EC ∈ PFC ( E), (1EC )c̃ = 0EC .
0.1 
Example 3 ([21]). Let κ ∈ PFC ( E) such that κ = 0.2 x . Then, κ ∪
˜ 0E = κ and κ ∪
˜ 1EC = 1EC .
0.3

Therefore, Memiş [21] has provided the definition and operations of pf -sets in [16] to
overcome the aforementioned inconsistencies.

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Definition 11 ([16,18]). A ⊆ E. The set

  μ(x)   
x, FA η (x) x :x∈A⊆E
ν( x )

is called a pfs-set over U, where FA is a mapping given by F : A → PFC (U ).

In this section, the set of all the pfs-sets over U according to Cuong’s definition is
denoted by PFSC (U ) and FA ∈ PFSC (U ).
Cuong [16] defined pfs-sets based on his own definition and operations of pf -sets. As a
result, the inconsistencies mentioned earlier also apply to his concept of pfs-sets. Addition-
ally, Yang et al. [18] claimed to have introduced the concept of pf -sets, even though Cuong
had already defined it in [16]. Thus, the concept of pfs-sets has also similar inconsistencies
therein. Hence, pfs-sets were redefined to deal with inconsistencies mentioned above [22].
Furthermore, the concept of pfs-matrices has similar inconsistencies therein, since
Arikrishnan and Sriram [20] have introduced the pfs-matrices according to Cuong’s defini-
tion [16] and defined their union, intersection, and complement.

Definition 12 ([20]). Let FA ∈ PFSC (U ). Then, [ aij ] is called pfs-matrix of FA and defined by
⎡ ⎤
a11 a12 a13 ... a1n ...
⎢ ⎥
⎢ a21 a22 a23 ... a2n ... ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ .. .. .. .. .. .. ⎥
[ aij ] := ⎢
⎢ . . . . . . ⎥⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ am1 am2 am3 ... amn ... ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ ⎦
.. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . .

such that for i ∈ {1, 2, · · · } and j ∈ {1, 2, · · · },

 μ(x )  
j
aij := FA η ( x j ) x j ( ui )
ν( x j )

Here, if |U | = m and | E| = n, then [ aij ] has order m × n.

In the present study, the membership, neutral membership, and non-membership

degrees of [ aij ], i.e., μij , ηij , and νij , will be denoted by μija , ηija , and νija , respectively, as long as
they do not cause any confusion. Moreover, the set of all the pfs-matrices over U according
to Arikrishnan and Sriram’s definition is denoted by PFS AS [U ] and FA ∈ PFS AS [U ].
It must be noted that the following definitions from [20] expressed the notations
employed throughout the present paper. Definitions of inclusion and equality in the
pfs-matrices space is provided according to Arikrishnan and Sriram’s definitions.

Definition 13. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFS AS [U ]. For all i and j, if μija ≤ μijb , ηija ≤ ηijb , and νija ≥ νijb ,
then [ aij ] is called a submatrix of [bij ] and is denoted by [ aij ]⊆[
˜ bij ].

Definition 14. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFS AS [U ]. For all i and j, if μija = μijb , ηija = ηijb , and νija = νijb ,
then [ aij ] and [bij ] are called equal pfs-matrices and denoted by [ aij ] = [bij ].

Definition 15 ([20]). Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFS AS [U ]. For all i and j, if μijc = max{μija , μijb },
ηijc = min{ηija , ηijb }, and νijc = min{νija , νijb }, then [cij ] is called union of [ aij ] and [bij ] and denoted
by [ aij ]∪[
˜ bij ].

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Definition 16 ([20]). Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFS AS [U ]. For all i and j, if μijc = min{μija , μijb },
ηijc = min{ηija , ηijb }, and νijc = max{νija , νijb }, then [cij ] is called intersection of [ aij ] and [bij ] and
denoted by [ aij ]∩[
˜ bij ].

Definition 17 ([20]). Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFS AS [U ]. For all i and j, if μijb = νija , ηijb = ηija , and
νijb = μija , then [bij ] is complement of [ aij ] and denoted by [ aij ]c̃ .

According to Arikrishnan and Sriram’s definitions, the definitions of empty and

universal pfs-matrices must be defined as in Definitions 18 and 19, respectively, to hold the
conditions “Empty pfs-matrices over U is a submatrix of all the pfs-matrices over U” and
“All pfs-matrices over U are the submatix of universal pfs-matrix over U”.

Definition 18. Let [ aij ] ∈ PFS AS [U ]. For all i and j, if μij = 0, ηij = 0, and νij = 1, then [ aij ] is
!0"
empty pfs-matrix and is denoted by 0 .
1

Definition 19. Let [ aij ] ∈ PFS AS [U ]. For all i and j, if μij = 1, ηij = 1, and νij = 0, then [ aij ] is
!1"
universal pfs-matrix and is denoted by 1 .
0

Arikrishnan and Sriram’s definitions have resulted in the inconsistencies in

Examples 4 and 5:
!1"
Example 4. There is a contradiction in Definition 19 since 1 + 1 + 0  1, namely, 1 ∈
/
0
!1" !1"c̃ !0" !0"
PFS AS [U ]. Moreover, even if 1 ∈ PFS AS [U ], 1 = 1 = 0 .
0 0 1 1

⎡ 0.4 0.2 ⎤
⎢ 0.3 0.4
⎥
Example 5. Let [ aij ] ∈ PFS AS [U ] such that [ aij ] = ⎢ 0.1
⎣ 0.7
0.3
0.1
 ⎥. Then,
⎦
0.1 0.5
0.1 0.2
⎡ 0.4 0.2 ⎤ ⎡ 0.4 0.2 ⎤
!0" 0 0
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ 0.3 0.4
⎥
[ aij ]∪˜ 0 =⎢
⎣
0.1
0.7
 0.3
0.1
 ⎥ = ⎢ 0.1
⎦ ⎣ 0.7
0.3
0.1
 ⎥ = [ aij ]
⎦
1
0 0 0.1 0.5
0.1 0.2 0.1 0.2

and
⎡ 1 1 ⎤
!1" !1"
⎢ 0.3 0.4
⎥
[ aij ]∪˜ 1 =⎢
⎣
 01   01  ⎥ =
⎦ 1 .
0 0
0.1 0.5
0 0

Consequently, since the aforesaid definitions and operations of pfs-matrices and how
they operate are inconsistent, this concept and its operations must be redefined.

4. Picture Fuzzy Soft Matrices (pfs-Matrices)

Cuong [16] and Yang et al. [18] have introduced the concept of pfs-sets to address
the need for more general mathematical modeling of specific issues involving additional
uncertainties. In addition, Yang et al. [18] have proposed an adjustable soft discernibility
approach based on pfs-sets and applied it to a decision-making problem. Memiş [22]
has redefined the concept of pfs-sets and applied it to a project selection problem. The
applications described in the aforementioned studies demonstrate the successful use of

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pfs-sets in addressing various issues with the uncertainties modeled by membership, non-
membership, and neutral degrees, namely picture fuzzy uncertainties. These results
suggest that researching the idea of pfs-sets is worthwhile. However, it is important to
note that these ideas have drawbacks, such as complexity and lengthy computation times.
Therefore, it is crucial to understand their matrix representations, i.e., pfs-matrices, and
ensure their theoretical consistency in the context of computerizing the aforementioned
problems. For instance, for utilizing pfs-sets in machine learning, pfs-matrices, which are
matrix representation of pfs-sets, and their consistent theoretical definition and operations
are needed.
Thus, in the present section, we make consistent the idea of pfs-matrices and present
some of its fundamental properties. Since some of the propositions in this section have
elementary proof, only the propositions with the complex proof are demonstrated.

Definition 20. Let α ∈ PFSE (U ) (See Definition 2). Then, [ aij ] is called pfs-matrix of α and
defined by
⎡ ⎤
a11 a12 a13 ... a1n ...
⎢ ⎥
⎢ a21 a22 a23 ... a2n ... ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ .. .. .. .. .. .. ⎥
[ aij ] := ⎢
⎢ . . . . . . ⎥⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ am1 am2 am3 ... amn ... ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ ⎦
.. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . .
such that for i ∈ {1, 2, · · · } and j ∈ {1, 2, · · · },
 μ(x )  
j
aij := α η ( x j ) x j ( ui )
ν( x j )

Here, if |U | = m and | E| = n, then [ aij ] has order m × n.

In the present study, the membership, neutral membership, and non-membership

degrees of [ aij ], i.e., μij , ηij , and νij , will be denoted by μija , ηija , and νija , respectively, as long
as they do not cause any confusion. Moreover, the set of all the pfs-matrices parameterized
via E over U (briefly over U) is denoted by PFSE [U ] and [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ].

Example 6. The pfs-matrix of α given in Example 1 is as follows:

⎡         ⎤
0.8 0 0 0
⎢ 0.1 1 1 1⎥
⎢ 0.1 1 1 1⎥
⎢ 0 0.6 0 0.1 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0 0.4 1 0.3 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 1
0.1
0
0
1
0.7 0 ⎥
0.2
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
[ aij ] = ⎢ 0.2 1 0 0 ⎥
⎢ 0.7 1 0.2 1 ⎥
⎢ 0 0 0 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0 1 1 1 ⎥
⎢ 1 1 1 1 ⎥
⎢ 1 0 0 0.4 ⎥
⎣ ⎦
0 0.5 1 0.2
0 0.5 1 0.4

Definition 21. Let [ aij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. For all i and j, if μij = λ, ηij = ε, and νij = ω, then [ aij ] is
! λ " !0" !1"
(λ, ε, ω )-pfs-matrix and denoted by ε . Moreover, 1 is empty pfs-matrix and 0 is
ω 1 0
universal pfs-matrix.

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Definition 22. Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ], IE := { j : x j ∈ E}, and R ⊆ IE . For all i and j, if
⎧ ⎧ ⎧
⎨ μija , j∈R ⎨ ηija , j∈R ⎨ νija , j∈R
μijc = , ηijc = , and νijc =
⎩ μb , j ∈ IE \ R ⎩ ηb , j ∈ IE \ R ⎩ νb , j ∈ IE \ R
ij ij ij

!0"
then [cij ] is called Rb-restriction of [ aij ] and is denoted by [( a Rb )ij ]. Briefly, if [bij ] = 1 , then
1
[( a R )ij ] can be used instead of [( a Rb )ij ]. It is clear that
⎧ $ a%
⎪ μij
⎪
⎪ j∈R
⎪ ηa
⎨ νija ,
( a R )ij =
ij

⎪ 0
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎩ 1 , j ∈ IE \ R
1

Definition 23. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. For all i and j, if μija ≤ μijb , ηija ≥ ηijb , and νija ≥ νijb ,
then [ aij ] is called a submatrix of [bij ] and denoted by [ aij ]⊆[
˜ bij ].

Definition 24. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. For all i and j, if μija = μijb , ηija = ηijb , and νija = νijb ,
then [ aij ] and [bij ] are called equal pfs-matrices and denoted by [ aij ] = [bij ].

Proposition 1. Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. Then,

!1"
i. [ aij ]⊆ 0
˜
0
!0"
ii. 1 ⊆[
˜ aij ]
1

iii. [ aij ]⊆[

˜ aij ]
& '
iv. [ aij ]⊆[˜ bij ] ∧ [bij ]⊆[
˜ aij ] ⇔ [ aij ] = [bij ]
& '
v. [ aij ]⊆[˜ bij ] ∧ [bij ]⊆[
˜ cij ] ⇒ [ aij ]⊆[
˜ cij ]
& '
vi. [ aij ] = [bij ] ∧ [bij ] = [cij ] ⇒ [ aij ] = [cij ]

Proof. The proofs of i-vi are straightforward.

Remark 3. From Proposition 1, it is straightforward that the inclusion relation herein is a partial
ordering relation in PFSE [U ].

Definition 25. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. If [ aij ]⊆[

˜ bij ] and [ aij ] = [bij ], then [ aij ] is called a
proper submatrix of [bij ] and denoted by [ aij ][
˜ bij ].

Definition 26. Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. For all i and j, if μijc = max{μija , μijb }, ηijc =
min{ηija , ηijb }, and νijc = min{νija , νijb }, then [cij ] is called union of [ aij ] and [bij ] and denoted by
[ aij ]∪[
˜ bij ].

Definition 27. Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. For all i and j, if μijc = min{μija , μijb }, ηijc =
max{ηija , ηijb }, and νijc = max{νija , νijb }, then [cij ] is called intersection of [ aij ] and [bij ] and denoted
by [ aij ]∩[
˜ bij ].

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Example 7. Assume that two pfs-matrices [ aij ] and [bij ] are as follows:
⎡ 0.2 0 1 ⎤ ⎡ 0.6 0.7 0.5 ⎤
0.3 1 0 0.2 0.2 0.4
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢   0.5 1
0.6 0.9 ⎥
0 ⎢   0.1 0
1 0.1 ⎥
0.1
⎢ 0.1 ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ 0
⎥
[ aij ] = ⎢ 0.5 0.4 0 ⎥ and [bij ] = ⎢ 1 0 0.8 ⎥
⎢ 0.2 0 0.1 ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢   0.8 0.5 ⎥ ⎢ 1 0.1
0 0.1
1 ⎥
⎣ 1 ⎦ ⎣ 0.4 ⎦
0 0 0.1 0.3 0.3 0
0 0 0.2 0.3 0.2 0

Then,
⎡ 0.6 0.7 1 ⎤ ⎡ 0.2 0 0.5 ⎤
0.2 0.2 0 0.3 1 0.4
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢   0.1 0
1 0.9 ⎥
0 ⎢   0.5 1
0.6 0.1 ⎥
0.1
⎢ 0.1 ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
˜ bij ] = ⎢ ⎥ ˜ bij ] = ⎢ ⎥
0
[ aij ]∪[ ⎢ 0.5 0 0 ⎥ and [ aij ]∩[ ⎢ 1 0.4 0.8 ⎥
⎢ 0.2 0 0.1 ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢   0.6 1 ⎥ ⎢ 1 0
0.1
0.1
0.5 ⎥
⎣ 1 ⎦ ⎣ 0.4 ⎦
0 0 0 0.3 0.3 0.1
0 0 0 0.3 0.2 0.2

Proposition 2. Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. Then,

i. [ aij ]∪[
˜ aij ] = [ aij ] and [ aij ]∩[
˜ aij ] = [ aij ]
!0" !0" !0"
ii. [ aij ]∪˜ 1 = [ aij ] and [ aij ]∩ 1 =
˜ 1
1 1 1
!1" !1" !1"
iii. [ aij ]∪
˜ 0 = 0 and [ aij ]∩
˜ 0 = [ aij ]
0 0 0

iv. [ aij ]∪[

˜ bij ] = [bij ]∪[˜ aij ] and [ aij ]∩[
˜ bij ] = [bij ]∩[
˜ aij ]
& ' & ' & ' & '
v. [ aij ]∪[ ˜ bij ] ∪[
˜ cij ] = [ aij ]∪
˜ [bij ]∪[˜ cij ] and [ aij ]∩[˜ bij ] ∩[
˜ cij ] = [ aij ]∩
˜ [bij ]∩[
˜ cij ]
& ' & ' & '
vi. [ aij ]∪ ˜ [bij ]∩[
˜ cij ] = [ aij ]∪[ ˜ bij ] ∩˜ [ aij ]∪[
˜ cij ] and
& ' & ' & '
[ aij ]∩˜ [bij ]∪[
˜ cij ] = [ aij ]∩[ ˜ bij ] ∪˜ [ aij ]∩[
˜ cij ]

Proof. vi. Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. Then,

⎡$ %⎤
min μijb , μijc
& '
[ aij ]∪˜ [bij ]∩[ ˜⎣
˜ cij ] = [ aij ]∪ max ηijb , ηijc ⎦
max νijb , νijc
⎡$ %⎤
max μija , min μijb , μijc
= ⎣ min ηija , max ηijb , ηijc ⎦
min νija , max νijb , νijc
⎡$ %⎤
min max μija , μijb , max μija , μijc
= ⎣ max min ηija , ηijb , min ηija , ηijc ⎦
max min νija , νijb , min νija , νijc
⎡$ %⎤ ⎡$max %⎤
max μija , μijb μija , μijc
= ⎣ min ηija , ηijb ˜ ⎣ min
⎦∩ ηija , ηijc ⎦
min νija , νijb min νija , νijc
& ' & '
= [ aij ]∪[
˜ bij ] ∩
˜ [ aij ]∪[
˜ cij ]
& ' & ' & '
The proof of [ aij ]∩
˜ [bij ]∪[
˜ cij ] = [ aij ]∩[
˜ bij ] ∪
˜ [ aij ]∩[
˜ cij ] is similar to the aforemen-
tioned proof. In addition, the proofs of i-v are straightforward.

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Definition 28. Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. For all i and j, if μijc = min{μija , νijb }, ηijc =
max{ηija , 1 − ηijb }, and νijc = max{νija , μijb }, then [cij ] is called difference between [ aij ] and [bij ] and
denoted by [ a ]\[˜ b ].
ij ij

Proposition 3. Let [ aij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. Then,

!0"
˜
i. [ aij ]\ 1 = [ aij ]
1
!1" !0"
ii. [ aij ]\˜ 0 = 1
0 1

Proof. The proofs of i and ii are straightforward.

Remark 4. It must be emphasized that the difference operation herein is non-commutative and
non-associative.

Definition 29. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. For all i and j, if μijb = νija , ηijb = 1 − ηija , and νijb = μija ,
!1"
then [bij ] is complement of [ aij ] and denoted by [ aij ] or [ aij ]. It is clear that [ aij ] =
c̃ c̃ c̃ 0 ˜ a ].
\[ ij
0

Proposition 4. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. Then,

& 'c̃
i. [ aij ]c̃ = [ aij ]
!0"c̃ !1"
ii. 1 = 0
1 0

˜ b ] = [ a ]∩[
iii. [ aij ]\[ ij ˜ bij ]
c̃
ij

iv. [ aij ]⊆[

˜ bij ] ⇒ [bij ]c̃ ⊆[
˜ aij ]c̃

Proof. The proofs of i-iv are straightforward.

Proposition 5. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. Then, the following De Morgan’s laws are valid.
& '
˜ bij ] c̃ = [ aij ]c̃ ∩[
i. [ aij ]∪[ ˜ bij ]c̃
& '
˜ bij ] c̃ = [ aij ]c̃ ∪[
ii. [ aij ]∩[ ˜ bij ]c̃

Proof. i. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. Then,

($ %)c̃
& 'c̃ max{μija , μijb }
[ aij ]∪[
˜ bij ] = min{ηija , ηijb }
min{νija , νijb }
($ %)
min{νija , νijb }
= 1 − min{ηija , ηijb }
max{μija , μijb }
($ %)
min{νija , νijb }
= max{1 − ηija , 1 − ηijb }
max{μija , μijb }
($ %) ($ %)
νija νijb
= 1 − ηija ∩˜ 1 − ηijb
μija μijb

* +c̃ * +c̃
= aij ∩˜ bij

The proof of ii is similar to the aforementioned proof.

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Definition 30. Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. For all i and j, if

μijc = max min{μija , νijb }, min{μijb , νija }

ηijc = min max{ηija , 1 − ηijb }, max{ηijb , 1 − ηija }

and
νijc = min max{νija , μijb }, max{νijb , μija }

˜ bij ].
then [cij ] is called symmetric difference between [ aij ] and [bij ] and denoted [ aij ][

Proposition 6. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. Then,

!0"
˜
i. [ aij ] 1 = [ aij ]
1
!1"
˜
ii. [ aij ] 0 = [ aij ]c̃
0

˜ bij ] = [bij ][

iii. [ aij ][ ˜ aij ]
 
˜ b ] ∪
˜ bij ] = [ aij ]\[
iv. [ aij ][ ˜ a ]
˜ [bij ]\[
ij ij

Proof. iv. Let [ aij ], [bij ] ∈ PFSE [U ]. Then,

⎡$ %⎤
max min μija , νijb , min μijb , νija
˜ bij ] = ⎣
[ aij ][ min max ηija , 1 − ηijb , max ηijb , 1 − ηija ⎦
min max νija , μijb , max νijb , μija
⎡$ %⎤ ⎡$ min μb , νa %⎤
min μija , νijb ij ij

= ⎣ max ηija , 1 − ηijb ˜ ⎣ max ηijb , 1 − ηija ⎦

⎦∪
max νija , μijb max νija , νijc
 
= ˜ b ] ∪
[ aij ]\[ ˜ a ]
˜ [bij ]\[
ij ij

The proofs of i-iii are similar to the proof mentioned above.

Remark 5. It must be emphasized that the symmetric difference operation herein is non-associative.

5. Distance Measures of pfs-Matrices

This section, firstly, defines the concept of metrics over PFSE [U ]. One of the significant
goals herein is to contribute to pf -sets and soft sets theoretically. The other goal is to improve
the modeling skill of pfs-matrices for classification problems in machine learning owing to
the aforementioned theoretical contribution. Throughout this study, let In = {1, 2, . . . , n}.

Definition 31. Let d : PFSE [U ] × PFSE [U ] → R be a function. Then, d is a metric over

PFSE [U ] for all [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ] if d satisfies the following properties,
& '
i. d [ aij ], [bij ] = 0 ⇔ [ aij ] = [bij ]
& ' & '
ii. d [ aij ], [bij ] = d [bij ], [ aij ]
& ' & ' & '
iii. d [ aij ], [bij ] ≤ d [ aij ], [cij ] + d [cij ], [bij ]

Secondly, Minkowski, Euclidean, and Hamming metrics over PFSE [U ] are propounded.
Thereafter, their three properties are investigated.

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p
Proposition 7. The function d M : PFSE [U ] × PFSE [U ] → R defined by
 1
1 m n  a p  p  p  p p
      
∑ ∑
p
d M ([ aij ], [bij ]) := μij − μijb  + ηija − ηijb  + νija − νijb  + πija − πijb 
3 i =1 j =1

such that p ∈ N+ is Minkowski metric over PFSE [U ]. Its normalized version, namely normalized
Minkowski metric, is defined as follows:
 1
m  n p  p  p  p p
1        
∑ ∑ μija − μijb  + ηija − ηijb  + νija − νijb  + πija − πijb 
p
dˆM ([ aij ], [bij ]) :=
3mn i =1 j =1

such that p ∈ N+ .

Specifically, d1M and d2M are Hamming and Euclidean metrics and represented by
d H and d E , respectively. Moreover, dˆ1M and dˆ2M are normalized Hamming and Euclidean
metrics and are represented by dˆH and dˆE , respectively.

Proof. Let [ aij ], [bij ], [cij ] ∈ PFSE [U ] and p ∈ N+ . Satisfying of d M the conditions i and ii is
p

straightforward from Definition 31. Then,

 1
 p  p  p  p p
p m  n       
iii. d M ([ aij ], [bij ]) = 1
3 ∑ ∑ μija − μijb  + ηija − ηijb  + νija − νijb  + πija − πijb 
i =1 j =1

m n  p  p
  
= 1
3 ∑ ∑ μija − μijc + μijc − μijb  + ηija − ηijc + ηijc − ηijb 
i =1 j =1
 1p
 p  p
   
+νija − νijc + νijc − νijb  + πija − πijc + πijc − πijb 

m n  p  p  p  p
      
≤ 1
3 ∑ ∑ μija − μijc  + μijc − μijb  + ηija − ηijc  + ηijc − ηijb 
i =1 j =1
 1p
   p  p  p
       
+νija − νijc  + νijc − νijb  + πija − πijc  + πijc − πijb 

 1
 p  p  p  p p
m  n       
≤ 1
3 ∑ ∑ μija − μijc  + ηija − ηijc  + νija − νijc  + πija − πijc 
i =1 j =1
 1
 p  p  p  p p
m  n       
+ 1
3 ∑ ∑ μijc − μijb  + ηijc − ηijb  + νijc − νijb  + πijc − πijb 
i =1 j =1
p p
= d M ([ aij ], [cij ]) + d M ([cij ], [bij ])

Moreover, 0 ≤ |μija − μijb | ≤ 1, 0 ≤ |ηija − ηijb | ≤ 1, 0 ≤ |νija − νijb | ≤ 1, and 0 ≤ |πija − πijb | ≤ 1
because 0 ≤ μija , μijb , ηija , ηijb , νija , νijb , πija , πijb ≤ 1, for all i ∈ Im and j ∈ In . Hence,

0 ≤ |μija − μijb | p + |ηija − ηijb | p + |νija − νijb | p + |πija − πijb | p

≤ |μija − μijb | + |ηija − ηijb | + |νija − νijb | + |πija − πijb |

≤ |μija | + |μijb | + |ηija − ηijb | + |νija | + |νijb | + |πija | + |πijb |

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= μija + μijb + |ηija − ηijb | + νija + νijb + πija + πijb

= μija + μijb + |ηija − ηijb | + νija + νijb + (1 − μija − νija ) + (1 − μijb − νijb )

= 2 + |ηija − ηijb |
≤3
Then,
 1  1
m n p m n p
p
1
3mn ∑ ∑ 0 ≤ dˆM ([ aij ], [bij ]) ≤ 1
3mn ∑ ∑ 3
i =1 j =1 i =1 j =1
 1
p p
0 ≤ dˆM ([ aij ], [bij ]) ≤ 1
3mn 3mn
p
0 ≤ dˆM ([ aij ], [bij ]) ≤ 1

!0" !1"
Proposition 8. Let 1 , 0 ∈ PFSE [U ] and p ∈ N+ . Then,
1 m×n 0 m×n
!0" !1" !0" !1"
p √ p
dM 1 , 0 = p mn and dˆM 1 , 0 =1
1 0 1 0

Proof. The proof is straightforward.

p & ' √
Proposition 9. Let [ aij ]m×n , [bij ]m×n ∈ PFSE [U ] and p ∈ N+ . Then, d M [ aij ], [bij ] ≤ p mn.

Proof. The proof is straightforward.

Proposition 10. Let [ aij ]m×n , [bij ]m×n , [cij ]m×n ∈ PFSE [U ] and p ∈ N+ . Then,
 & ' & ' & ' & '
i. [ aij ]⊆[ ˜ cij ] ⇒ d p [ aij ], [bij ] ≤ d p [ aij ], [cij ] ∧ d p [bij ], [cij ] ≤ d p [ aij ], [cij ]
˜ bij ]⊆[
M M M M
 & ' & ' & ' & '
ii. [ aij ]⊆[ ˜ cij ] ⇒ dˆp [ aij ], [bij ] ≤ dˆp [ aij ], [cij ] ∧ dˆp [bij ], [cij ] ≤ dˆp [ aij ], [cij ]
˜ bij ]⊆[
M M M M

Proof. The proofs of i and ii are straightforward.

6. Picture Fuzzy Soft k-Nearest Neighbor Classifier: PFS-kNN

In this section, firstly, the basic expressions and notations to be required for the
suggested PFS-kNN based on pfs-matrices are provided. Throughout the paper, let D =
[dij ]m×(n+1) represent a data matrix. The last column of D consists of class labels of the data.
Here, m and n are the numbers of samples and attributes in D, respectively. Moreover, let
( Dtrain )m1 ×n , Cm1 ×1 , and ( Dtest )m2 ×n derived from attained D denote a training matrix, class
matrix of the training matrix, and the testing matrix, respectively, such that m1 + m2 = m.
Moreover, let Uk×1 be a matrix comprising of unique class labels of Cm1 ×1 . Further, let
Di−train and Di−test represent ith rows of Dtrain and Dtest , respectively. In a similar manner,
Dtrain− j and Dtest− j represent jth rows of Dtrain and Dtest , respectively. Furthermore, let

Tm2 ×1 stand for the predicted classes of the testing queries.

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Definition 32. Let u ∈ Rn . Then, the vector û ∈ Rn such that j ∈ In defined by

⎧
⎪ u j −min{uk }
⎪
⎪ k∈ In
⎨ max{uk }−min{uk } , max{uk } = min{uk }
k ∈ In k ∈ In
û j := k ∈ In k ∈ In
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎩ 1, max{uk } = min{uk }
k ∈ In k ∈ In

is called normalized u, i.e., normalizing vector of u.

Definition 33. Consider the training matrix ( Dtrain )m1 ×n attained from D = [dij ]m×(n+1) ,
i ∈ Im1 , and j ∈ In . Then, the matrix defined by
⎧
⎪ dij−train − min {dkj }
⎪
⎪ k∈ Im
⎨ max{dkj }− min {dkj } , max{dkj } = min{dkj }
k∈ Im k∈ Im
d˜ij−train := k∈ Im k∈ Im
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎩ 1, max{dkj } = min{dkj }
k∈ Im k∈ Im

is called feature-fuzzification matrix of Dtrain , namely column normalized matrix of Dtrain , and it is
denoted by D̃train = [d˜ij−train ]m1 ×n .

Definition 34. Consider the testing matrix ( Dtest )m2 ×n attained from D = [dij ]m×(n+1) , i ∈ Im2 ,
and j ∈ In . Then, the matrix defined by
⎧
⎪ dij−test − min {dkj }
⎪
⎪ k ∈ Im
⎨ max{dkj }− min {dkj } , max{dkj } = min{dkj }
k∈ Im k∈ Im
d˜ij−test := k ∈ Im k ∈ Im
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎩ 1, max{dkj } = min{dkj }
k∈ Im k∈ Im

is called feature-fuzzification matrix of Dtest , namely column normalized matrix of Dtest , and it is
denoted by D̃test = [d˜ij−test ]m1 ×n .

Definition 35. Let D̃train = [d˜ij−train ]m1 ×n be a feature-fuzzification matrix of ( Dtrain )m1 ×n .
Then, the matrix ⎡$ ˜ λ %⎤
μijD̃−train
˜
D̃ λ
= [d ˜λ
]= ⎣ ηijD̃−train ⎦
˜λ
train train−ij ˜λ
νijD̃−train
m1 × n

is called feature picture fuzzification of D̃train and is defined by

˜λ ˜λ d˜ij−train ˜λ
μijD̃−train := 1 − (1 − d˜ij−train )λ , ηijD̃−train := , and νijD̃−train := (1 − d˜ij−train )λ(λ+1)
λ
such that i ∈ Im1 , j ∈ In , and λ ∈ [0, ∞).

Definition 36. Let D̃test = [d˜ij−test ]m2 ×n be a feature-fuzzification matrix of ( Dtest )m2 ×n . Then,
the matrix ⎡$ %⎤ ˜λ
μijD̃−test
˜ λ = [d˜λ ⎣ ⎦
test−ij ] =
˜λ
D̃ test ηijD̃−test
˜λ
νij−test
D̃
m2 × n

is called feature picture fuzzification of D̃test and is defined by

˜λ ˜λ d˜ij−test ˜λ
μijD̃−test := 1 − (1 − d˜ij−test )λ , ηijD̃−test := , and νijD̃−test := (1 − d˜ij−test )λ(λ+1)
λ
such that i ∈ Im2 , j ∈ In , and λ ∈ [0, ∞).

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Definition 37.⎡Let ( D̃train )m ×n be a feature-fuzzification matrix of ( Dtrain )m1 ×n and D̃˜ train
λ =
$ ˜ λ %⎤ 1
μijD̃−train
[d˜λtrain−ij ] = ⎣ ˜λ
ηijD̃−train ⎦ be the picture fuzzification of D̃train . Then, the pfs-matrix
˜λ
νijD̃−train
! " m1 ×n
˜λ
D̃ ˜λ
bij k−train ˜ λ and is defined by bD̃k−train :=
is the training pfs-matrix attained by kth row of D̃ train 1j
$ ˜λ % 1×n
μkj
D̃
−train
˜λ
ηkjD̃−train such that k ∈ Im1 and j ∈ In .
˜λ
νkjD̃−train

Definition ⎡38. Let ( D̃ ˜λ

test )m2 ×n be a a feature-fuzzification matrix of ( Dtest )m2 ×n and D̃test =
$ D̃˜ λ %⎤ ! "
μij−test ˜λ
˜ D̃
[d λ ]= ⎣ ˜λ
ηij−test
D̃ ⎦ be the picture fuzzification of D̃test . Then, the pfs-matrix a k−test
test−ij ˜λ
ij
νijD̃−test 1×n
m2 ×n
$ ˜λ %
˜λ μkj
D̃
−test
˜ λ and is defined by aD̃k−test :=
is called the testing pfs-matrix attained by kth row of D̃ ˜λ
ηkj−test
D̃
such
test 1j ˜λ
νkjD̃−test
that k ∈ Im1 and j ∈ In .

Secondly, a new classifier named PFS-kNN employing the Minkowski metric of pfs-
matrices is suggested (Algorithm 1). Pseudocode of the proposed PFS-kNN is presented
in Algorithm 1. In Line 1, it obtains feature fuzzification of testing and training matrices
required for feature picture fuzzification. In Line 2, the feature picture fuzzification of
testing and training matrices utilizing their feature fuzzification versions. The aim herein is
to make the data ready in a way that can be used in the distance calculation of pfs-matrices.
In Lines 3–4, the ith testing pfs-matrix is constructed by extracting ith sample from the
feature picture fuzzification of the testing matrix. Similarly, in Lines 5–6, the jth training
pfs-matrix is constructed by extracting jth sample from the feature picture fuzzification of
the training matrix. In Line 7, the distance between the ith test sample and the jth training
sample is calculated utilizing the Minkowski metric over the pfs-matrices in accordance
with Proposition 7, and Dm j1 is attained. In Line 9, k-nearest neighbor according to the
matrix of picture fuzzy soft distances, namely Dm j1 , is determined. In Line 10, the most
repetitive class label (predicted class label) of the determined k-nearest neighbor is obtained.
In Line 11, the predicted class label, particularly diagnosis label in medical diagnosis, is
assigned to the test sample. In Line 12–13, finally, the predicted label (class) matrix is
created for the test queries.

Algorithm 1 PFS-kNN’s pseudocode

Input: ( Dtrain )m1 ×n , Cm1 ×1 , ( Dtest )m2 ×n , k, λ, and p

Output: Tm2 ×1
PFS-kNN(Dtrain , C, Dtest , k, λ, p)
1: Calculate feature fuzzification of Dtest and Dtrain , i.e., D̃test and D̃train  See Definition 33 and 34
2: Calculate feature picture fuzzification of D̃test and D̃train , i.e., D̃ ˜ λ and D̃
˜λ  See Definition 35 and 36
test train
3: for i from 1 to m2 do ! ˜λ "
D̃ ˜λ
4: Calculate the testing pfs-matrix a i−test ij employing D̃ i −test
1× n
5: for j from 1 to m1 do ( )
˜ λ2
D̃
6: Calculate the training pfs-matrix bij
j−train ˜λ
employing D̃ j−train
( ) ( ) 1× n
˜ λ2
D̃ ˜ λ2
D̃
p
7: Dm j1 ← dM aij k−test , bij k−train  See Proposition 7

8: end for
9: Find k-nearest neighbor using [ Dm j1 ]
10: Find the most repetitive class label in the considered k-nearest neighbor

11: tk1 ← most repetitive class label (predicted class label)
12: end for

13: return Tm2 ×1

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7. Application of PFS-kNN to Medical Diagnosis

In this section, firstly, details of the datasets used in simulation and the setting of the
compared classifiers are provided according to the methodology presented in Figure 4.
Afterward, the performance metrics for classification problems are introduced. Finally,
simulation results for several medical datasets in UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository
(UCI-MLR) [35] are presented, and the discussion of the results are provided.

Medical Dataset

5-fold Cross Validation (CV)

Test Train
Partition 1 Partition 2 Partition 3 Partition 4 Partition 5

Traning Phase of the Algorithms

kNN Fuzzy kNN WkNN IFROWANN LCkNN GMkNN LMRkNN BM-Fuzzy kNN PFS-kNN
(Cover and (Keller et al., (Dubey and (Ramentol et (Gou et al., (Gou et al., (Gou et al., (Kumbure et al., (Proposed,
Hart, 1967) 1985) Pudi, 2013) al., 2015) 2019a) 2019b) 2019c) 2020) 2023)

Classify the testing samples

Test

Accuracy Results Precision Results Recall Results F1-Score Results

Record the results and determine the next Partition as testing

Have all Partitions been

No
determined as testing?

Yes

Repeat this process 10 times

Figure 4. Simulation methodology of the present study via kNN-based classifiers [36–43].

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7.1. Medical Datasets

One of the major motivations of this paper is the applicability of PFS-kNN in medical
diagnosis. Therefore, the well-known and commonly used four medical diagnosis datasets
in UCI-MLR [35] were chosen. This subsection offers descriptions of the following medical
datasets employed in the simulation, provided in Table 1: “Breast Tissue”, “Parkinsons[sic]”,
“Breast Cancer Wisconsin”, and “Indian Liver”.
Breast Tissue [35]: This dataset measured impedance frequencies: 15.625, 31.25, 62.5,
125, 250, 500, and 1000 KHz. The aforesaid frequencies were used to test the impedance of
freshly removed breast tissue. The impedance spectrum is formed by these data plotted in
the (actual, imaginary) plane, from which the features of the breast tissue are calculated.
The dataset can be used to predict the categorization of either the original six classes or
four classes by combining the mastopathy, fibro-adenoma, and glandular types whose
distinction is unnecessary (they cannot be differentiated accurately).
Parkinsons[sic] [35]: The dataset consists of a range of biological voice measurements
from 31 patients, 23 of whom have Parkinson’s disease. Each column in the dataset stands
for a separate vocal measure, and each row corresponds to one of these people’s 195 voice
recordings (“name” column). The major purpose of the data is to differentiate between
healthy and Parkinson’s disease patients by utilizing the “status” column, which is set to 0
for healthy and 1 for Parkinson’s disease patients.
Breast Cancer Wisconsin (Diagnostic) [35]: This dataset uses a digitized picture of a
fine needle aspirate (FNA) of a breast mass to construct characteristics. They describe the
characteristics of the cell nuclei shown in the photograph. The separation plane mentioned
above was created using the Multisurface approach-Tree (MSM-T), a classification approach
that constructs a decision tree using linear programming [44]. To locate relevant features,
an exhaustive search in the space of 1–4 features and 1–3 separation planes was utilized.
The exact linear program used to obtain the separation plane in 3-dimensional space is
described in [45].
Indian Liver Patient (ILPD) [35]: This data collection contains 416 records for liver
patients and 167 for non-liver patients. The dataset was gathered in the northeastern state
of Andhra Pradesh, India. The selector is a class label categorizing people (liver sick or not).
This data collection has 441 male and 142 female patients records. Any patient over the age
of 89 is labeled as “90”.

Table 1. Properties of several medical datasets in UCI.

No. Name Instance Number Attribute Number Class Number Imbalance

1 Breast Tissue 106 9 6 
2 Parkinsons[sic] 195 22 2 
3 Breast Cancer Wisconsin 569 30 2 
4 Indian Liver 583 10 2 

7.2. Quality Metrics for Classification Performance

In this subsection, the mathematical expressions of the quality metrics for binary
and multi classification [46], i.e., Accuracy, Precision, Sensitivity (or Recall), and F1-
Score, are presented to make a comparison of the considered classifiers. Assume that
Dtest = {y1 , y2 , . . . , yn } is n queries to be classified, T = {t1 , t2 , . . . , tn } is their ground truth
   
class sets, T = {t1 , t2 , . . . , tn } is their prediction class sets, and l is their number of the class.
The quality metrics for binary classification are as follows:

 TP + TN
Accuracy( T, T ) :=
TP + TN + FP + FN
 TP
Precision( T, T ) :=
TP + FP

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 TP
Recall( T, T ) :=
TP + FN
 2TP
F1-Score( T, T ) :=
2TP + FP + FN
where true positive (TP), true negative (TN), false positive (FP), and false negative (FN)
are defined as follows:
 
  
TP :=  y j |1 ∈ Tj ∧ 1 ∈ Tj , 1 ≤ j ≤ l 

 
  
TN :=  y j |0 ∈
/ Tj ∧ 0 ∈
/ Tj , 1 ≤ j ≤ l 

 
  
FP :=  y j |0 ∈
/ Tj ∧ 1 ∈ Tj , 1 ≤ j ≤ l 

 
  
FN :=  y j |1 ∈ Tj ∧ 0 ∈
/ Tj , 1 ≤ j ≤ l 


such that |.| stands for the cardinality of a set.

The performance metrics for multi classification are as follows:

 1 l TPi + TNi
l i∑
Accuracy( T, T ) :=
=1
TPi + TN i + FPi + FNi

 1 l TPi
l i∑
Precision( T, T ) :=
=1
TPi + FPi

 1 l TPi
Recall( T, T ) := ∑
l i=1 TPi + FNi

 1 l 2TPi
F1-Score( T, T ) := ∑
l i=1 2TPi + FPi + FNi
where ith true positive (TPi ), ith true negative (TNi ), ith false positive (FPi ), and ith false
negative (FNi ) for the class i are defined as follows:
 
  
TPi :=  x j |i ∈ Tj ∧ i ∈ Tj , 1 ≤ k ≤ l 


 
  
TNi :=  x j |i ∈
/ Tj ∧ i ∈
/ Tj , 1 ≤ k ≤ l 

 
  
FPi :=  x j |i ∈
/ Tj ∧ i ∈ Tj , 1 ≤ k ≤ l 

 
  
FNi :=  / Tj , 1 ≤ k ≤ l 
x j |i ∈ Tj ∧ i ∈

such that |.| stands for the cardinality of a set.

7.3. Diagnosis Results for Medical Diagnosis

In this subsection, the comparison of PFS-kNN with the well-known and state-of-the-art
kNN-based classifiers (Table 2), i.e., kNN [36], Fuzzy kNN [37], WkNN [38], IFROWANN [39],
LCkNN [40], GMkNN [41], LMRkNN [42], and BM-Fuzzy kNN [43], is performed by em-
ploying a computer with I(R)Core(TM) I5-4200H [email protected] and 8 GB RAM and MAT-
LAB R2021b software. Random 10 runs rely on the five-fold cross-validation (CV) [47,48],
generating the classifiers’ performance results in which each CV, of which four parts are

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selected for training and the other for testing (for more details about CV, see [47]), randomly
split the considered dataset into five parts. Table 3 presents the average Accuracy, Precision,
Recall, and F1-Score results of PFS-kNN, kNN, Fuzzy kNN, WkNN, IFROWANN, LCkNN,
GMkNN, LMRkNN, and BM-Fuzzy kNN for the datasets.

Table 2. Details of the kNN-based classifier.

Number of Nearest Neigbors Employed-Concept Inverse Class Distribution Class Imbalance

Ref. Year Classifier Distance
Fixed Adaptive Crisp Fuzzy Set fr-Set pfs-Matrix Distance Impact Impact
[36] 1967 kNN   
[37] 1985 Fuzzy kNN   
[38] 2013 WkNN    
[39] 2015 IFROWANN    
[40] 2019 LCkNN   
[41] 2019 GMkNN   
[42] 2019 LMRkNN   
[43] 2020 BM-Fuzzy kNN   
Proposed 2023 PFS-kNN   

Table 3. Diagnosis performance results of the kNN-based classifiers.

Medical Datasets Classifiers Accuracy Precision Recall F1-Score

kNN 86.59 61.12 57.98 62.94
Fuzzy kNN 85.34 59.32 54.39 59.18
WkNN 86.72 61.24 58.59 62.87
IFROWANN 85.65 64.38 56.02 67.18
Breast Tissue LCkNN 75.37 20.07 23.89 40.15
GMkNN 88.45 66.72 63.55 66.45
LMRkNN 84.09 54.66 51.62 58.62
BM-Fuzzy kNN 85.57 60.82 57.79 62.09
PFS-kNN 88.51 65.34 60.84 67.95
kNN 85.03 74.57 62.16 66.53
Fuzzy kNN 84.92 73.14 64.49 67.23
WkNN 84.92 73.14 64.49 67.23
IFROWANN 68.26 44.18 100 61.08
Parkinsons[sic] LCkNN 68.05 42.07 68.80 51.38
GMkNN 83.85 68.53 68.96 67.31
LMRkNN 68.97 42.33 70.82 52.64
BM-Fuzzy kNN 78.10 55.91 63.20 58.42
PFS-kNN 91.18 89.38 73.51 79.80
kNN 92.90 92.92 87.79 90.18
Fuzzy kNN 92.46 92.29 87.18 89.57
WkNN 92.46 92.29 87.18 89.57
IFROWANN 78.07 63.25 99.53 77.27
Breast Cancer LCkNN 79.03 67.13 87.98 75.98
GMkNN 93.09 91.60 89.91 90.64
LMRkNN 86.82 81.50 83.85 82.54
BM-Fuzzy kNN 91.95 91.00 87.27 88.97
PFS-kNN 93.59 90.18 93.17 91.56
kNN 66.55 75.08 79.55 77.22
Fuzzy kNN 65.97 76.15 76.20 76.12
WkNN 65.97 76.15 76.20 76.12
IFROWANN 30.21 100 2.19 4.24
Indian Liver LCkNN 67.07 75.40 79.96 77.58
GMkNN 67.36 77.72 76.16 76.87
LMRkNN 60.93 77.33 64.04 69.97
BM-Fuzzy kNN 65.73 75.88 76.28 76.01
PFS-kNN 67.46 75.57 77.98 77.69
Accuracy, Precision, Recall, and F1-Score results are offered in percentage. The best results are shown in bold.

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Based on the results obtained from Accuracy, it is evident that PFS-kNN surpasses
all other kNN-based classifiers that were compared. This is similarly observed when it
comes to F1-Score results. However, it should be noted that the proposed approach has
lower Precision and Recall results when compared to the other classifiers. Nevertheless,
the results are still close to the highest score in general.
These simulation results manifest that pfs-matrices and PFS-kNN can model uncer-
tainty and real-world problems, such as medical diagnosis and machine learning. It is
important to note that applying these models can significantly impact the accuracy of such
issues, leading to more reliable and effective solutions. Therefore, using PFS-kNN and
pfs-matrices is recommended when dealing with similar problems.
In this study, we evaluated the Accuracy performance values of various algorithms
on four medical datasets. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of the algorithms’
performance, we ran each algorithm 50 times (10 times five-fold cross-validation) and
plotted the results as box plots in Figure 5.

95
100

95
90
90

85
Accuracy Ratio

Accuracy Ratio

85
80

75
80
70

65
75
60

55

kN
N
kN
N NN NN
kN
N NN NN kN
N
-kN
N
kN
N
kN
N NN N N
kN
N NN NN kN
N
-kN
N
Wk WA LC
k Rk Wk WA LC
k Rk
z zy O GM LM u zzy P FS z zy O GM LM u zzy P FS
Fu IFR -F Fu IFR -F
BM BM
Classifier Classifier
(a) (b)

100
75
95 70
90 65

85 60
Accuracy Ratio

Accuracy Ratio

80 55

75 50

70 45

65 40

60 35

30
55

kN
N
kN
N NN N N
kN
N NN NN kN
N
-kN
N
kN
N
kN
N NN NN
kN
N NN NN kN
N
-kN
N
Wk WA LC
k Rk Wk WA LC
k Rk
z zy O GM LM u zzy P FS z zy O GM LM u zzy P FS
Fu IFR -F Fu IFR -F
BM BM
Classifier Classifier
(c) (d)

Figure 5. Box plot of Accuracy results of 50 runs for the classifiers: (a) Breast Tissue, (b) Parkinson’s,
(c) Breast Cancer, (d) Indian Liver.

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From the visual results in Figure 5a–d, we can observe that PFS-kNN outperforms the
other algorithms, with the highest performance value and a performance value distribution
that is close to normal distribution. This indicates that PFS-kNN is a reliable algorithm for
these medical datasets.
Similarly, in Figure 5b, we see that PFS-kNN produces the highest performance re-
sults, with the 50 performance values almost following a normal distribution. Moreover,
the distance between quartiles is relatively low, suggesting that PFS-kNN is consistent
in performance.
Overall, the box plots in Figure 5 demonstrate that PFS-kNN is a superior algorithm
compared to the others evaluated in this study, and it is a promising option for medical
data analysis.

8. Discussion on PFS-kNN in Medical Diagnosis and Supervised Learning

This section discusses the significance of the proposed PFS-kNN classifier’s perfor-
mance on medical diagnosis datasets herein.
Accuracy and F1-Score Dominance:The achievement of PFS-kNN outperforming all
other kNN-based classifiers in terms of Accuracy and F1-Score is remarkable. Accuracy
measures the overall correctness of the classifier’s predictions, while the F1-Score considers
both precision and recall. These metrics are crucial in medical diagnosis, where accurately
identifying and classifying medical conditions can be a life-or-death matter. The supe-
rior performance of PFS-kNN in these areas indicates its potential as a valuable tool for
enhancing the accuracy and effectiveness of medical diagnoses.
Precision and Recall Trade-Off: While PFS-kNN performs well in terms of Accuracy
and F1-Score, it is observed to have slightly lower Precision and Recall compared to other
classifiers. Precision measures the ratio of correctly predicted positive cases to all predicted
positive cases, while Recall measures the ratio of correctly predicted positive cases to all
actual positive cases. In medical diagnosis, Precision is vital for minimizing false positive
errors, and Recall is crucial for reducing false negatives. The slightly lower Precision
and Recall values suggest that PFS-kNN might be more cautious when making positive
predictions, possibly to reduce false positive errors. However, the results are still close to
the highest scores overall, indicating a reasonable balance between these metrics.
Modeling Uncertainty and Real-World Problems: Addressing the concept of pfs-
matrices and their role in modeling uncertainty in practical scenarios, such as medical
diagnosis, is significant. Medical diagnosis frequently deals with intricate and uncertain
data, and the capability of PFS-kNN to model uncertainty is a valuable advantage. This
indicates that the classifier is flexible and resilient in handling various demanding datasets,
making it suitable for real-world applications where data are inherently uncertain and noisy.
Impact on Accuracy and Reliability: The practical importance of using PFS-kNN and
pfs-matrices in areas, such as medical diagnosis mentioned in the previous section indicates
that they can notably affect accuracy. By enhancing accuracy in medical diagnosis, they
can provide more dependable and efficient solutions, decrease misdiagnosis rates, and
improve patient outcomes. This emphasizes the potential of PFS-kNN to make a valuable
contribution to the healthcare industry, where precision and accuracy are crucial.
Recommendation for Similar Problems: The suggestion to utilize PFS-kNN and pfs-
matrices as a conclusion highlights the belief in the effectiveness of this approach. This
indicates that the advantages demonstrated in the research are not restricted to the dataset
employed for assessment but can also apply to other medical diagnosis scenarios or re-
lated fields.
In brief, the performance of the proposed PFS-kNN classifier on medical diagnosis
datasets, assessed using Minkowski metrics over pfs-matrices, demonstrates its potential to
enhance the accuracy and dependability of medical diagnoses. While there are some trade-
offs in Precision and Recall, the overall superiority in Accuracy and F1-Score, coupled with
its capability to model uncertainty, positions PFS-kNN as a promising tool for improving
healthcare and addressing real-world challenges in supervised learning.

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Electronics 2023, 12, 4129

9. Conclusions
This paper redefined the idea of pfs-matrices, and their fundamental properties were
examined extensively. Afterward, distance measures of pfs-matrices were introduced.
Then, PFS-kNN, via the aforementioned distance measures, was suggested and applied
to medical diagnosis. The results manifested that the concept of pfs-matrices and the
proposed PFS-kNN approach can model uncertainty and real-world problems such as
medical diagnosis.
The current study, which focuses on soft sets, has significantly contributed to the
literature in both theoretical and practical aspects. This study has introduced three crucial
additions that redefine the mathematics underlying pfs-matrices and proposed new dis-
tance measures between pfs-matrices and PFS-kNN. By doing so, this paper has expanded
the understanding of this field and enhanced its applicability in real-world problems. In
addition, this research has gained prominence in the literature due to its innovative con-
tributions, which have opened up new avenues for further exploration and research in
the field.
In future works, there is potential for further investigation into the algebraic and
topological structures of pfs-matrices and the exploration of new distance and similarity
measures. While pfs-matrices have proven effective in addressing specific problems, it is
essential to acknowledge their limitations when dealing with picture fuzzy parameters.
To overcome this issue, research can be conducted on several related concepts, such as
intuitionistic fuzzy parameterized intuitionistic fuzzy soft matrices (ifpifs-matrices) [49,50],
aggregation operators of pfs-matrices [51,52], picture fuzzy parameterized picture fuzzy
soft sets (pfppfs-sets) [53], and picture fuzzy parameterized picture fuzzy soft matrices
(pfppfs-matrices). Additionally, interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy parameterized interval-
valued intuitionistic fuzzy soft sets (d-sets) [4] and interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy
parameterized interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy soft matrices (d-matrices) [5] are other
related concepts that may be worth exploring. We can better understand their potential
applications and limitations by studying and applying these concepts to different real-
world problems. For instance, different real-world problems, such as trend prediction of
component stock [54], remote sensing image fusion [55], and Landsat image fusion [56] can
be investigated, and the applications of pfs-matrices to them can be focused.

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Data Availability Statement: The datasets employed and analyzed during the present study are
available from the UCI-MLR.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.

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Article
Meteorological Variables Forecasting System Using Machine
Learning and Open-Source Software
Jenny Aracely Segovia *, Jonathan Fernando Toaquiza *, Jacqueline Rosario Llanos *
and David Raimundo Rivas

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas (ESPE),
Sangolquí 171103, Ecuador
* Correspondence: jasegovia4@[Link] (J.A.S.); tcjonathan@[Link] (J.F.T.); jdllanos1@[Link] (J.R.L.)

Abstract: The techniques for forecasting meteorological variables are highly studied since prior
knowledge of them allows for the efficient management of renewable energies, and also for other
applications of science such as agriculture, health, engineering, energy, etc. In this research, the
design, implementation, and comparison of forecasting models for meteorological variables have
been performed using different Machine Learning techniques as part of Python open-source software.
The techniques implemented include multiple linear regression, polynomial regression, random
forest, decision tree, XGBoost, and multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP). To identify the
best technique, the mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean
absolute error (MAE), and coefficient of determination (R2 ) are used as evaluation metrics. The most
efficient techniques depend on the variable to be forecasting, however, it is noted that for most of
them, random forest and XGBoost techniques present better performance. For temperature, the best
performing technique was Random Forest with an R2 of 0.8631, MAE of 0.4728 ◦ C, MAPE of 2.73%,
and RMSE of 0.6621 ◦ C; for relative humidity, was Random Forest with an R2 of 0.8583, MAE of
2.1380RH, MAPE of 2.50% and RMSE of 2.9003 RH; for solar radiation, was Random Forest with
an R2 of 0.7333, MAE of 65.8105 W/m2 , and RMSE of 105.9141 W/m2 ; and for wind speed, was
Random Forest with an R2 of 0.3660, MAE of 0.1097 m/s, and RMSE of 0.2136 m/s.

Keywords: machine learning; forecasting models; meteorological variables; Python

Citation: Segovia, J.A.; Toaquiza, J.F.;
Llanos, J.R.; Rivas, D.R.
Meteorological Variables Forecasting
System Using Machine Learning and
1. Introduction
Open-Source Software. Electronics
2023, 12, 1007. [Link]
Since the 17th century, meteorological variables have been of great interest throughout
10.3390/electronics12041007
history, with the creation of the first instruments for measuring meteorological variables
aiming to accurately predict the weather. For this purpose, mathematical and statistical
Academic Editor: Grzegorz Dudek methods and computer programs are used, most of which are of a non-linear nature [1].
Received: 4 January 2023 Nowadays, climatic conditions change under various influences. For example, atmospheric
Revised: 4 February 2023 pollution is increasing, so climate change is occurring and threatening the planet [2], which
Accepted: 6 February 2023 is why the measurement of meteorological variables has grown in importance as the
Published: 17 February 2023 information provided by the meteorological stations is important for monitoring climate
change [3].
Climate is defined by the grouping of meteorological phenomena that are related to
each other; although each of them is studied separately, it must be taken into account that a
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. change in one produces a variation in the others [4]. The actual weather is characterised
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. by the wind, temperature, and humidity variables forced by radiative fluxes and surface
This article is an open access article
latent and sensible heat fluxes. The local climate usually denotes the mean state of the
distributed under the terms and
atmosphere over a 20–30-year period for a given location and day (or season) of the year.
conditions of the Creative Commons
For this reason, meteorological variables are usually modeled by means of computational,
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
numerical, and statistical techniques, most of which are nonlinear [5]. Forecasting certain
[Link]/licenses/by/
climatic variables is a great challenge due to the variable behavior of the climate, which
4.0/).

Electronics 2023, 12, 1007. [Link] 169 [Link]

Electronics 2023, 12, 1007

makes it impossible to optimally manage renewable energies and obtain a greater benefit
from them.
There are multiple scientific studies of modeling and prediction in order to forecast
future conditions of phenomena in various fields; among the most prominent are ARIMA,
Chaos Theory, and Neural Networks [6]. Forecasting models have evolved in recent
decades, from smart systems with formal rules and logical theories, to the emergence of
artificial intelligence techniques that allow us to propose alternatives in the treatment of
information [7].
Currently, forecasting models have a high impact and are used for several applica-
tions, such as management of energy units for renewable resources microgrids [8,9], load
estimation methods for isolated communities that do not receive energy or only receive it
for a limited time each day [10,11], the operation of energy systems [12,13], in agriculture
to predict the water consumption of plants and plan the irrigation sheet [14], in agriculture
4.0 for the prediction of variables that affect the quality of crops, for micronutrient analysis
and prediction of soil chemical parameters [15], optimization of agricultural procedures
and increasing productivity in the field, forecasting of SPI and Meteorological Drought
Based on the Artificial Neural Network and M5P Model Tree [16], and in controllers based
on forecasting models and predictive controllers. They are also used in the health field to
predict the solar radiation index and to obtain a correct assessment in people with skin
cancer [17], therefore, all the applications mentioned above need forecasting models that
have the lowest error rate for their effective operation.
Having a forecasting model system is costly because computer packages are used
in which licensing costs can be significant. On the other hand, free software is an option
to reduce costs. This research proposes a system based on free software (Python), which
is currently used at industrial level for its reliability, for example in applications such as
the following: Advanced Time Series: Application of Neural Networks for Time Series
Forecasting [18], Machine Learning in Python: main developments and technological
trends in data science, Machine Learning and artificial intelligence [19], Development of
an smart tool focused on artificial vision and neural networks for weed recognition in rice
plantations, using Python programming language [20], etc.
In this research, different prediction techniques were evaluated and compared—among
them, multiple linear regression, polynomial regression, random forest, decision tree, XG-
Boost, and multilayer perceptron neural network—in order to identify the best performing
strategy, using evaluation metrics such as the root mean square error (RMSE) and the
coefficient of determination (R2 ). The variables to be predicted are temperature, relative
humidity, solar radiation, and wind speed, from data taken from the weather station located
in Ecuador, Tungurahua province, Baños. The predicted variables will be the inputs for a
smart irrigation system and used for an energy management system of a microgrid based
on predictive control, therefore, models with high approximation to online measurements
are required.
The contributions of this work are as follows: (i) To design, validate, and compare
different machine learning techniques, and with them select the best technique that adapts
to climate variables for agriculture and energy applications, (ii) To develop a forecast system
for climate variables of low cost based in free software (Python), (iii) To generate forecasting
models that can be replicated for other types of variables applied to smart control systems
based on forecasting models.

2. Design of Forecasting Models for Meteorological Variables

This section describes the prediction techniques used and their design. In this research,
the following meteorological variables are studied and predicted: temperature, relative
humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation.
The techniques designed, evaluated, and compared are the following: multiple linear
regression, polynomial regression, random forest, decision tree, XGBoost, and neural

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Electronics 2023, 12, 1007

network—multilayer perceptron. To obtain the forecast of meteorological variables, the

design methodology shown in Figure 1 is implemented.

Figure 1. Flowchart of the methodology used to obtain forecasting models for meteorological
variables.

2.1. Obtaining the Database

For the implementation of the forecasting models, information was obtained from
the page of the Tungurahua hydrometeorological network, where there are several me-
teorological stations, including the Baños family park, located in Ecuador, Tungurahua
province, Baños, coordinates X = 9, 845, 439, Y = 791, 471 that counts the parameters of
precipitation (mm), temperature& (◦ 'C), relative humidity (%), wind speed (m/s), wind
direction (◦ ), solar radiation W/m2 , and evapotranspiration (mm). For the design of the
models, only the values of temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity, and wind speed
were taken, since after a previous analysis of correlation between meteorological variables,
the variables with lower correlation with the variable to be predicted are discarded. It is

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Electronics 2023, 12, 1007

important to note that the values of temperature, solar radiation (net solar radiation at
surface), and relative humidity were measured at a distance of 2 m, while the wind speed
was measured at 10 m.

2.2. Data Preprocessing

From the database obtained, 1 year of information was available (from 23 July 2021
to 15 June 2022), which was preprocessed to take data every 5 min for each variable
(temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation). To make a forecast, it is
important to verify that there are no missing data in the measurements or to implement a
data filling method; in this case, a Python algorithm was implemented, which calculates
the average of the existing list of data and automatically fills in the missing data.

2.3. Dataset Division

To verify that the models work correctly, the available database is divided into
three groups: training set, test set, and validation set. As its name indicates, the first
one will be used to train the forecasting models, the second one will be used to evaluate
the test set, and the third one to validate each of the implemented models [17,21].
After data preprocessing, a total of 93,780 data were obtained for each variable, where
80% of the database (75,024 data) is used to train the models, 20% (18,756 data) to test the
models, and 2 days (576 data) were used for the validation of the models.

2.4. Design of the Forecasting Models

2.4.1. Multiple Linear Regression
It is a technique that allows modeling the relationship between a continuous variable
and one or more independent variables by adjusting a linear equation. It is called simple
linear regression when there is one independent variable, and if there is more than one,
it is called multiple linear regression. In this context, the modeled variables are called
dependent or response variables (y); and the independent variables are called regressors,
predictors, or features ( X ) [22]. Multiple linear regression is defined by Equation (1)

y = a + b1 X1 + b2 X2 + · · · + bn Xn (1)

where: X1 , X2 , . . . Xn : are the predictor or independent variables, b1 , b2 , . . . bn : coefficients

of the predictor variables, a : constant of the relationship between the dependent and
independent variable, and y : predicted or dependent variable.
After performing different heuristic tests and using sensitivity analysis for this fore-
casting technique, it is deduced that the best parameters for tuning are those described
in Table 1.

Table 1. Tuning parameters for the multiple linear regression techniques.

Multiple Linear Regression

Predicted Variable Inputs Variables
Temperature Solar radiation, relative humidity, wind speed
Solar radiation Temperature, relative humidity, wind speed
Wind speed Temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity
Relative Humidity Temperature, solar radiation, wind speed

2.4.2. Polynomial Regression

A linear regression with polynomial attributes that uses the relationship between the
dependent (y) and independent ( X ) variables to find the best way to draw a line through
the data points. This technique is used when the data are more complex than a simple
straight line [23], and is defined by Equation (2).

y = a + b1 Xi + b2 Xi 2 + b3 Xi 3 + . . . + bn Xi n (2)

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Electronics 2023, 12, 1007

where: X1 , X2 , . . . Xn : are the predictor or independent variables, b1 , b2 , . . . bn : coefficients

of the predictor variables, a : constant of the relationship between the dependent and
independent variable, and y : predicted or dependent variable.
After performing different heuristic tests and using sensitivity analysis for this fore-
casting technique, it is deduced that the best parameters for tuning are those described
in Table 2.

Table 2. Tuning parameters for polynomial regression technique.

Polynomial Regression
Degree of the
Predicted Variable Inputs Variables
Polynomial
Temperature Solar radiation, relative humidity, wind speed 4
Solar radiation Temperature, relative humidity, wind speed 5
Wind speed Temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity 6
Relative Humidity Temperature, solar radiation, wind speed 4

2.4.3. Decision Tree

Values by learning decision rules derived from features and can be used for classifica-
tion, regression, and multi-output tasks. Decision trees work by dividing the feature space
into several simple rectangular regions, divided by parallel divisions of axes. To obtain
a prediction, the mean or mode of the responses of the training observations, within the
partition to which the new observation belongs, is used [23]. This is defined by Equation (3).
m
Gi = 1 − ∑ ( Pi,k )2 (3)
k =1

where: Pi,k : is the radio of class k instances among the training instances in the ith node,
m : number of class labels, and Gi (Gini impurity): represents the measure for constructing
decision trees.
After performing different heuristic tests and using sensitivity analysis for this forecast
technique, it is deduced that the best parameters for tuning are those described in Table 3.

Table 3. Tuning parameters for the decision tree technique.

Decision Tree
Predicted Variable Inputs Variables Max_Depth Min_Samples_Leaf
Temperature Solar radiation, relative humidity, wind speed 10 18
Solar radiation Temperature, relative humidity, wind speed 10 7
Wind speed Temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity 19 6
Relative Humidity Temperature, solar radiation, wind speed 9 16

2.4.4. Random Forest

A supervised learning algorithm that uses an ensemble learning method for regression
that combines predictions from several machine learning algorithms (decision trees) to
make a more accurate prediction than a single model [23]. Figure 2 shows that the random
forest algorithm is composed of a collection of decision trees, and each tree in the set is
composed of a sample of data extracted from a training set (DATASET); for a regression task,
the individual decision trees are averaged (Average) until the predicted value (Prediction)
is obtained.
In general, deep decision trees tend to overfit, while random forests avoid this by
generating random subsets of features and using those subsets to build smaller trees.
The generalization error for random forests is based on the strength of the individual
constructed trees and their correlation [24].

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Figure 2. Algorithm for making predictions using random forest.

This technique has several parameters that can be configured, such as the following:
N◦ estimators: the number of trees in the forest. Max leaf nodes: the maximum
number of leaf nodes, this hyperparameter sets a condition for splitting the tree nodes and
thus restricts the growth of the tree. If after splitting there are more terminal nodes than the
specified number, the splitting stops and the tree does not continue to grow, which helps to
avoid overfitting. And Max features: the maximum number of features that are evaluated
for splitting at each node, increasing max_features generally improves model performance,
since each node now has a greater number of options to consider [23].
After performing different heuristic tests and using sensitivity analysis for this forecast
technique, it is deduced that the best parameters for tuning are those described in Table 4.

Table 4. Tuning parameters for the random forest technique.

Random Forest
Predicted Variable Inputs Variables N◦ Estimators Max Leaf Nodes Max Features
Temperature Solar radiation, relative humidity, wind speed 100 3000 0.1
Solar radiation Temperature, relative humidity, wind speed 100 3000 0.1
Wind speed Temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity 100 2000 0.3
Relative Humidity Temperature, solar radiation, wind speed 100 2000 0.2

2.4.5. Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGboost)

The XGBoost algorithm is a scalable tree-boosting system that can be used for both
classification and regression tasks. It performs a second-order Taylor expansion on the
loss function and can automatically use multiple threads of the central processing unit
(CPU) for parallel computing. In addition, XGBoost uses a variety of methods to avoid
overfitting [25].
Figure 3 shows the XGBoost algorithm; decision trees are created sequentially (De-
cision Tree-1, Decision Tree-2, Decision Tree-N) and weights play an important role in
XGBoost. Weights are assigned to all independent variables, which are then entered into
the decision tree that predicts the outcomes (Result-1, Result-2, Result-N). The weights of
variables incorrectly predicted by the tree are increased and these variables are then fed
into the second decision tree (Residual error). These individual predictors are then grouped
(Average) to give a strong and more accurate model (Prediction).

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Figure 3. Structure of an XGBoost algorithm for regression.

After performing different heuristic tests and using sensitivity analysis for this forecast
technique, it is deduced that the best parameters for its tuning are those described in Table 5.

Table 5. Tuning parameters for the XGboost technique.

XGBoost
Predicted Variable Inputs Variables Max Depth N◦ Estimators
Temperature Solar radiation, relative humidity, wind speed 2 100
Temperature, relative humidity,
Solar radiation 2 20
wind speed
Temperature, solar radiation,
Wind speed 5 19
relative humidity
Temperature, solar radiation,
Relative Humidity 7 19
wind speed

2.4.6. Neural Network—Multilayer Perceptron

It is an effective and widely used model for modeling many real situations. The
multilayer perceptron is a hierarchical structure consisting of several layers of fully inter-
connected neurons, which input neurons are outputs of the previous layer. Figure 4 shows
the structure of a multilayer perceptron neural network; the input layer is made up of r
units (where r is the number of external inputs) that merely distribute the input signals to
the next layer; the hidden layer is made up of neurons that have no physical contact with
the outside; the number of hidden layers is variable (u); and the output layer is made up of
l neurons (where l is the number of external outputs) whose outputs constitute the vector
of external outputs of the multilayer perceptron [26].
The training of the neural network consists of calculating the linear combination
from a set of input variables, with a bias term, applying an activation function, generally
the threshold or sign function, giving rise to the network output. Thus, the weights
of the network are adjusted by the method of supervised learning by error correction
(backpropagation), in such a way that the expected output is compared with the value of
the output variable to be obtained, the difference being the error or residual. Each neuron
behaves independently of the others: each neuron receives a set of input values (an input
vector), calculates the scalar product of this vector and the vector of weights, adds its own
bias, applies an activation function to the result, and returns the final result obtained [26].

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Figure 4. Structure of a multilayer perceptron neural network.

In general, all weights and biases will be different. The output of the multilayer
perceptron neural network is defined by Equation (4). Where: yk is the output, f k activation
function of output layer, θk bias of the output layer, Wij hidden layer weights, yj output of
the hidden layer, f j activation function of the hidden layer, Xi neuron inputs, Wjk output
layer weights, θ j bias of hidden layer, r is the number of inputs for the neuron j from the
hidden layer, and u is the number of inputs for the neuron k from the output layer [27].
 
r
 
y j = f j ∑ Xi Wij − θ j
i=1  (4)
u
yk = f k ∑ yj Wjk − θk
j =1

For this research, backpropagation was used as a training technique. After performing
different heuristic tests and using sensitivity analysis for this forecasting technique, it is
deduced that the best parameters for its tuning are those described in Table 6.

Table 6. Tuning parameters for the multilayer perceptron neural network technique.

Neural Network—Multilayer Perceptron

Predicted Input Layer Batch Hidden Layer Activation
Inputs Variables N◦ Epoch
Variable Neurons Size Neurons Function
Solar radiation, relative Hidden: ReLU
Temperature 3 5000 128 32
humidity, wind speed Out: Sigmoid
Temperature, relative Hidden: ReLU
Solar radiation 3 5000 128 32
humidity, wind speed Out: Sigmoid
Temperature, solar radiation, Hidden: ReLU
Wind speed 3 3000 128 32
relative humidity Out: Sigmoid
Relative Temperature, solar radiation, Hidden: ReLU
3 5000 128 32
Humidity wind speed Out: Sigmoid

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3. Results
3.1. Indicators for Assessing the Performance of Weather Forecasting Models
To measure the performance of the forecast techniques for each of the variables de-
scribed above, two types of metrics were used: to evaluate the forecast accuracy, the mean
square error RMSE is used, which allows comparing their results and defining the technique
with the lowest error, and therefore, the best method for each variable to be predicted. In
addition, to determine if the implemented models perform well in their training and to
define their predictive ability, the coefficient of determination is R2 .

3.1.1. Coefficient of Determination (R2 )

R2 or coefficient of determination can be in the range of [−∞, 1] it is used to determine
the ability of a model to predict future results. The best possible result is 1, and occurs when
the prediction coincides with the values of the target variable, while the closer to zero, the
less well-fitted the model is and, therefore, the less reliable it is. R2 can take negative values
because the prediction can be arbitrarily bad [28]. It is defined as Equation (5), described
by 1 minus the sum of total squares divided by the sum of squares of the residuals.
2
∑ (yc − ŷc )
R2 = 1 − 2
(5)
∑ (yc − y)

where: yc : are the values taken by the target variable, ŷc : are the values of the prediction,
and y: is the mean value of the values taken by the target variable.

3.1.2. Mean Square Error (RMSE)

The root mean square error, also known as root mean square deviation, measures the
amount of error between two sets of data. That is, it compares the predicted value with the
observed or known value [28]. It is given by Equation (6):
,
1 o
o c∑
RMSE = (yc − ŷc )2 (6)
=1

where: yc : are the values taken by the target variable, ŷc : are the values of the prediction,
and o: is the sample size.

3.1.3. Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE)

Mean absolute percentage error is an evaluation metric for regression problems; the
idea of this metric is to be sensitive to relative errors. MAPE is the mean of all absolute
percentage errors between the predicted and actual values [29]. It is given by Equation (7):
 
1 o  yc − ŷc 
MAPE = ∑  ∗ 100% (7)
o c =1 yc 

where yc : are the values taken by the target variable, ŷc : are the values of the prediction,
and o: is the sample size.
Equation (7) helps to understand one of the important caveats when using MAPE,
since to calculate this metric, you need to divide the difference by the actual value. This
means that if you have actual values close to 0 or at 0, the MAPE score will receive a
division error by 0 or will be extremely high. Therefore, it is recommended not to use
MAPE when it has real values close to 0 [30].

3.1.4. Mean Absolute Error (MAE)

Mean absolute error is a common metric to use for measuring the error of regression
predictions. The mean absolute error of a model is the mean of the absolute values of the
individual prediction errors on over all instances in the test set. Each prediction error is

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the difference between the true value and the predicted value for the instance [16,31]. It is
given by Equation (8):
1 o
o c∑
MAE = | yc − ŷc | (8)
=1
where: yc : are the values taken by the target variable, ŷc : are the values of the prediction,
and o: is the sample size.

3.2. Case Study

For the implementation of the forecast techniques for meteorological variables (tem-
perature, wind speed, solar radiation, and relative humidity), the Python programming
language was used. Information was obtained from the Parque de la Familia Baños
meteorological station, located in Ecuador, Tungurahua province, Baños, coordinates
X = 9, 845, 439, Y = 791, 471. From the database obtained, 1 year of information was
available (from 23 July 2021 to 15 June 2022) with a sampling time of 5 min having a total
of 93,780 data for each variable, where 80% of the database (75,024 data) is used to test the
models, 20% (18,756 data) to test the models, and 2 days (576 data) were used for validation.
To obtain the values of the evaluation metrics (RMSE, MAE, MAPE y R2 ) the validation
data corresponding to the days 10 June 2022 and 11 June 2022 were used.
The forecast techniques implemented for all variables are the following: multiple linear
regression, polynomial regression, decision tree, random forest, XGboost, and multilayer
perceptron neural network.
To identify which of the models is more efficient, evaluation metrics such as root mean
square error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and mean absolute error
(MAE) are used over the entire validation range, while to evaluate whether the forecasting
algorithms fit correctly, the R2 metric is used. It is important to note that these metrics
evaluate different aspects; the RMSE, MAPE, and MAE evaluate the forecasting error, while
R2 allows to analyze how well a regression model fits the real data.

3.2.1. Temperature Forecasting

Table 7 shows the results of the evaluation metrics: root mean square error (RMSE),
mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean absolute error (MAE), and coefficient
of determination (R2 ) for each of the techniques used for temperature forecasting. The
calculation of the root mean square error, mean absolute percentage error, and mean
absolute error was obtained by averaging the errors of the validation data (576 data), while
the calculation of the coefficient of determination (R2 ) used the data from the training set
and the test set (93,780 data).

Table 7. Evaluation metrics for temperature forecasting.

Coefficient of Mean Absolute Mean Absolute Percentage Mean Square Error

Technique
Determination (R2 ) Error (MAE) [◦ C] Error (MAPE) [%] (RMSE) [◦ C]
Multiple linear
0.8244 0.6597 3.71 0.8453
regression
Polynomial regression 0.8406 0.6097 3.51 0.8146
Decision tree 0.8593 0.5097 2.95 0.7333
Random forest 0.8631 0.4728 2.73 0.6621
XGboost 0.8599 0.5335 3.09 0.7565
Multilayer perceptron 0.8226 0.9124 5.51 1.2498

Table 7 shows that R2 obtained from the implemented algorithms converge to appro-
priate values, i.e., there is a correct approximation between the real temperature and the
predicted temperature, thus guaranteeing the good performance of the algorithm, which

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allows a comparison of the performance in terms of forecast error. Comparison of the root
mean square errors (RMSE), mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE), and mean absolute
errors (MAE), and analysis of the coefficient of determination R2 of the different techniques
implemented show that the best performing technique for forecasting the temperature
variable is Random Forest, with an R2 of 0.8631, MAE of 0.4728 ◦ C, MAPE of 2.73%, and
RMSE of 0.6621 ◦ C. This is followed by XGBoost, with an R2 of 0.8599, MAE of 0.5335 ◦ C,
MAPE of 3.09%, and RMSE of 0.7565 ◦ C.
Figure 5 shows the real (red) and prediction (blue) profiles using the different Machine
Learning techniques to predict the temperature variable: (a) Multiple linear regression
technique, (b) Polynomial regression technique, (c) Decision tree technique, (d) Random
Forest technique, (e) XGboost technique, (f) Multilayer perceptron neural network tech-
nique. Figure 5c,d, validate that the best performance corresponds to the Decision tree and
Random forest techniques.

3.2.2. Relative Humidity Forecasting

Table 8 shows the results of the evaluation metrics: root mean square error (RMSE),
mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean absolute error (MAE), and coefficient of
determination (R2 ) for each of the techniques used for relative humidity forecasting. The
calculation of the root mean square error, mean absolute percentage error, and mean
absolute error was obtained by averaging the errors of the validation data (576 data), while
the calculation of the coefficient of determination (R2 ) used the data from the training set
and the test set (93,780 data).

Table 8. Evaluation metrics for relative humidity forecasting.

Coefficient of Mean Absolute Mean Absolute Percentage Mean Square Error

Technique
Determination (R2 ) Error (MAE) [RH] Error (MAPE) [%] (RMSE) [RH]
Multiple linear
0.7815 3.0900 3.56 3.7475
regression
Polynomial regression 0.8420 2.2816 2.68 3.0163
Decision tree 0.8547 2.2685 2.65 3.2083
Random forest 0.8583 2.1380 2.50 2.9003
XGboost 0.8597 2.2907 2.67 3.1444
Multilayer perceptron 0.8013 4.6055 5.64 5.5759

Table 8 shows that R2 obtained from the implemented algorithms converge to appro-
priate values, i.e., there is a correct approximation between the real relative humidity and
the predicted relative humidity, thus guaranteeing the good performance of the algorithm,
which allows a comparison of the performance in terms of forecast error. Comparison
of the root mean square errors (RMSE), mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE), and
mean absolute errors (MAE), and analysis of the coefficient of determination R2 of the
different techniques implemented show that the best performing techniques for forecasting
the relative humidity variable are Random Forest, with an R2 of 0.8583, MAE of 2.1380 RH,
MAPE of 2.50%, and RMSE of 2.9003 RH; and XGBoost, with an R2 of 0.8597, MAE of
2.2907 RH, MAPE of 2.67%, and RMSE of 3.1444 RH.
Figure 6 shows the real (red) and prediction (blue) profiles using the different Machine
Learning techniques to predict the relative humidity variable: (a) Multiple linear regression
technique, (b) Polynomial regression technique, (c) Decision tree technique, (d) Random
forest technique, (e) XGboost technique, (f) Multilayer perceptron neural network technique.
Figure 6d and Figure 6c validate that the best performance corresponds to the Random
forest and Decision tree techniques.

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(a) (b)

(c) (d)

(e) (f)

Figure 5. Temperature forecast techniques: (a) Multiple linear regression, (b) Polynomial regression,
(c) Decision tree, (d) Random forest, (e) XGboost, (f) Multilayer perceptron neural network.

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(a) (b)

(c) (d)

(e) (f)

Figure 6. Techniques for relative humidity forecasting: (a) Multiple linear regression, (b) Polynomial
regression, (c) Decision tree, (d) Random forest, (e) XGboost, (f) Multilayer perceptron neural network.

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3.2.3. Solar Radiation Forecasting

Table 9 shows the results of the evaluation metrics: root mean square error (RMSE),
mean absolute error (MAE), and coefficient of determination (R2 ) for each of the techniques
used for solar radiation forecasting. The calculation of the root mean square error, and
mean absolute error was obtained by averaging the errors of the validation data (576 data),
while the calculation of the coefficient of determination (R2 ) used the data from the training
set and the test set (93,780 data).

Table 9. Evaluation metrics for solar radiation forecasting.

Coefficient of Determination Mean Absolute Error (MAE) Mean Square Error (RMSE)
Technique
(R2 ) [W/m2 ] [W/m2 ]
Multiple linear regression 0.6689 106.9741 164.7435
Polynomial regression 0.7394 76.6667 129.1836
Decision tree 0.7253 75.8177 127.3530
Random forest 0.7333 65.8105 105.9141
XGboost 0.7075 87.6137 145.0170
Multilayer perceptron 0.7423 88.5897 140.0681

Table 9 shows that R2 obtained from the implemented algorithms converge to appro-
priate values, i.e., there is a correct approximation between the real solar radiation and
the predicted solar radiation, thus guaranteeing the good performance of the algorithm,
which allows a comparison of the performance in terms of forecast error. Comparison of
the root mean square errors (RMSE), and mean absolute errors (MAE), and analysis of the
coefficient of determination R2 of the different techniques implemented show that the best
performing techniques for forecasting the solar radiation variable are Random Forest with
an R2 of 0.7333, MAE of 65.8105 W/m2 , and RMSE of 105.9141 W/m2 ; and Decision Tree
with an R2 of 0.7253, MAE of 75.8177 W/m2 , and RMSE of 127.3530 W/m2 .
Figure 7 shows the real (red) and prediction (blue) profiles using the different Machine
Learning techniques to predict the variable solar radiation: (a) Multiple linear regression
technique, (b) Polynomial regression technique, (c) Decision tree technique, (d) Random
forest technique, (e) XGboost technique, (f) Multilayer perceptron neural network technique.
Figure 7d validates that the best performance corresponds to the Random forest technique.

3.2.4. Wind Speed Forecasting

Table 10 shows the results of the evaluation metrics: root mean square error (RMSE),
mean absolute error (MAE), and coefficient of determination (R2 ) for each of the techniques
used for wind speed forecasting. The calculation of the root mean square error and mean
absolute error was obtained by averaging the errors of the validation data (576 data), while
the calculation of the coefficient of determination (R2 ) used the data from the training set
and the test set (93,780 data).
Table 10 shows that R2 obtained from the implemented algorithms converge to appro-
priate values, i.e., there is an acceptable approximation between the real wind speed and
the predicted wind speed, thus guaranteeing the good performance of the algorithm, which
allows a comparison of the performance in terms of forecast error. Comparison of the root
mean square errors (RMSE) and mean absolute errors (MAE) and analysis of the coefficient
of determination R2 of the different techniques implemented show that the best performing
techniques for forecasting the wind speed variable are Random Forest with an R2 of 0.3660,
MAE of 0.1097 m/s, and RMSE of 0.2136 m/s; and XGBoost with an R2 of 0.3866, MAE
of 0.1439 m/s, and RMSE of 0.3131 m/s. It should be taken into account that due to the
high variability of wind speed, the implemented techniques have a lower coefficient of
determination compared to the other variables; however, forecasts with acceptable errors
were obtained. In this case, the value of the mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) is

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not taken into account because it is used only when it is known that the quantity to be
predicted remains well above 0.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

(e) (f)

Figure 7. Solar radiation forecast techniques: (a) Multiple linear regression, (b) Polynomial regression,
(c) Decision tree, (d) Random forest, (e) XGboost, (f) Multilayer perceptron neural network.

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Table 10. Evaluation metrics for wind speed forecasting.

Coefficient of Determination Mean Absolute Error Mean Square Error

Technique
(R2 ) (MAE) [m/s] (RMSE) [m/s]
Multiple linear regression 0.3428 0.1614 0.3354
Polynomial regression 0.3770 0.1428 0.3159
Decision tree 0.2142 0.1256 0.2705
Random forest 0.3660 0.1097 0.2136
XGboost 0.3866 0.1439 0.3131
Multilayer perceptron 0.3270 0.1654 0.3616

Figure 8 shows the real (red) and prediction (blue) profiles using the different Machine
Learning techniques to predict the wind speed variable: (a) Multiple linear regression
technique, (b) Polynomial regression technique, (c) Decision tree technique, (d) Random
forest technique, (e) XGboost technique, (f) Multilayer perceptron neural network technique.
Figure 8d validates that the best performance corresponds to the Random forest technique.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 8. Cont.

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(e) (f)

Figure 8. Techniques for wind speed forecast: (a) Multiple linear regression, (b) Polynomial regression,
(c) Decision tree, (d) Random forest, (e) XGboost, (f) Multilayer perceptron neural network.

4. Conclusions
For the forecasting of meteorological variables in this research, information obtained
from the Parque de la Familia Baños meteorological station located in Ecuador was used
and the following prediction techniques were tested: multiple linear regression, polynomial
regression, decision tree, random forest, XGBoost, and multilayer perceptron neural net-
work. For forecasting the temperature variable, a better result is obtained by using Random
Forest with an R2 of 0.8631, MAE of 0.4728 ◦ C, MAPE of 2.73%, and RMSE of 0.6621 ◦ C.
In addition, XGBoost also performed well with an R2 of 0.8599, MAE of 0.5335 ◦ C, MAPE
of 3.09%, and RMSE of 0.7565 ◦ C. For forecasting the relative humidity variable, a better
result is obtained by using Random Forest with an R2 of 0.8583, MAE of 2.1380 RH, MAPE
of 2.50%, and RMSE of 2.9003 RH. In addition, XGBoost also performed well with an R2
of 0.8597, MAE of 2.2907 RH, MAPE of 2.67%, and RMSE of 3.1444 RH. For forecasting
the solar radiation variable, a better result is obtained by using Random Forest with an
R2 of 0.7333, MAE of 65.8105 W/m2 , and RMSE of 105.9141 W/m2 . In addition, Deci-
sion Tree also performed well with an R2 of 0.7253, MAE of 75.8177 W/m2 , and RMSE
of 127.3530 W/m2 . For forecasting the wind speed variable, a better result is obtained by
using Random Forest, with an R2 of 0.3660, MAE of 0.1097 m/s, and RMSE of 0.2136 m/s.
In addition, XGBoost also performed well, with an R2 of 0.3866, MAE of 0.1439 m/s, and
RMSE of 0.3131 m/s.
It can be observed that wind speed has the highest variability compared to the other
predicted variables, therefore, the results of the techniques implemented show that the
coefficient of determination R2 of this variable has a lower value. This is due to the type of
signal we are trying to predict; however, acceptable predictions were obtained.
The prediction of meteorological variables (temperature, solar radiation, wind speed,
and relative humidity) will allow future projects to be implemented in the study area, such
as intelligent agriculture to support food problems in that area and the implementation
of a microgrid based on renewable resources where prediction models will support the
planning and operation of the microgrid in real time, allowing clean energy to this locality,
contributing to the reduction in the use of fossil resources, which is the goal that different
countries have set as part of their policies.

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Author Contributions: Conceptualization, J.A.S., J.F.T., J.R.L. and D.R.R.; methodology, J.A.S., J.F.T.,
J.R.L. and D.R.R.; software J.A.S. and J.F.T.; validation, J.A.S. and J.F.T.; formal analysis, J.A.S., J.F.T.,
J.R.L. and D.R.R.; investigation, J.A.S., J.F.T. and J.R.L.; resources, J.A.S. and J.F.T.; data curation,
J.A.S. and J.F.T.; writing—original draft preparation, J.A.S., J.F.T., J.R.L. and D.R.R..; writing—review
and editing, J.A.S., J.F.T., J.R.L. and D.R.R.; visualization, J.A.S., J.F.T., J.R.L. and D.R.R.; supervision,
J.R.L. and D.R.R.; project administration, J.R.L.; funding acquisition, J.R.L. All authors have read and
agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.
Acknowledgments: This work was supported in part by the Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas
ESPE through the Project “Optimal energy management systems for hybrid generation systems”,
under Project 2023-pis-03. In addition, the authors would like to thank to the project EE-GNP-0043-
2021-ESPE, REDTPI4.0-CYTED, Conv-2022-05-UNACH, “SISMO-ROSAS”–UPS.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

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Review
Bias Mitigation via Synthetic Data Generation: A Review
Mohamed Ashik Shahul Hameed, Asifa Mehmood Qureshi and Abhishek Kaushik *

Dundalk Institute of Technology, A91 K584 Dundalk, Ireland

* Correspondence: [Link]@[Link]

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely used in healthcare applications to perform various
tasks. Although these models have great potential to improve the healthcare system, they have also
raised significant ethical concerns, including biases that increase the risk of health disparities in
medical applications. The under-representation of a specific group can lead to bias in the datasets that
are being replicated in the AI models. These disadvantaged groups are disproportionately affected
by bias because they may have less accurate algorithmic forecasts or underestimate the need for
treatment. One solution to eliminate bias is to use synthetic samples or artificially generated data
to balance datasets. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to review and evaluate how synthetic
data can be generated and used to mitigate biases, specifically focusing on the medical domain.
We explored high-quality peer-reviewed articles that were focused on synthetic data generation to
eliminate bias. These studies were selected based on our defined inclusion criteria and exclusion
criteria and the quality of the content. The findings reveal that generated synthetic data can help
improve accuracy, precision, and fairness. However, the effectiveness of synthetic data is closely
dependent on the quality of the data generation process and the initial datasets used. The study also
highlights the need for continuous improvement in synthetic data generation techniques and the
importance of evaluation metrics for fairness in AI models.

Keywords: synthetic data; artificial data; bias; fairness; AI; data generation

1. Introduction
Citation: Shahul Hameed, M.A.; Bias in AI models can be defined as systematic errors that affect the algorithm and
Qureshi, A.M.; Kaushik, A. Bias unfairly favor certain outcomes over others [1]. These biases can originate from various
Mitigation via Synthetic Data sources, such as using imbalanced or underrepresented datasets to train the models, the
Generation: A Review. Electronics algorithms themselves, and the ways AI models are being deployed by humans. In
2024, 13, 3909. [Link] healthcare, these biases can lead to significant consequences of disparities in treatment
10.3390/electronics13193909 outcomes for specific racial, gender, or demographic groups, resulting in unequal treatment
Academic Editor: Grzegorz Dudek that may lead to life-threatening incidences. They have a direct impact on patient medical
outcomes. Biased models can lead to misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatment plans, and
Received: 29 August 2024 unequal access to medical resources [2]. For instance, a used model to estimate breast
Revised: 23 September 2024
cancer density is trained on data that are under-inclusive of African-American women and
Accepted: 24 September 2024
will generate recommendations that are not well-suited for that population [3]. Moreover,
Published: 2 October 2024
Kiyasseh et al. [4] deployed a surgical AI model to assess the skill level of robotic surgeries
in completing different surgical activities. However, it was found that the model exhibited
an underskilling or overskilling bias. Underskilling occurs when an AI model incorrectly
Copyright: © 2024 by the authors. predicts that a certain surgical skill is of a lower grade than it actually is, hence reducing
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. surgical performance. In contrast, overskilling occurred when the AI model incorrectly
This article is an open access article improved surgical performance by estimating that a certain skill would be a higher caliber
distributed under the terms and than it was.
conditions of the Creative Commons Therefore, the broad aim behind ensuring fairness, accuracy, and equality through bias
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// mitigation in AI models within the medical domain is to create fair and equal outcomes for
[Link]/licenses/by/ a diverse set of populations.
4.0/).

Electronics 2024, 13, 3909. [Link] 188 [Link]

Electronics 2024, 13, 3909

There are several techniques to eliminate biases from datasets. These techniques
include the collection of diverse and representative data [5], handling at the algorithmic
level [6], pre-processing of datasets and post-processing of the model output to reduce
bias [7], and synthetic data generation [8].
Generating data is one of the several strategies to mitigate bias. It can be defined as ar-
tificial data that mimics the statistical properties and patterns of real-world information [9].
While other techniques tend to reduce or process the datasets to ensure fairness, which may
result in information loss, synthetic data generation helps to preserve the data distribution
and add statistically similar data samples to reduce bias. In healthcare settings, synthetic
data can be utilized as a substitute for real patient data while avoiding privacy issues,
which allows for the simulation and sharing of sensitive patient data. There exist multiple
methods, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Variational Auto-Encoders
(VAEs), the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE), Bayesian networks,
and statistical sampling methods, to generate synthetic data. These methods have been
used vastly to generate new artificial datasets that capture the structure and distribution of
actual datasets. These synthetic datasets can help to tackle situations where there is bias or
no additional data to work with while trying to improve the fairness and accuracy of AI
algorithms [4]. Using synthetic data in healthcare is also a solution to patient data privacy.
Moreover, synthetic data allows you to create big, diverse datasets to train models.
This article reviews research studies that are focused on bias mitigation via synthetic
data generation techniques.

Motivation
AI systems can produce biased results that both reflect and amplify human prejudices
within a community, including historical and contemporary social injustice. Bias may exist
in the algorithm, the original training set, or the predictions the algorithm makes. It can be
passed on through racial, religious, and gender stereotypes [10]. Synthetic data can be a
viable solution to preserve patient data privacy and mitigate bias in the data. Synthetic data
methodologies tend to capture the structure and distributions found in real datasets while
minimizing bias and protecting individually identifiable [11]. Moreover, synthetic data
allows us to create big, diverse datasets to train AI models. Therefore, this paper explores
the literature to highlight the application of synthetic data generation to mitigate bias. The
study provides a comprehensive review of the methods and techniques used to generate
synthetic data. Also, the limitations of these models are discussed. The hypothesis and
formulated research questions are as follows:

Hypothesis: Synthetic data can be used to mitigate bias in medical data effectively, resulting in
unbiased, accurate, and equitable healthcare datasets.

RQ1. What are the most common methods or techniques to generate synthetic data to
handle biases in the dataset?
RQ2. What are the limitations of the existing techniques used for synthetic data generation?
The rest of the article is structured as follows:
Section 2 explains the search methodology. Section 3 gives an overview of the bias
mitigation techniques. Section 4 discusses the hypothesis and research questions. Section 5
concludes the discussion.

2. Search Methodology
Figure 1 shows the detailed search methodology used to conduct this review. Several
major databases, including Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, Pubmed, ScienceDirect, and ACM
Digital Library, were explored. Google Scholar was used for its broad and inclusive nature.
It covers many topics and has many articles from interdisciplinary fields, so it is a great
resource for literature reviews. PubMed was chosen for its focus on biomedical and life
science literature. Since the focus is on AI applications in healthcare, PubMed has high-

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quality reviews and survey papers to obtain peer-reviewed medical research articles on the
impact and implementation of AI in clinical settings. The ACM Digital Library was included
for its focus on computing and information technology research. It is great for finding
research on algorithm development, computational methods, and technical advancements
in synthetic data generation and bias mitigation in AI. IEEE Xplore was chosen for its large
collection of technology research and application implementation papers, especially in AI,
ML, and synthetic data. It has technical papers and theory conference articles on the latest
AI technologies and their applications in healthcare.

Figure 1. Search methodology workflow.

The selections are based on the scope, relevance, and credibility of the databases and
article papers in the fields of AI, Machine Learning (ML), synthetic data, and healthcare.
A search query was formulated to find research articles on bias in AI, ML, Deep Learning
(DL), and synthetic data generation in healthcare:
“((Bias) AND (Artificial Intelligence OR Machine Learning OR Deep Learning) AND (Syn-
thetic Data) AND (text OR tabular dataset))”
Slight adjustments were made to the query to refine the results further. These ad-
justments included using synonyms of these terms, including fairness, biases, data bias,
artificial data, generated data, and medical data.
To obtain the most relevant and recent studies, inclusion and exclusion criteria were
devised as follows:

2.1. Inclusion Criteria

• Research articles that are focused on bias and bias handling in AI models using
synthetic data generation were included.

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• Research articles published between 2020 and 2024 were included to review the
relevant, latest techniques.
• Research studies that were published in conferences, journals, book chapters, or
proceedings were included.
• Research articles only written in the English language were selected.

2.2. Exclusion Criteria

• Research articles that did not align with our research questions were excluded.
• Non-peer-reviewed articles were not considered.
About 83,700 papers were found in this first search using the Google Scholar database
platform. By applying inclusion and exclusion criteria and restricting the year of publication
between 2020 and 2024, the total was dropped to about 16,800 papers. The dynamic of
scientific studies in this field from 2020 to 2023 was approximately recorded as 13,200,
17,400, 21,500, and 28,000. Therefore, the average annual growth rate of articles in this field
was approximately 29%.
Then, a quality assessment was performed to ensure the relevance and credibility of
the papers, and the selection was narrowed down to 50 papers. The shortlisted articles
were examined further for eligibility on the basis of title relevancy and abstracts; a total of
26 articles were removed, and the remaining articles were assessed by a full article reading.
After a critical analysis, we finally selected 17 papers for the literature review. Table 1
summarizes the number of articles after each step.

Table 1. Number of articles selected at each step.

Stages Number of Articles

Initial results (using query) 83,700
After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria 16,800
After quality assessment 50
Based on the abstract and conclusion 24
Full article reading (Finally selected articles) 17

The proportion of selected research studies from each database is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Proportion of the selected articles from each database.

Figure 3 shows the year-wise distribution of the selected articles. The year 2021
constituted the highest number of selected articles, preceded by the years 2022 and 2023.
Moreover, the category of the selected articles is given in Table 2. A total of 12 journals,
4 conferences, and 1 doctoral dissertation were reviewed.

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Year-wise distribution of selected articles

7

Number of selected articles

6

0
2020 2021 2022 2023
Year

Figure 3. Year-wise distribution of the selected articles.

Table 2. Overview of selected article categories and count.

Category Number of Articles

Academic Journal paper 12
Conference paper 4
Doctoral dissertation 1

3. Bias Mitigation via Synthetic Data Generation

Several techniques have been proposed in the literature to mitigate bias using synthetic
sample generation. Table 3 summarizes the studies and the methodologies along with the
dataset, modality, strengths, and weaknesses of each reviewed article.

Table 3. Overview of the methodology, dataset, modality, evaluation metric, strengths, and limitations
of the reviewed research articles.

Refs. Year Methodology Dataset Modality Evaluation Metric Strengths Limitations

Analyses explainable
Balanced accuracy
artificial intelligence
and fairness scores
(XAI) methods and Auditing pipelines Focuses only on
to compare real
suggests metrics to for robust synthetic data
A large and and synthetic
determine the technical evaluation under generation and
heterogeneous models, time-series
characteristics of the varying data, fairness, lack of
[12] 2023 corpus of one text data metrics, and
methods. Focuses on combines GANs, datasets, and
million Dutch disparate impact
XAI methods such as fairness metrics, complexity in
EHR notes. metrics for
LIME and SHAP, and bias mitigation adversarial
representational
applied to machine algorithms. auditing methods.
bias and evaluating
learning models using
resemblance.
synthetic data.
Metrics include
Focuses on generating
faithfulness Addresses the
synthetic data Temporal and
(correlation critical area of The imperfection
strategies for fairness non-temporal
between feature explainable AI, of existing XAI
assessment. Explores datasets.
and model essential for user methods
techniques for creating Subgroup-
Healthcare predictions), trust, provides undermines user
[13] 2023 synthetic datasets that level analysis
data monotonicity insights into the trust, does not
can be used to of protected
(correctness of evaluation of XAI delve into specific
stress-test machine attributes such
feature), and methods, and datasets, and lacks
learning models and as gender
incompleteness guides future diverse data.
assess bias mitigation and race
(effect of noise research.
algorithms.
in feature).

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Table 3. Cont.

Refs. Year Methodology Dataset Modality Evaluation Metric Strengths Limitations

VP model-based
Utilized GANs.
clustering
Interactive GUI tool to
approach VP modeling
generate synthetic data. Depends on the
compared to approach mitigates
Integrated bias availability of
German Credit clustering based biases by
detection. Evaluated relevant
[14] 2022 dataset, adult Tabular data solely on original heterogeneous
with LFR. Uses observational data,
dataset patient data datasets and
statistical fairness and the complexity
reduced biases by improves cluster
metrics including of use.
data from different discovery.
Statistical Parity
hospitals with
Difference (SPD).
ARDS.
Employs mechanistic Observational
virtual patient (VP) data of mixed
Specific to used
modeling to capture origin, Interactive GUI,
LFR improved datasets,
specific features of including data effective bias
fairness by 62% generalizability
patients’ states and pooled from text and mitigation,
[15] 2022 and 17.5%. issues, rely on
dynamics while different tabular data improved fairness,
Reduced SPD specific metrics,
reducing biases hospitals. ICU comprehensive
by 93%. limited to specific
introduced by datasets like bias mitigation.
algorithms.
heterogeneous MIMIC or
datasets. HiRID
Dependence on
Privacy
DECAF framework. initial dataset
preservation,
Structural causal model. AUC, ROC, and quality,
effective bias
Biased edge removal. Precision–Recall methodological
identification,
Evaluated fairness. curves improved complexity, and
[16] 2021 Tabular data Tabular data maintaining high
SCM focus on the representation parameter
data quality, and
understanding causal of under- sensitivity may
versatility for
relationships within represented groups need adjustments
various medical
data. for different
datasets.
dataset
Data size reduction.
Simulation of data CPRD-based
High-quality Requires causal
biases. Bayes Boost synthetic Compatible with
synthetic data, relationship
approach for bias datasets multiple fairness
maintained utility understanding,
handling. Probabilistic (Synthetic definitions,
of real data, definition-specific
[17] 2021 models and synthetic CVD dataset) Tabular data high-quality data,
fairness evaluated results, focused on
data generation. with effective debiasing,
by demographic tabular data, and
Comparison with 499,344 pa- and theoretical
parity, equal expert knowledge
SMOTE and ADASYN tients and guarantees.
opportunity. needed.
for generating 21 variables.
synthetic datasets
GANs for generating
synthetic biomedical
signals using LSTM Biomedical Signal fidelity, High-quality
Computationally
generator and CNN signal datasets noise levels, and synthetic signals,
Time-series intensive, requires
discriminator. like ECG, EEG, usability. Signal reduce data
[18] 2020 data (signal high-quality initial
Comparison with real EMG, and PPG similarity: high scarcity issues,
data) datasets, and
signals to assess quality. (17 types of accuracy approx. high accuracy, and
model complexity.
Training using signal ECG signals). 92%. versatility.
augmentation
techniques.
Review of GAN
applications in Accuracy,
Various
medicine. Discussion precision, recall, GANs generate Focus on
medical
on ethical security Structured and F1-score, and synthetic medical theoretical aspects,
datasets such
[19] 2023 privacy conservation. unstructured visual quality images for limited empirical
as MRI, CT
Comparative analysis data assessments. GAN datasets and new data, and ethical
scans, and
of different GAN metrics vary in data patterns concerns.
retinal images.
architecture techniques each use case.
with visual review.

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Table 3. Cont.

Refs. Year Methodology Dataset Modality Evaluation Metric Strengths Limitations

Review of clinical papers
from PubMed about
AI-assessed disparities
in dataset country
sources, and clinical A comprehensive
demographics analysis of
Country metrics:
(nationality, sex, 300,000 articles,
U.S. 40.8%, Chinese
expertise). Manually highlights Focuses on U.S.
13.7%. Clinical
[20] 2022 tagged a subsample of -- -- disparities in data, and China data
Specialties:
articles to train a model transfer-learning only.
Radiology: 40.4%,
using transfer-learning and automated
Pathology: 9.1%.
techniques to predict. tools to analyze
Studied transfer learning the dataset.
with the BioBERT model
and automated tools like
Entrez Direct
and Gendarize.
Discusses the critical
issues of fairness, bias, Addresses AI
Disparate impact
and the use of AI and biases in
Diagnosis scores, fairness Data specific to
ML in global health, underrepresented
clinical records prediction from New Zealand,
specifically in Low- Indigenous
[21] 2021 of 200 consecu- Text data different groups, dependent on
and Middle-Income populations,
tive patients at measure fairness in available health
Countries. It proposes employing fairness
a clinic. true positive rates data.
a framework for metrics enhances
across groups.
appropriateness, bias, transparency
and fairness
Analyzes data and
Health data
algorithmic bias related A robust
collected in Heavily dependent
to data collection and framework
New Zealand, on the quality and
model development, Accuracy was assessing fairness,
including Maori diversity of the
training, and testing approximately bias, and
populations. Tabular data training data,
using health data 89.2% for both appropriateness in
NZ-GP Harms (NZ-GP practical challenges
[22] 2022 collected in New genders, models AI/ML
and NZ-GDF Harms), in deploying
Zealand. Measures showed varying applications,
Diabetes Free-text AI/ML, and bias
fairness using DI ROC for offers clear
Mellitus inherent in
scores, impact scores, different groups. guidelines for
(kaggle), PIMA, biological
equal opportunities AI/ML fairness
SACardio, differences.
and equalized and reducing bias.
MNCD-RED
tabular data.
Deep reinforcement
Text and
learning framework for Improved fairness
structured data
bias mitigation. and reduced bias in Effective bias Requires extensive
eICU with multiple
Adversarial training to clinical AUC-ROC mitigation, resources,
Collaborative attributes such
reduce biases during score of 0.818 to application on dependent on the
[23] 2023 Clinical data as patient
model development. 0.875 using the real-world datasets, quality of initial
Research demographics,
Application on XGBoost model enhances clinical data. Limited
Database diagnoses,
COVID-19 screening and Random Forest decision support. dataset information
treatments,
and patient discharge (RF) model
and outcomes
prediction
Synthetic data
Synthetic data
effectively It can be
generation to address Evaluated multiple
maintained, time-consuming,
the issues of small and datasets, advanced
improved synthetic errors encountered
imbalanced medical Eight medical synthetic data
data, and enhanced depend on the
datasets. Algorithms datasets generation
machine learning quality of original
containing tabular data including techniques such as
[24] 2022 Tabular data model training datasets, and
of different sizes to test MNCD, CTGAN, and the
without the original challenges with
data, balancing using Bangladesh effectiveness of
dataset. Metrics: CTGANs in
SMOTE, and ADASYN Diabetes Gaussian Copula
MNCD, PCD, KLD, maintaining
and data augmentation in preserving data
MMD for statistical balance and
via Gaussian Copulas, structure.
similarity and performance.
and CTGANs
F1-score.

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Table 3. Cont.

Refs. Year Methodology Dataset Modality Evaluation Metric Strengths Limitations

Neural language
models (LSTM and
GPT-2) for generating
synthetic EHR text.
Joint generation of
The accuracy of
synthetic text and Addresses privacy Privacy risks with
de-identification is
annotations for NER A large and concerns, reduces synthetic text,
95%, The LSTM
with in-text PHI tag. heterogeneous manual annotation challenges in
Text-based method produces
[25] 2021 User study for privacy corpus of one efforts and evaluating privacy-
(EHR data) synthetic text with
assessment. Privacy million Dutch compares the preservation. The
higher utility
was evaluated using EHR notes. utility of synthetic study focuses on
compared to
ROUGE n-gram and data to real data. Dutch EHR data.
GPT-2.
BM25 scoring.
Combining real and
synthetic data to
improve recall without
manual annotation
Discussed various AI
Model
models and algorithms
Multiple High predictive interpretability,
for clinical outcome
clinical Structured and accuracy, robust and
prediction. These
datasets unstructured model validation, generalizability to
models include
[26] 2021 include patient data (mixed: -- personalized diverse
decision trees, linear
records (EHR), text, tabular, medicine, and populations,
models, regression
imaging, and images) effective data require large
models, ensemble
genetic data. integration. datasets and lack
learning and
privacy concerns.
neural networks.
Synthetic data Precise control over May not capture
generation with bias types, open real-world
controlled bias. Synthetic data source complexities,
Synthetic Qualitative
Qualitative analysis of generation availability, generalization
[27] 2023 datasets with analysis of bias
bias impact. (open-source flexibility to model issues, requires
predefined bias impact.
Open-source toolkit. toolkit) various biases, expertise, scope of
Controlled scenarios contribution to bias types might be
for bias studies. fairness research limited.
Bias reduction by
Anonymized
15–20%, accuracy
Synthetic data CPRD data.
improved by Varying results and
generation using Large-scale Effective bias
10–12%, privacy quality depend on
various techniques. datasets Tabular EHR mitigation ensures
[11] 2021 with <5% models,
Comparative study. including real data privacy, scalable,
re-identification resource-intensive,
Analysis of and synthetic and versatile.
risk, and data and metric reliance.
bias reduction data. Request-
utility retained
based access.
by 90–95%.

Detailed Analysis of the Reviewed Articles

This section provides a detailed analysis of the reviewed articles:
Hazra et al. [18] focus on creating synthetic biomedical signals by utilizing (GANs) to
improve information accessibility of training data for medical students and machine learn-
ing models. The strategy includes an LSTM generator and Convolutional Neural Network
(CNN) discriminator, prepared by utilizing flag increase strategies assessed against real
signals for quality. Datasets incorporate Electrocardiogram (ECG), electroencephalogram
(EEG), electromyography (EMG), and Photoplethysmography (PPG) signals. The ponder
reports tall-flag constancy and similitude with accuracy signals, accomplishing roughly
92% exactness. In spite of its potential to moderate an information shortage, the approach is
computationally complex and depends on the quality of initial datasets. Moreover, another
approach named BayesBoost is proposed by [17]. It centers on taking care of the simu-
lation of data biases through synthetic data generation. It employs probabilistic models
and synthetic dataset generators like Bayesian systems and compares them with strate-
gies like SMOTE and AdaSyn. The method employs Clinical Practice Research Datalink
(CPRD)-based synthetic datasets, particularly the Synthetic Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)

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dataset that constitutes 499,344 patient records having 21 features. The results show an
improvement in the Area Under Curve (AUC), Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC),
and Precision–Recall curves. The proposed model is effective in privacy preservation and
bias identification. However, the approach is complex and relies on the initial dataset
quality, requiring alterations for distinctive datasets.
Also, Breugel et al. [16] investigate the DEbiasing CAusal Fairness (DECAF) system
that utilizes the Structural Causal model and one-sided edge expulsion to produce fair
synthetic data. The consideration centers on data generation, guaranteeing high-quality
synthetic data. Fairness is evaluated by demographic parity and equal opportunity. De-
cency is assessed by utilizing statistical equality and rise-to-opportunity measurements.
The system is congruous with numerous fairness definitions, but it requires an understand-
ing of causal connections and centers essentially on tabular data, thus requiring expert
knowledge for further studies.
Gujar et al. [14] proposed a framework named GenEthos that utilizes GANs and
Interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI) tools to produce synthetic data with integrated
bias detection. The tool is assessed by using datasets, including the German Credit and
Adult datasets. The framework is evaluated by factual fairness measurements like Statistical
Parity Difference (SPD) and Disparate Impact (DI). Learning Fair Representation (LFR) has
improved fairness by 62%. Reduced SPD by 93%. Despite its compelling Interactive GUI,
effective bias mitigation, improved fairness moderation, and comprehensive assessment,
the approach is particular to the utilized datasets and faces generalizability and specific
algorithm issues.
Sharafutdinov et al. [15] utilize mechanistic virtual patient (VP) modeling to de-
crease biases in heterogeneous ICU datasets to identify acute respiratory distress syndrome
(ARDS) using machine learning techniques. Utilizing observational information with mixed
origin data from different hospitals, the VP model-based clustering approach, compared to
clustering based solely on original patient data, makes strides in cluster revelation and miti-
gates bias. The approach depends on the accessibility of heterogeneous datasets, improved
cluster discovery information, and relevant observational data, making it complex to use.
Paladugu et al. [19] audit the application of GANs in restorative imaging and AI
preparation, emphasizing the generation of synthetic data information era and privacy
conservation. It compares different GAN models utilizing restorative datasets like Mag-
netic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (CT) scans, and retinal images.
Measurements like precision, accuracy, review, visual quality assessments, and F1-score
are utilized to assess the information that has been created. GAN metrics vary in each use
case, whereas GANs appear guaranteed in making high-quality manufactured restorative
pictures and design patterns. However, this approach centers on hypothetical perspec-
tives with restricted experimental information and limited empirical data. Moreover, Celi
et al. [20] explore how bias in AI emerges from clinical medication information, center-
ing on the populace and data-source disparities. Utilizing PubMed clinical papers from
2019, it surveys aberrations about AI-assessed disparities in dataset country sources and
clinical demographics (nationality, sex, expertise). They manually tagged a subsample of
articles to train a model using transfer-learning techniques with the Bidirectional Encoder
Representations from Transformers for Biomedical Text Mining (BioBERT) model to make
predictions. The result of the survey highlights critical aberrations, especially in the US
(40.8%) and Chinese (13.7%) information. Clinical specialties: Radiology: 40.4% utilize
exchange learning with BioBERT, whereas a comprehensive analysis of 300,000 articles
highlights the disparities in data. Transfer-learning and automated tools to analyze the
dataset are mostly trained on US and Chinese datasets.
Also, Fletcher et al. [21] investigate a system for surveying fairness, bias, and the
use of AI/ML in worldwide global healthcare, specifically in low and middle-income
nations. Utilizing clinical records from 200 patients to train logistic regression models
accomplished around 89.2% exactness for both genders; the ROC may vary for different
groups, whereas the system depends on the quality and diversity of the training data. Ad-

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ditionally, Yogarajan et al. [22] analyze information and algorithmic bias in data collection
and model development, training, and testing by utilizing healthcare records collected in
New Zealand, centering on the Maori populations. Fairness measures, including impact
scores, equal opportunities, and equalized odds, were utilized to assess bias and disparities
among them. The results show evidence of bias when changes were made to algorithmic
designs. However, employing fairness metrics enhances transparency to reduce bias in
underrepresented populations.
Yang et al. [23] present a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) system for bias mitiga-
tion that was acquired in the data collection process. The model is evaluated for COVID-19
predictions by eliminating any hospital and ethnicity-based biases. The technique includes
Adversarial training to decrease biases during model development. The framework is also
evaluated on the Electronic Intensive Care Unit (eICU) Collaborative Inquire Database to
predict patient discharge status. The result reports an AUC-ROC score of 0.818 to 0.875
using the XGBoost model and Random Forest (RF) model.
Libbi et al. [25] explore the utilization of synthetic data information in healthcare,
particularly for preserving privacy for individuals, by creating Electronic Health Record
(EHR) data. Utilizing neural dialect models like LSTM and General-Purpose Transformers-2
(GPT-2), it aims to generate synthetic EHR content that incorporates in-text Protected Health
Information (PHI) labels with annotations for Named-Entity Recognition (NER). Privacy
was evaluated using a recall-oriented understudy for the Gisting Evaluation (ROUGE)
n-gram and Best Match (BM25) scoring. The method utilized a dataset of one million Dutch
EHR notes to train these models. The result illustrates that combining real and synthetic
data information has accomplished a 95% exactness accuracy in de-identification, especially
favoring the LSTM strategy for higher utility compared to GPT-2. However, the study
discoveries are specific to Dutch EHR datasets.
Pettit et al. [26] discuss the application of AI, ML, and DL in healthcare, with a specific
focus on the data processing model, clinical outcome prediction, utilization of data, and
AI fairness. To reduce bias in the dataset, different AI models and algorithms have been
discussed. These methods include linear and regression models, decision trees, ensemble
learning, and neural networks, whereas the paper underscores accuracy, precision, recall,
and the F1-score to measure the performance of the AI models.
Rodriguez et al. [24] examine synthetic data generation to address the issues of small
and imbalanced medical datasets containing tabular data in different sizes. The proposed
method utilizes techniques like Gaussian Copulas, Conditional Tabular Generative Ad-
versarial Networks (CTGAN), and Synthetic Data Vault (SDV). The models are evaluated
on eight different medical datasets, including MNCD, MNCD-RED, BANG, EarlyDM,
HeartDis, Kidney, PIMA, and SACardio. The result shows that synthetic data effectively
improved and enhanced machine learning model training without the original dataset. In
spite of its evaluation on multiple datasets, advanced synthetic data generation techniques
such as CTGAN and SDV are dependent on the quality of original datasets and are not
time efficient.
Baumann et al. [27] present a strategy to generate synthetic data with a controlled
bias to analyze the impact of bias on model performance. They proposed an open-source
toolkit to generate synthetic data with different types of biases. The produced synthetic
datasets with predefined bias are assessed to increase awareness of bias in AI and how it
affects individuals and society. Even though the toolkit offers control over biases that need
to be introduced, it may not capture real-world complexities. Moreover, Draghi et al. [11]
compare different synthetic data generation methods to reduce bias in healthcare data.
Utilizing anonymized CPRD informative large-scale datasets comprised of both real and
synthetic data, the result illustrates a reduction in bias by 15–20% and precision accuracy
changes by 10–12%, with privacy metric underneath 5% of re-identification. Overall, data
utility was retained up to 90–95%. The approach is effective in bias mitigation and ensures
privacy. However, the proposed approach is resource-intensive.
The next section analyses all these studies given our hypothesis and research questions.

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4. Discussion
Based on our investigation, synthetic data generation provides opportunities to mini-
mize biases in the data by generating artificial samples that are statistically similar to the
real data. Therefore, we fail to reject our hypothesis, stating that synthetic data can be
used to mitigate bias in medical datasets effectively. The previously formulated research
questions are answered below:
RQ1. What are the methods or techniques to generate synthetic data to handle biases
in datasets?
• Generative Adversarial Network (GAN): GANs use two neural networks, the gener-
ator and the discriminator, which compete to produce realistic synthetic data. This
technique compares actual real and synthetic data. The generator creates data, while
the discriminator evaluates it against real data, improving the generator’s output
iteratively. For example, SynSigGAN uses an LSTM as a generator and a CNN as a
discriminator to obtain biomedical signal datasets to produce high-quality synthetic
biomedical signals such as ECG, EEG, and EMG in time-series data signal data [18].
• Bayesian network: The Bayesian networks use probabilistic models to simulate data
with controlled biases. They can model complex dependencies between variables,
providing a framework for generating synthetic datasets. For example, the BayesBoost
method employs Bayesian networks to generate synthetic datasets to address under-
represented group samples in healthcare data, showing improvements in AUC and
ROC curve metrics [17].
• Structural Causal Models (SCM): SCM focuses on understanding causal relationships
within data. They remove biased edges in the causal graph to generate fair synthetic
data, ensuring that the generated data adheres to fairness criteria like demographics
and equal opportunity. For example, DECAF is a framework that uses SCMs to create
fair synthetic data, maintain high-quality data utility, and achieve fairness through
causally aware generative networks [16].
• Synthetic Minority Over-sampling (SMOTE): SMOTE is an oversampling technique
designed to identify data imbalance among the datasets. SMOTE is a kind of data
augmentation approach that creates additional data points by interpolating between
the minority class samples and one of its k-nearest neighbors. This method helps
the model to make the data more balanced, which enhances the minority class’s
representation and reduces the bias in classification tasks. For example, if a dataset has
100 instances of class A and 10 instances of class B, SMOTE would generate additional
synthetic data instances of class B to balance the dataset [28].
• Gaussian Copulas: Copula-based techniques simulate synthetic data by modeling the
samples from different populations with similar marginal dependencies structure be-
tween variables separately from their marginal distributions. Gaussian copulas use the
multivariate uniform distributions method to examine and compare the dependence
between variables to represent the relation between various features and mitigate bias
among them. This technique is especially helpful for producing high-dimensional
data with complex dependencies, such as medical records with multiple variables like
age, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels [24].
RQ2. What are the limitations of the existing techniques used for synthetic data generation?
Despite the vast application of synthetic generation models, there are still some limita-
tions that need to be addressed. These limitations include
• Techniques like GANs, CT-GAN, and adversarial training require significant computa-
tional resources and high-quality initial datasets with meaningful data, which can be a
barrier to the widespread adoption and implementation of this method [18].
• In Bayesian networks, the generation and effectiveness of synthetic data heavily
depend on the quality of the original datasets. Poor-quality or biased input data can
lead to synthetic data that are also biased [17].

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• Structural Causal models require a deep understanding of causal relationships between

variables and expert knowledge to be implemented effectively and to understand
the definition of specific results. This complexity can lead to significant changes in
the inferred causal relationships among data; also, this method focuses on tabular
structured data [16].
• Techniques like SMOTE can overlap samples while interpolating between instance
variables. SMOTE only focuses on tabular structured data. In high-dimensional
datasets, the interpolation process to generate synthetic samples that lack accuracy
among instances may lead to bias in the dataset [17].
• Copula-based methods, particularly Gaussian copulas, assume a specific dependency
structure between variables captured by the copula remains consistent across the
dataset. These methods often require a substantial large amount of data to model the
dataset accurately without bias. These methods also require a good understanding of
the relationships between variables, and they might go to dependency, which makes it
complex to generate synthetic data without bias [24].

5. Conclusions
This article reviewed recent research studies to investigate the application of synthetic
data to mitigate bias in healthcare datasets. For this purpose, different databases, including
Google Scholar, PubMed, ACM, and IEEEXplore, were explored to find relevant research
studies. A total of 17 articles were selected and reviewed, including conferences, jour-
nals, and a doctoral dissertation. For each article, the methodologies, dataset, modality,
evaluation metric, strengths, and weaknesses were analyzed. The overall findings show
that synthetic data generation can enhance the fairness and accuracy of datasets used to
train AI models by artificially generating samples representing diverse patient groups.
These models, when trained on unbiased datasets, can produce fair outcomes. Differ-
ent techniques, including Gaussian Copula, SMOTE, the Structural Causal method, and
GANs, are discussed in this review. Each data generation method has its own limitations.
However, the efficacy of synthetic data is contingent upon the quality of the generation
process and the synthetic datasets. Challenges such as ensuring high-quality initial datasets,
managing computational complexity, ethical considerations, and privacy concerns need to
be addressed to fully realize the potential of synthetic data generation. While the study
provides useful insights into the application of synthetic data to mitigate bias, it is essential
to highlight certain limitations that may have influenced the outcome. One significant
limitation is the selection of databases; we have not included Scopus and Web of Science
databases, which limits the scope of our study. These platforms provide a greater selection
of research studies that could have enhanced the findings. Therefore, in the future, wider
databases will be utilized to provide a more comprehensive analysis. Despite this, the
current study lays out a strong foundation for future investigation in the area of artificial
data generation to handle biases.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization: M.A.S.H., A.M.Q. and A.K. methodology: M.A.S.H.,

A.M.Q. and A.K.; writing—review and editing A.M.Q. and A.K. All authors have read and agreed to
the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research was managed by the CREATE-DkIT project, supported by the HEA’s TU-Rise
programme and co-financed by the Government of Ireland and the European Union through the
ERDF Southern, Eastern & Midland Regional Programme 2021–27 and the Northern & Western
Regional Programme 2021–27.

Data Availability Statement: No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is
not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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