SOM of SOMs: Self-organizing Map Which Maps a Group of Self-organizing Maps

摘要

This paper aims to propose an extension of SOMs called an "SOM of SOMs," or SOM~2, in which the mapped objects are self-organizing maps themselves. In SOM~2, each nodal unit of the conventional SOM is replaced by a function module of SOM. Therefore, SOM~2 can be regarded as a variation of a modular network SOM (mnSOM). Since each child SOM module in SOM~2 is trained to represent a manifold, the parent SOM in SOM~2 generates a self-organizing map representing the distribution of the group of manifolds modeled by the child SOMs. This extension of SOM is easily generalized in the case of SOM~n, such that "SOM~3 as SOM of SOM~2s." In this paper, the algorithm of SOM~2 is introduced, and some simulation results are reported.