CNN Convolutional layer optimisation based on quantum evolutionary algorithm

In this paper, a quantum convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture is proposed to find the optimal number of convolutional layers. Since quantum bits use probability to represent binary information, the quantum CNN does not represent the actual network, but the probability of existence of each convolutional layer, thus achieving the aim of training weights and optimising the number of convolutional layers at the same time. In the simulation part, CIFAR-10 (including 50k training images and 10k test images in 10 classes) is used to train VGG-19 and 20-layer, 32-layer, 44-layer and 56-layer CNN networks, and compare the difference between the optimal and non-optimal convolutional layer networks. The simulation results show that without optimisation, the accuracy of the test data drops from approximately 90% to about 80% as the number of network layers increases to 56 layers. However, the CNN with optimisation made it possible to maintain the test accuracy at more than 90%, and the number of network parameters could be reduced by nearly half or more. This shows that the proposed method can not only improve the network performance degradation caused by too many hidden convolutional layers, but also greatly reduce the use of the network’s computing resources.