A novel artificial neural network for sorting

An artificial neural network (ANN) is employed for sorting a sequence of real elements in monotonic (descending or ascending) order. Although inspired by harmony theory (HT), whereby the same construction as for the HT ANN is followed, the proposed ANN differs in the mode of operation, namely the obliteration of the consensus (harmony) function, the circumvention of simulated annealing as a means of settling to a solution, the simplification of the activation updating of the nodes of the upper layer, the clamping of the nodes of the lower layer, the gradual shrinking of the ANN and the use of an automatic termination criterion. The creation of the sorted sequence is progressive, whereby at most as many network updates are required as there are elements in the sequence. Ties between elements are resolved by simultaneous activation of the corresponding nodes. Finally, the min and max problems are solved in a single network update.