Kernel Fuzzy Clustering with Output Layer Self-Connection Recurrent Neural Networks for Software Cost Estimation

In the current world, the software cost estimation problem has been resolved using various newly developed methods. Significantly, the software cost estimation problems can be dealt with effectively with the recently grown recurrent neural network (RNN) than the other newly developed methods. In this paper, an improved approach is proposed to software cost estimation using Output layer self-connection recurrent neural networks (OLSRNN) with kernel fuzzy c-means clustering (KFCM). The proposed OLSRNN method follows the basics of traditional RNN models for integrating self-connections to the output layer; thereby, the output temporal dependencies are better captured. Also, the performance of neural networks is improved using the kernel fuzzy clustering algorithm to enhance software estimation results. Ultimately, five publicly available software cost estimation datasets are adapted to verify the efficacy of the proposed KFCM-OLSRNN method using the validation metrics such as MdMRE, PRED (0.25) and MMRE. The experimental results proved the efficiency of the proposed method for solving the software cost estimation problem.