Optimizing FCN for devices with limited resources using quantization and sparsity enhancement.

Journal: Scientific reports
Published Date:

Abstract

This study addresses the optimization of fully convolutional networks (FCNs) for deployment on resource-limited devices in real-time scenarios. While prior research has extensively applied quantization techniques to architectures like VGG-16, there is limited exploration of comprehensive layer-wise quantization specifically within the FCN-8 architecture. To fill this gap, we propose an innovative approach utilizing full-layer quantization with an [Formula: see text] error minimization algorithm, accompanied by sensitivity analysis to optimize fixed-point representation of network weights. Our results demonstrate that this method significantly enhances sparsity, achieving up to 40%, while preserving performance, yielding an impressive 89.3% pixel accuracy under extreme quantization conditions. The findings highlight the efficacy of full-layer quantization and retraining in simultaneously reducing network complexity and maintaining accuracy in both image classification and semantic segmentation tasks.

Authors

  • Muhammad Faizan-Khan
    Departament d'Enginyeria Electrònica, Elèctrica i Automàtica, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. muhammadfaizan.khan@urv.cat.
  • Nisar Ali
    Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Regina, Regina, S4S0A2, Saskatchewan, Canada.
  • Raja Hashim Ali
    University of Europe for Applied Sciences, Potsdam, 14469, Germany.
  • Areej Alasiry
    College of Computer Science, King Khalid University, Abha, 61413, Saudi Arabia.
  • Mehrez Marzougui
    College of Computer Science, King Khalid University, Abha, 61413, Saudi Arabia.
  • Shabbab Ali Algamdi
    Department of Software Engineering, College of Computer Science and Engineering, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia.
  • Yunyoung Nam

Keywords

No keywords available for this article.