Approximation of compositional functions with ReLU neural networks

The power of DNN has been successfully demonstrated on a wide variety of high-dimensional problems that cannot be solved by conventional control design methods. These successes also uncover some fundamental and pressing challenges in understanding the representability of deep neural networks for complex and high dimensional input–output relations. Towards the goal of understanding these fundamental questions, we applied an algebraic framework developed in our previous work to analyze ReLU neural network approximation of compositional functions. We prove that for Lipschitz continuous functions, ReLU neural networks have an approximation error upper bound that is a polynomial of the network’s complexity and the compositional features. If the compositional features do not increase exponentially with dimension, which is the case in many applications, the complexity of DNN has a polynomial growth. In addition to function approximations, we also establish ReLU network approximation results for the trajectories of control systems, and for a Lyapunov function that characterizes the domain of attraction.