The invention relates to an optimized binary
convolution unit (ESBCU) based on a channel expansion and contraction technology, and belongs to the technical field of
binary neural network optimization. The optimized binary
convolution unit aims to solve the problem that an existing basic binary
convolution unit (BBCU) is insufficient in information expression ability due to the fact that an output value is limited to a limited
discrete set. According to the core scheme, through channel expansion, contraction and copy operation, firstly, the number of input channels is expanded by t times to increase a
discrete set output by binary convolution, then the number of convolution kernel output channels is reduced to 1 / t of the original number to maintain the calculation complexity unchanged, and finally, through
processing of a channel copy splicing layer and a batch normalization (BN) layer, the convolution kernel output channel number is reduced to 1 / t of the original number to maintain the calculation complexity unchanged. And recovering the final output channels to the number compatible with the next layer. According to the method, on the premise of not increasing the calculation complexity, the output
dynamic range of the binary convolution is effectively expanded, and the feature representation capability of the binary convolution is enhanced. Experiments show that the unit can effectively improve model performance (such as a PSNR index) in low-level visual tasks such as image super-resolution and the like, and can be flexibly integrated into various
deep neural networks as a plug-and-play standard module.