ReLU network with bounded width is a universal approximator in view of an approximate identity

Deep neural networks have shown very successful performance in a wide range of tasks, but a theory of why they work so well is in the early stage. Recently, the expressive power of neural networks, important for understanding deep learning, has received considerable attention. Classic results, provided by Cybenko, Barron, etc., state that a network with a single hidden layer and suitable activation functions is a universal approximator. A few years ago, one started to study how width affects the expressiveness of neural networks, i.e., a universal approximation theorem for a deep neural network with a Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation function and bounded width. Here, we show how any continuous function on a compact set of Rⁿin, n_in ∈ N can be approximated by a ReLU network having hidden layers with at most n_in + 5 nodes in view of an approximate identity.