Review Articles

Hybrid Kolmogorov-Arnold and xLSTM network for enhanced RUL prediction of lithium batteries

Yunhao Hu ,

Center of Statistical Research, School of Statistics and Data Science, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, People's Republic of China

Qiuyi Ge ,

Center of Statistical Research, School of Statistics and Data Science, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, People's Republic of China

Ziqing Tian ,

Center of Statistical Research, School of Statistics and Data Science, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, People's Republic of China

Zuwei Zhang ,

Center of Statistical Research, School of Statistics and Data Science, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, People's Republic of China

Fode Zhang

Center of Statistical Research, School of Statistics and Data Science, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, People's Republic of China

fredzh@swufe.edu.cn

Pages | Received 08 Nov. 2025, Accepted 12 Feb. 2026, Published online: 03 Mar. 2026,
  • Abstract
  • Full Article
  • References
  • Citations

Accurate prediction of the remaining useful life (RUL) of lithium batteries is essential for ensuring efficient equipment maintenance and energy management, particularly as these batteries serve as a core driver in the new energy technology revolution. While deep learning models such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Long Short-Term Memory Networks (LSTMs), and their variants have demonstrated significant success in RUL prediction, they often face challenges related to inadequate modelling of long-term dependencies in complex degradation data. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a novel hybrid architecture that integrates the Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN) with an Extended Long Short-Term Memory Network (xLSTM). The KAN component enhances high-dimensional function approximation and improves parameter efficiency by substituting traditional linear weights with B-spline-parameterized univariate functions. Meanwhile, the xLSTM introduces exponential gating mechanisms and covariance update rules to more effectively capture high-order long-term dependencies. Experimental results on the NASA lithium battery aging dataset demonstrate that the proposed KAN-xLSTM model significantly outperforms CNN, LSTM, and xLSTM models in prediction accuracy, particularly for battery groups with large capacity fluctuations.

Your browser may not support PDF viewing. Please click to download the file.

References

  • Ba, J., Hinton, G. E., Mnih, V., Leibo, J. Z., & Ionescu, C. (2016). Using fast weights to attend to the recent past. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (Vol. 29, pp. 4338–4346). Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation, Inc.
  • Beck, M., Pöppel, K., Spanring, M., Auer, A., Prudnikova, O., Kopp, M., Klambauer, G., Brandstetter, J., & Hochreiter, S. (2024). xLSTM: Extended long short-term memory. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (Vol. 37, pp. 107547–107603). Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation, Inc.
  • Bu, Z., Long, B., Liu, Z., Wu, K., Geng, H., & Cheng, Y. (2025). Multivariate adaptive Brownian motion-particle filter framework for remaining useful life prediction of nonlinear and state-noise coupled degradation process. Reliability Engineering & System Safety264,111356. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2025.111356
  • Cai, X., Li, N., & Xie, M. (2024, April). RUL prediction for two-phase degrading systems considering physical damage observations. Reliability Engineering & System Safety244,109926. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2024.109926
  • Cui, X., Chen, Z., Lan, J., & Dong, M. (2021). An online state of health estimation method for lithium-ion battery based on ICA and TPA-LSTM. In 2021 IEEE Industrial Electronics and Applications Conference (IEACON) (pp. 130–135). IEEE.
  • Cybenko, G. (1989). Approximation by superpositions of a sigmoidal function. Mathematics of Control, Signals and Systems2(4), 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02551274
  • Dayan, P., & Willshaw, D. J. (1991). Optimising synaptic learning rules in linear associative memories. Biological Cybernetics65(4), 253–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00206223
  • Gao, K., Wu, D., Zhang, S., Peng, R., & Wu, S. (2025). The state-of-the-art development and new challenges: Operations management of metro systems. ICCK Transactions on Systems Safety and Reliability1(1), 4–20. https://doi.org/10.62762/TSSR.2025.246708
  • Genet, R., & Inzirillo, H. (2025). Tkan: Temporal Kolmogorov-Arnold networks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.07344(open in a new window)
  • Greff, K., Srivastava, R. K., Koutník, J., Steunebrink, B. R., & Schmidhuber, J. (2016). LSTM: A search space odyssey. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems28(10), 2222–2232. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNNLS.2016.2582924
  • He, W., Williard, N., Osterman, M., & Pecht, M. (2011). Lithium-ion Battery Aging Dataset. Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering, University of Maryland.
  • Hess, A., Calvello, G., & Frith, P (2005, March). Challenges, issues, and lessons learned chasing the ‘Big P’. Real predictive prognostics. Part 1. In 2005 IEEE Aerospace Conference (pp. 3610–3619). IEEE.
  • Hochreiter, S., & Schmidhuber, J. (1997, November). Long short-term memory. Neural Computation9(8), 1735–1780. https://doi.org/10.1162/neco.1997.9.8.1735
  • Hornik, K., Stinchcombe, M., & White, H. (1989). Multilayer feedforward networks are universal approximators. Neural Networks2(5), 359–366. https://doi.org/10.1016/0893-6080(89)90020-8
  • Kolmogorov, A. N (1961). On the representation of continuous functions of several variables by superpositions of continuous functions of a smaller number of variables. In Collected works (pp. 25–46). American Mathematical Society.
  • Krotov, D., & Hopfield, J. (2018). Dense associative memory is robust to adversarial inputs. Neural Computation30(12), 3151–3167. https://doi.org/10.1162/neco_a_01143
  • Krotov, D., & Hopfield, J. J. (2016). Dense associative memory for pattern recognition. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (Vol. 29). Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation, Inc.
  • Lai, C., Baraldi, P., & Zio, E. (2025, July). Gradient-enhanced physics-informed long short-term memory networks for stable and accurate prediction of the RUL of electronic components. Reliability Engineering & System Safety265,111485. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2025.111485
  • Li, N., Wang, M., Lei, Y., Yang, B., Li, X., & Si, X. (2025). Remaining useful life prediction of lithium-ion battery with nonparametric degradation modeling and incomplete data. Reliability Engineering & System Safety256,110721. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2024.110721
  • Li, S., Fang, H., & Shi, B. (2021). Remaining useful life estimation of lithium-ion battery based on interacting multiple model particle filter and support vector regression. Reliability Engineering & System Safety210,107542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2021.107542
  • Li, Y., Xiong, B., Vilathgamuwa, D. M., Wei, Z., Xie, C., & Zou, C. (2021, January). Constrained ensemble Kalman filter for distributed electrochemical state estimation of lithium-ion batteries. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics17(1), 240–250. https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.9424
  • Liu, J., Hou, B., Lu, M., & Wang, D. (2024). Box-Cox transformation based state-space modeling as a unified prognostic framework for degradation linearization and RUL prediction enhancement. Reliability Engineering & System Safety244, 109952. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2024.109952
  • Liu, K., Hu, X., Wei, Z., Li, Y., & Jiang, Y. (2019, December). Modified Gaussian process regression models for cyclic capacity prediction of lithium-ion batteries. IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification5(4), 1225–1236. https://doi.org/10.1109/TTE.6687316
  • Liu, K., Shang, Y., Ouyang, Q., & Widanage, W. D. (2021, April). A data-driven approach with uncertainty quantification for predicting future capacities and remaining useful life of lithium-ion battery. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics68(4), 3170–3180. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIE.41
  • Liu, Z., Wang, Y., Vaidya, S., Ruehle, F., Halverson, J., Soljačić, M., Hou, T. Y., & Tegmark, M. (2024). Kan: Kolmogorov-Arnold networks. Preprint. arXiv:2404.19756(open in a new window)
  • Milakov, M., & Gimelshein, N. (2018). Online normalizer calculation for softmax. Preprint. arXiv:1805.02867(open in a new window)
  • Niu, H., Zeng, J., Shi, H., Zhang, X., Liang, J., & Shi, G. (2025). Remaining useful life prediction for multi-component systems with stochastic correlation based on auxiliary particle filter. Reliability Engineering & System Safety264,111357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2025.111357
  • Peiseler, L., Schenker, V., Schatzmann, K., Pfister, S., Wood, V., & Schmidt, T. (2024, May). Carbon footprint distributions of lithium-ion batteries and their materials. Preprint.
  • Perumal, T., Mustapha, N., Mohamed, R., & Shiri, F. M. (2024). A comprehensive overview and comparative analysis on deep learning models. Journal on Artificial Intelligence6(1), 301–360. https://doi.org/10.32604/jai.2024.054314
  • Ramsauer, H., Schäfl, B., Lehner, J., Seidl, P., Widrich, M., Adler, T., Gruber, L., Holzleitner, M., Pavlović, M., Sandve, G. K., Greiff, V., Kreil, D., Kopp, M., Klambauer, G., Brandstetter, J., & Hochreiter, S. (2021). Hopfield networks is all you need. Preprint. https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.02217(open in a new window).
  • Ren, L., Zhao, L., Hong, S., Zhao, S., Wang, H., & Zhang, L. (2018). Remaining useful life prediction for lithium-ion battery: A deep learning approach. IEEE Access6, 50587–50598. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2858856
  • Rosenblatt, F. (1958). The perceptron: A probabilistic model for information storage and organization in the brain. Psychological Review65(6), 386–408. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0042519
  • Saha, B., & Goebel, K. (2007). Battery Data Set. NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Prognostics Data Repository.
  • Schlag, I., Irie, K., & Schmidhuber, J. (2021). Linear transformers are secretly fast weight programmers. In International Conference on Machine Learning (pp. 9355–9366). Proceedings of Machine Learning Research.
  • Schmidhuber, J. (1992). Learning to control fast-weight memories: An alternative to dynamic recurrent networks. Neural Computation4(1), 131–139. https://doi.org/10.1162/neco.1992.4.1.131
  • Sejnowski, T. J. (1977). Storing covariance with nonlinearly interacting neurons. Journal of Mathematical Biology4(4), 303–321. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00275079
  • Shu, Q., Zhang, F., Shen, L., & Ng, H. K. T. (2024, January). RUL prediction with cross-domain adaptation based on reproducing kernel Hilbert space. IEEE Transactions on Reliability74(3), 3871–3883. https://doi.org/10.1109/TR.2024.3488792
  • Sun, Y., Dong, L., Huang, S., Ma, S., Xia, Y., Xue, J., Wang, J., & Wei, F. (2023). Retentive network: A successor to transformer for large language models. Preprint. arXiv:2307.08621(open in a new window)
  • Vaca-Rubio, C. J., Blanco, L., Pereira, R., & Caus, M. (2024). Kolmogorov-Arnold networks (KANs) for time series analysis. Preprint. arXiv:2405.08790(open in a new window)
  • Wang, F. K., Amogne, Z. E., Chou, J. H., & Tseng, C. (2022). Online remaining useful life prediction of lithium-ion batteries using bidirectional long short-term memory with attention mechanism. Energy254,124344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2022.124344
  • Wang, H., Ma, X., & Zhao, Y. (2019). An improved Wiener process model with adaptive drift and diffusion for online remaining useful life prediction. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing127, 370–387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymssp.2019.03.019
  • Wang, J., Zhang, F., Ng, H. K. T., & Shi, Y. (2024). Remaining useful life prediction via information enhanced domain adversarial generalization. IEEE Transactions on Reliability74(2), 2837–2850. https://doi.org/10.1109/TR.2024.3441592
  • Xiang, S., Qin, Y., Luo, J., Pu, H., & Tang, B. (2021). Multicellular LSTM-based deep learning model for aero-engine remaining useful life prediction. Reliability Engineering & System Safety216,107927. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2021.107927
  • Xiang, S., Qin, Y., Zhu, C., Wang, Y., & Chen, H. (2020). Long short-term memory neural network with weight amplification and its application into gear remaining useful life prediction. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence91,103587. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engappai.2020.103587
  • Xu, A., Fang, G., Zhuang, L., & Gu, C. (2025, September). A multivariate student-t process model for dependent tail-weighted degradation data. IISE Transactions57(9), 1071–1087. https://doi.org/10.1080/24725854.2024.2389538
  • Zhang, F., Ng, H. K. T., & Shen, L. (2023, January). Robust estimation and selection for degradation modeling with inhomogeneous increments. IEEE Transactions on Reliability73, 560–575.
  • Zhang, S., Zhai, Q., & Li, Y. (2023). Degradation modeling and RUL prediction with wiener process considering measurable and unobservable external impacts. Reliability Engineering & System Safety231,109021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2022.109021
  • Zhu, R., Hu, J., & Peng, W. (2025). Bayesian calibrated physics-informed neural networks for second-life battery SOH estimation. Reliability Engineering & System Safety264,111432. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2025.111432
  • Zhu, R., Peng, W., Ye, Z. S., & Xie, M. (2025, January). Collaborative prognostics of lithium-ion batteries using federated learning with dynamic weighting and attention mechanism. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics72(1), 980–991. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIE.2024.3387115
  • Zhu, Y., Zhang, F., Chen, W., Cheng, Z., & Shen, L. (2026). Order-preserving kernel contrastive learning with applications to cross-domain RUL prediction. IEEE Transactions on Reliability75, 97–111. https://doi.org/10.1109/TR.2025.3635402

To cite this article: Yunhao Hu, Qiuyi Ge, Ziqing Tian, Zuwei Zhang & Fode Zhang (03 Mar 2026): Hybrid Kolmogorov-Arnold and xLSTM network for enhanced RUL prediction of lithium batteries, Statistical Theory and Related Fields, DOI: 10.1080/24754269.2026.2635735

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/24754269.2026.2635735