Robust Reconstruction of Complex Networks from Sparse Data

TL;DR

This paper presents a robust framework for reconstructing complex networks from limited, noisy data by decomposing the problem into local structures and applying sparse signal reconstruction techniques, achieving high accuracy across various real-world networks.

Contribution

The authors introduce a general, noise-tolerant method for network reconstruction from sparse data using local structure recovery and convex optimization, applicable to diverse complex systems.

Findings

High reconstruction accuracy from sparse, noisy data

Effective in real-world networks like transportation and communication

Applicable across different types of complex network models

Abstract

Reconstructing complex networks from measurable data is a fundamental problem for understanding and controlling collective dynamics of complex networked systems. However, a significant challenge arises when we attempt to decode structural information hidden in limited amounts of data accompanied by noise and in the presence of inaccessible nodes. Here, we develop a general framework for robust reconstruction of complex networks from sparse and noisy data. Specifically, we decompose the task of reconstructing the whole network into recovering local structures centered at each node. Thus, the natural sparsity of complex networks ensures a conversion from the local structure reconstruction into a sparse signal reconstruction problem that can be addressed by using the lasso, a convex optimization method. We apply our method to evolutionary games, transportation and communication processes taking place in a variety of model and real complex networks, finding that universal high reconstruction accuracy can be achieved from sparse data in spite of noise in time series and missing data of partial nodes. Our approach opens new routes to the network reconstruction problem and has potential applications in a wide range of fields.