Cyclicity Analysis of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Process

TL;DR

This thesis explores how Cyclicity Analysis applied to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process can reveal the underlying network structure of a sensor system by examining lead-lag relationships in multivariate signals.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the eigenstructure of a lead matrix derived from the OU process can recover the network topology from observed data.

Findings

Eigenvector of the lead matrix reflects network structure.

Cyclicity Analysis can identify sensor receptivity patterns.

Method effectively uncovers lead-lag dynamics in multivariate signals.

Abstract

In this thesis, we consider an $N$-dimensional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process satisfying the linear stochastic differential equation $d\mathbf x(t) = - \mathbf B\mathbf x(t) dt + \boldsymbol \Sigma d \mathbf w(t).$ Here, $\mathbf B$ is a fixed $N \times N$ circulant friction matrix whose eigenvalues have positive real parts, $\boldsymbol \Sigma$ is a fixed $N \times M$ matrix. We consider a signal propagation model governed by this OU process. In this model, an underlying signal propagates throughout a network consisting of $N$ linked sensors located in space. We interpret the $n$-th component of the OU process as the measurement of the propagating effect made by the $n$-th sensor. The matrix $\mathbf B$ represents the sensor network structure: if $\mathbf B$ has first row $(b_1 \ , \ \dots \ , \ b_N),$ where $b_1>0$ and $b_2 \ , \ \dots \ ,\ b_N \le 0,$ then the magnitude of $b_p$ quantifies how receptive the $n$-th sensor is to activity within the $(n+p-1)$-th sensor. Finally, the $(m,n)$-th entry of the matrix $\mathbf D = \frac{\boldsymbol \Sigma \boldsymbol \Sigma^\text T}{2}$ is the covariance of the component noises injected into the $m$-th and $n$-th sensors. For different choices of $\mathbf B$ and $\boldsymbol \Sigma,$ we investigate whether Cyclicity Analysis enables us to recover the structure of network. Roughly speaking, Cyclicity Analysis studies the lead-lag dynamics pertaining to the components of a multivariate signal. We specifically consider an $N \times N$ skew-symmetric matrix $\mathbf Q,$ known as the lead matrix, in which the sign of its $(m,n)$-th entry captures the lead-lag relationship between the $m$-th and $n$-th component OU processes. We investigate whether the structure of the leading eigenvector of $\mathbf Q,$ the eigenvector corresponding to the largest eigenvalue of $\mathbf Q$ in modulus, reflects the network structure induced by $\mathbf B.$