Revealing Network Connectivity From Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to deduce network connectivity solely from the observed collective dynamics of synchronizing oscillators, enabling accurate reconstruction even in under-determined scenarios.

Contribution

The authors propose a novel approach to infer network structure from stationary responses of oscillators under various driving conditions, applicable to sparse networks.

Findings

Accurate network reconstruction from dynamics alone

Effective in under-determined and sparse network cases

Requires multiple driving condition measurements

Abstract

We present a method to infer network connectivity from collective dynamics in networks of synchronizing phase oscillators. We study the long-term stationary response to temporally constant driving. For a given driving condition, measuring the phase differences and the collective frequency reveals information about how the oscillators are interconnected. Sufficiently many repetitions for different driving conditions yield the entire network connectivity from measuring the dynamics only. For sparsely connected networks we obtain good predictions of the actual connectivity even for formally under-determined problems.