Learning to Identify Sources of Network Diffusion

We propose a deep learning solution to the inverse problem of localizing sources of network diffusion. Invoking graph signal processing (GSP) fundamentals, the problem boils down to blind estimation of a diffusion filter and its sparse input signal encoding the source locations. While the observations are bilinear functions of the unknowns, a mild requirement on invertibility of the graph filter enables a convex reformulation that we solve via the alternating-direction method of multipliers (ADMM). We unroll and truncate the novel ADMM iterations, to arrive at a parameterized neural network architecture for Source Localization on Graphs (SLoG-Net), that we train in an end-to-end fashion using labeled data. This way we leverage inductive biases of a GSP model-based solution in a data-driven trainable parametric architecture, which is interpretable, parameter efficient, and offers controllable complexity during inference. Experiments with simulated data corroborate that SLoG-Net exhibits performance in par with the iterative ADMM baseline, while attaining significant (post-training) speedups.

Automated summary

In this study, a deep learning solution is proposed for localizing sources of network diffusion. By leveraging graph signal processing and the ADMM method, a diffusion filter and source locations can be estimated. The trained neural network model, SLoG-Net, is interpretable, parameter efficient, and offers controllable complexity, achieving comparable performance and significant speedups compared to traditional methods.