Skip to content
Preprint

Graph Signal Surrogate Generation for Statistical Testing of Covariance Structure on Directed Graphs

Aug 2026 · 0 citations · 20 references
Mathematics

TL;DR

The definition of directed graph wide-sense stationarity is revisited, and the surrogate signals preserve covariance under the stationary assumption to demonstrate the feasibility of the scheme to detect irregular node covariance and benchmark the method against conventional schemes using the symmetrized graph.

Abstract

Non-parametric statistical testing is based on surrogate data generation that randomizes chosen features in the empirical data. In the graph setting, graph signal processing (GSP) brings forward versatile schemes; e.g., to preserve smoothness of graph signals as measured by the Dirichlet energy. However, how to deal with directed graphs remains an active area of research. We begin by revisiting the definition of directed graph wide-sense stationarity. The surrogate signals preserve covariance under the stationary assumption. We demonstrate the feasibility of the scheme to detect irregular node covariance and benchmark our method against conventional schemes using the symmetrized graph. We also investigate how the level of asymmetry affects the detection performance, thus assessing the advantages of the presented approach. Finally, we show results for a real-world graph extracted from the Freeman EIES social network dataset.

View source

Similar papers

Preprint Jul 2026

Stability of Flow Models for Graph Signals

Generating signals on graphs requires permutation-equivariant models that exhibit stability with respect to relative structural perturbations. While favorable stability properties of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have been well documented, it is unclear how structural errors propagate through the dynamics of continuous generative flow models that are gaining traction for graph signal generation. In this paper, we analyze continuous normalized flow models parameterized by GNNs and show that permutation equivariance is preserved for both the resulting continuous-time ordinary differential equations and their discrete numerical approximations used as graph signal samplers. Our primary contribution is to derive explicit stability bounds on the generated probability distributions, which quantify how relative graph perturbations affect the final sampled signals. Motivated by these theoretical bounds, we introduce a stability-promoting regularized flow matching strategy that actively penalizes the spatial Lipschitz constant of the vector field during model training. Experiments using synthetic smooth signals on stochastic block model graphs and real-world fMRI signals on brain connectomes demonstrate that this bound-oriented approach yields generative models that are more robust to structural noise, without sacrificing output quality.

M. Schmidt, Gonzalo Mateos · 0 citations
Book Open access Aug 2026

Testing Statistical Dependence in Labeled Graphs under Mismatches

This work proposes a novel and practical framework for dependence testing in labeled graphs via mutual information over a structure-weighted joint label distribution and demonstrates that the proposed test is a statistically sound and an effective tool for uncovering nontrivial dependencies in graph data.

Nikolaos Papagiannis, Vasam Manjveekar Prabantu, A. Grama et al. · 0 citations
Preprint Jul 2026

Structure Learning on Clustered Data

A new approach is introduced that estimates a global structure while accounting for local cluster-level effects, and presents a differentiable graph coupling mechanism that guarantees the union of the fixed- and random-effects graphs remains acyclic.

Ryan Thompson, Matt P. Wand, V. Baladandayuthapani · 0 citations
Preprint Jul 2026

Graph Distribution-valued Signals in Wasserstein Spaces: Theory and Applications

We introduce a framework for graph signal processing (GSP) in which signals are represented as graph distribution-valued signals (GDSs), i.e., probability measures in a Wasserstein space. This perspective addresses fundamental limitations of classical vector-based GSP, including the requirement for complete synchronous observations across vertices and the need for strict temporal correspondence in observed filter input--output pairs. Furthermore, by modeling the graph structure as a distribution conditioned on signal realizations, we provide a principled approach to signal-dependent graph structures, which are common in real-world applications, while explicitly encoding uncertainty in graph topology. Our framework inherently captures uncertainty and stochasticity while strictly generalizing traditional graph signals, which can be interpreted as Dirac delta measures. We develop a systematic correspondence between foundational GSP concepts and their GDS analogs, showing that classical formulations emerge as special cases of our framework. We establish theoretical continuity results for GDS transforms, providing stability guarantees for input perturbations and distribution approximations. We demonstrate the utility of this approach through example applications, including graph filter learning and anomaly detection, and validate its effectiveness through empirical studies.

Yanan Zhao, Feng Ji, Xingchao Jian et al. · 0 citations
Open access Aug 2026

Higher-order graphon theory: Fluctuations, degeneracies and inference

The joint asymptotic distribution of any finite collection of network moments in random graphs sampled from a graphon, which includes both the nondegenerate case as well as the degenerate case, provides the higher-order fluctuation theory for subgraph counts in the graphon model.

Anirban Chatterjee, S. Dan, B. Bhattacharya · 0 citations
Conference Jul 2026

Local Stationarity in Time-Varying Graph Signals

Graph signal processing provides a powerful framework for analyzing data defined over irregular network structures. Estimation of effective models from a set of timevarying graph signals requires capturing both temporal dynamics and graph-dependent statistical structures. Existing approaches that model time-vertex signals as stochastic processes typically assume a globally stationary model, which often fails to represent local variations that naturally arise across both temporal and graph dimensions. In this work, we address the problem of learning parametric models for graph signals exhibiting locally stationary behavior over time and graph. We propose a locally stationary time-vertex signal model that extends stationarity to a locally adaptive setting and develop an algorithm to learn the model parameters. Experiments on synthetic and real datasets demonstrate improved estimation accuracy over existing time-vertex methods.

Deniz Aslan, Elif Vural · 0 citations