MFRS: A Multi-Frequency Reference Series Approach to Scalable and Accurate Time-Series Forecasting

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yu, Liang, Tu, Lai, Bai, Xiang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866929753179553792
author Yu, Liang
Tu, Lai
Bai, Xiang
author_facet Yu, Liang
Tu, Lai
Bai, Xiang
contents Multivariate time-series forecasting holds immense value across diverse applications, requiring methods to effectively capture complex temporal and inter-variable dynamics. A key challenge lies in uncovering the intrinsic patterns that govern predictability, beyond conventional designs, focusing on network architectures to explore latent relationships or temporal dependencies. Inspired by signal decomposition, this paper posits that time series predictability is derived from periodic characteristics at different frequencies. Consequently, we propose a novel time series forecasting method based on multi-frequency reference series correlation analysis. Through spectral analysis on long-term training data, we identify dominant spectral components and their harmonics to design base-pattern reference series. Unlike signal decomposition, which represents the original series as a linear combination of basis signals, our method uses a transformer model to compute cross-attention between the original series and reference series, capturing essential features for forecasting. Experiments on major open and synthetic datasets show state-of-the-art performance. Furthermore, by focusing on attention with a small number of reference series rather than pairwise variable attention, our method ensures scalability and broad applicability. The source code is available at: https://github.com/yuliang555/MFRS
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_08328
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MFRS: A Multi-Frequency Reference Series Approach to Scalable and Accurate Time-Series Forecasting
Yu, Liang
Tu, Lai
Bai, Xiang
Machine Learning
Information Retrieval
Multivariate time-series forecasting holds immense value across diverse applications, requiring methods to effectively capture complex temporal and inter-variable dynamics. A key challenge lies in uncovering the intrinsic patterns that govern predictability, beyond conventional designs, focusing on network architectures to explore latent relationships or temporal dependencies. Inspired by signal decomposition, this paper posits that time series predictability is derived from periodic characteristics at different frequencies. Consequently, we propose a novel time series forecasting method based on multi-frequency reference series correlation analysis. Through spectral analysis on long-term training data, we identify dominant spectral components and their harmonics to design base-pattern reference series. Unlike signal decomposition, which represents the original series as a linear combination of basis signals, our method uses a transformer model to compute cross-attention between the original series and reference series, capturing essential features for forecasting. Experiments on major open and synthetic datasets show state-of-the-art performance. Furthermore, by focusing on attention with a small number of reference series rather than pairwise variable attention, our method ensures scalability and broad applicability. The source code is available at: https://github.com/yuliang555/MFRS
title MFRS: A Multi-Frequency Reference Series Approach to Scalable and Accurate Time-Series Forecasting
topic Machine Learning
Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.08328