CoVariance Filters and Neural Networks over Hilbert Spaces

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Battiloro, Claudio, Cavallo, Andrea, Isufi, Elvin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Battiloro, Claudio
Cavallo, Andrea
Isufi, Elvin
author_facet Battiloro, Claudio
Cavallo, Andrea
Isufi, Elvin
contents CoVariance Neural Networks (VNNs) perform graph convolutions on the empirical covariance matrix of signals defined over finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, motivated by robustness and transferability properties. Yet, little is known about how these arguments extend to infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. In this work, we take a first step by introducing a novel convolutional learning framework for signals defined over infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, centered on the (empirical) covariance operator. We constructively define Hilbert coVariance Filters (HVFs) and design Hilbert coVariance Networks (HVNs) as stacks of HVF filterbanks with nonlinear activations. We propose a principled discretization procedure, and we prove that empirical HVFs can recover the Functional PCA (FPCA) of the filtered signals. We then describe the versatility of our framework with examples ranging from multivariate real-valued functions to reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. Finally, we validate HVNs on both synthetic and real-world time-series classification tasks, showing robust performance compared to MLP and FPCA-based classifiers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_13178
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CoVariance Filters and Neural Networks over Hilbert Spaces
Battiloro, Claudio
Cavallo, Andrea
Isufi, Elvin
Machine Learning
Signal Processing
CoVariance Neural Networks (VNNs) perform graph convolutions on the empirical covariance matrix of signals defined over finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, motivated by robustness and transferability properties. Yet, little is known about how these arguments extend to infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. In this work, we take a first step by introducing a novel convolutional learning framework for signals defined over infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, centered on the (empirical) covariance operator. We constructively define Hilbert coVariance Filters (HVFs) and design Hilbert coVariance Networks (HVNs) as stacks of HVF filterbanks with nonlinear activations. We propose a principled discretization procedure, and we prove that empirical HVFs can recover the Functional PCA (FPCA) of the filtered signals. We then describe the versatility of our framework with examples ranging from multivariate real-valued functions to reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. Finally, we validate HVNs on both synthetic and real-world time-series classification tasks, showing robust performance compared to MLP and FPCA-based classifiers.
title CoVariance Filters and Neural Networks over Hilbert Spaces
topic Machine Learning
Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13178