SMKC: Sketch Based Kernel Correlation Images for Variable Cardinality Time Series Anomaly Detection

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Zhou, Haokun
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Zhou, Haokun
author_facet Zhou, Haokun
contents Conventional anomaly detection in multivariate time series relies on the assumption that the set of observed variables remains static. In operational environments, however, monitoring systems frequently experience sensor churn. Signals may appear, disappear, or be renamed, creating data windows where the cardinality varies and may include values unseen during training. To address this challenge, we propose SMKC, a framework that decouples the dynamic input structure from the anomaly detector. We first employ permutation-invariant feature hashing to sketch raw inputs into a fixed size state sequence. We then construct a hybrid kernel image to capture global temporal structure through pairwise comparisons of the sequence and its derivatives. The model learns normal patterns using masked reconstruction and a teacher-student prediction objective. Our evaluation reveals that robust log-distance channels provide the primary discriminative signal, whereas cosine representations often fail to capture sufficient contrast. Notably, we find that a detector using random projections and nearest neighbors on the SMKC representation performs competitively with fully trained baselines without requiring gradient updates. This highlights the effectiveness of the representation itself and offers a practical cold-start solution for resource-constrained deployments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_21050
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SMKC: Sketch Based Kernel Correlation Images for Variable Cardinality Time Series Anomaly Detection
Zhou, Haokun
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Conventional anomaly detection in multivariate time series relies on the assumption that the set of observed variables remains static. In operational environments, however, monitoring systems frequently experience sensor churn. Signals may appear, disappear, or be renamed, creating data windows where the cardinality varies and may include values unseen during training. To address this challenge, we propose SMKC, a framework that decouples the dynamic input structure from the anomaly detector. We first employ permutation-invariant feature hashing to sketch raw inputs into a fixed size state sequence. We then construct a hybrid kernel image to capture global temporal structure through pairwise comparisons of the sequence and its derivatives. The model learns normal patterns using masked reconstruction and a teacher-student prediction objective. Our evaluation reveals that robust log-distance channels provide the primary discriminative signal, whereas cosine representations often fail to capture sufficient contrast. Notably, we find that a detector using random projections and nearest neighbors on the SMKC representation performs competitively with fully trained baselines without requiring gradient updates. This highlights the effectiveness of the representation itself and offers a practical cold-start solution for resource-constrained deployments.
title SMKC: Sketch Based Kernel Correlation Images for Variable Cardinality Time Series Anomaly Detection
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21050