arXiv:2606.05264cs.LG2026-06

用真实数据做骨架,生成可控的多变量时间序列,提升预测效果。

REGEN: Reference-Guided Synthetic Multivariate Time Series Generation for Forecasting

论文配图:REGEN: Reference-Guided Synthetic Multivariate Time Series Generation for Forecasting
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 将真实序列分解为周期骨架、随机残差和变量依赖关系,分步生成。
  • 在交通等强周期领域,生成数据甚至比真实数据更利于预测。
  • 适合数据少、需保持结构特征的场景,如工业监控、交通预测。

训练鲁棒的多变量时间序列预测模型需要大量多样数据,但许多真实场景仅有少量观测序列。现有生成方法存在缺陷:基于先验的方法(如 CauKer、TimePFN)生成无领域特性的样本,而数据驱动方法(如 TimeGAN)将参考序列视为黑箱监督,无法显式控制周期结构、局部变异性和变量间动态关系。本文提出 ReGeN,一种参考引导的生成框架,将观测序列视为结构骨架而非模仿对象。ReGeN 将每个参考序列分解为三个可解释成分:对齐相位的周期主干,捕捉主导领域形态;基于深度核高斯过程建模的变量级随机残差;通过结构因果模型注入的滞后感知变量间依赖关系。通过可控温度采样这些组件,可扩展分布覆盖,同时保留领域结构。实验表明,ReGeN 生成数据能几乎无缝替代真实同源数据,且在强周期领域(如交通)中表现优于真实数据本身。此外,基于 ReGeN 数据预训练的通用模型,优于基于先验和数据驱动合成数据预训练的模型。这表明在低数据场景下,如何结构化利用参考数据,其重要性不亚于数据量本身。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Training robust multivariate time series forecasting models requires large, diverse corpora, yet many real-world domains provide only a handful of observed sequences. Existing generators fail to resolve this mismatch: prior-based approaches (e.g., CauKer, TimePFN) produce domain-agnostic samples, while data-driven methods (e.g., TimeGAN) treat references as black-box supervision, forfeiting explicit control over periodic structure, local variability, and cross-variable dynamics. We propose ReGeN, a reference-guided generative pipeline that treats observed sequences not as examples to imitate, but as structural scaffolds for controllable synthesis. ReGeN decomposes each reference into three interpretable components: a phase-aligned periodic backbone capturing dominant domain morphology; per-variable stochastic residuals modeled with a deep-kernel Gaussian process; and lag-aware cross-variable dependencies injected through a structural causal model with fitted coupling coefficients. Sampling these components at controllable temperature broadens distributional coverage while preserving domain-grounded structure. We show that ReGeN-generated data consistently substitutes for real sibling data with minimal forecasting degradation, and in strongly periodic domains such as traffic, can outperform the real source itself. We further show that a foundation model pretrained on ReGeN corpora outperforms those pretrained on prior-based and data-driven synthetic alternatives. This suggests that in low-data regimes, how reference data is structurally exploited can matter as much as how much data is available.

时间序列生成多变量预测数据合成结构建模

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