Sparse neural network based anomaly detection in multi-dimensional time series

Abstract

Anomaly detection from time series is one of the key components in automated monitoring of one or more entities. Domain-driven sensor selection for anomaly detection is restricted by knowledge of important sensors to capture only a certain set of anomalies from the entire set of possible anomalies. Hence, existing anomaly detection approaches are not very effective for multi-dimensional time series. Embodiments of the present disclosure depict sparse neural network for anomaly detection in multi-dimensional time series (MDTS) corresponding to a plurality of parameters of entities. A reduced-dimensional time series is obtained from the MDTS via an at least one feedforward layer by using a dimensionality reduction model. The dimensionality reduction model and recurrent neural network (RNN) encoder-decoder model are simultaneously learned to obtain a multi-layered sparse neural network. A plurality of error vectors corresponding to at least one time instance of the MDTS is computed to obtain an anomaly score.