Network Embedding via Community Based Variational Autoencoder

In recent years, network embedding has attracted more and more attention due to its effectiveness and convenience to compress the network structured data. In this paper, we propose a community-based variational autoencoder (ComVAE) model to learn network embedding, which consists of a community detection module and a deep learning module. In the proposed model, both community information and deep learning techniques are utilized to learn low-dimensional vertex representations. First, community information reveals an implicit relationship between vertices from a global view, which can be a supplement to local information and help to improve the embedding quality. To obtain the community information, community detection algorithms are utilized as a module and the modularization design makes the model more flexible. Second, deep learning techniques can not only integrate and preserve the information from both local and global views efficiently but also strengthen the robustness of vertex representations. To demonstrate the performance of our model, extensive experiments are conducted in four downstream tasks, namely, network reconstruction, node classification, link prediction, and visualization. The experimental results show that our model outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches to real-world datasets.