A Vertex-centric Markov Chain Algorithm for Network Clustering based on b-Coloring

Abstract

The massive size and complexity of big datasets such as those coming from social, natural and sensor environments raise utmost challenges to unsupervised cluster analysis methods in terms of performance scalability in designing algorithms, also considering parallel and distributed networking context. To cope with these hindrances, the parallelization of clustering techniques, also benefiting from GPU-centered computation, can contribute to fill the gap in applicative areas such as optimization of network routing or management of large-scale IoT networks, thus enabling the extraction, processing and policy making relying on rich network information that are typically represented in the form of graphs. One established approach to clustering graphs is through the coloring techniques, and indeed, graph clustering and graph coloring can be viewed as tied. We devise a graph clustering technique based on a Markov Chain method aimed at b-coloring the data points, that works in efficient vertex-centric parallel manner and produces a valid clustering with reduced number of color classes. We assess our algorithm against synthetic data encapsulating group structure characteristics and present a brief convergence analysis of the method.