CrossLinear: Plug-and-Play Cross-Correlation Embedding for Time Series Forecasting with Exogenous Variables
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
May 29, 2025
Abstract
Time series forecasting with exogenous variables is a critical emerging
paradigm that presents unique challenges in modeling dependencies between
variables. Traditional models often struggle to differentiate between
endogenous and exogenous variables, leading to inefficiencies and overfitting.
In this paper, we introduce CrossLinear, a novel Linear-based forecasting model
that addresses these challenges by incorporating a plug-and-play
cross-correlation embedding module. This lightweight module captures the
dependencies between variables with minimal computational cost and seamlessly
integrates into existing neural networks. Specifically, it captures
time-invariant and direct variable dependencies while disregarding time-varying
or indirect dependencies, thereby mitigating the risk of overfitting in
dependency modeling and contributing to consistent performance improvements.
Furthermore, CrossLinear employs patch-wise processing and a global linear head
to effectively capture both short-term and long-term temporal dependencies,
further improving its forecasting precision. Extensive experiments on 12
real-world datasets demonstrate that CrossLinear achieves superior performance
in both short-term and long-term forecasting tasks. The ablation study
underscores the effectiveness of the cross-correlation embedding module.
Additionally, the generalizability of this module makes it a valuable plug-in
for various forecasting tasks across different domains. Codes are available at
https://github.com/mumiao2000/CrossLinear.
