Multi-Scale Harmonic Encoding for Feature-Wise Graph Message Passing
Abstract
Most Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) propagate messages by treating node embeddings as holistic feature vectors, implicitly assuming uniform relevance across feature dimensions. This limits their ability to selectively transmit informative components, especially when graph structures exhibit distinct frequency characteristics. We propose MSH-GNN (Multi-Scale Harmonic Graph Neural Network), a frequency-aware message passing framework that performs feature-wise adaptive propagation. Each node projects incoming messages onto node-conditioned feature subspaces derived from its own representation, enabling selective extraction of frequency-relevant components. Learnable multi-scale harmonic modulations further allow the model to capture both smooth and oscillatory structural patterns. A frequency-aware attention pooling mechanism is introduced for graph-level readout. We show that MSH-GNN admits an interpretation as a learnable Fourier-feature approximation of kernelized message functions and matches the expressive power of the 1-Weisfeiler--Lehman (1-WL) test. Extensive experiments on node- and graph-level benchmarks demonstrate consistent improvements over state-of-the-art methods, particularly in joint structure--frequency analysis tasks.
Benchmark Results
Tested on 6 datasets 5 baseline values reported too low Non-standard metric on 1 dataset
Tables show presented results in global context (best 3 papers + GCN + MLP).
TU Dortmund
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MSH-GNN | 0.9910
±0.0030 | This paper |
| 2 | ID-GNN+BEC | 0.9830
±0.0360 | |
| 3 | SupCosine | 0.9830
±0.0250 | |
| 25 | RTPool | 0.9470
±0.0330 | This paper |
| 26 | CIN | 0.9440
±0.0370 best reported | best at pub: CIN++: Enhancing Topological Message Passing (2023) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 39 | GIN | 0.9330
±0.0290 best reported | best at pub: ProtGNN: Towards Self-Explaining Graph Neural Networks (AAAI 2021) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 40 | Wit-TopoPool | 0.9320
±0.0410 | This paper |
| 64 | GSN | 0.9220
±0.0750 | This paper |
| 63 | GCN | 0.9220
±0.0440 | |
| 139 | PPGNs | 0.9060
±0.0870 | This paper |
| 191 | GNTK | 0.9000
±0.0850 | This paper |
| 202 | GMT | 0.8990
±0.0420 best reported | best at pub: Graph Classification via Reference Distribution Learning: Theory and Practice (NeurIPS 2024) |
| 244 | Natural GN | 0.8940
±0.0160 | This paper |
| 245 | SEP | 0.8940
±0.0610 best reported | best at pub: Graph Classification via Reference Distribution Learning: Theory and Practice (NeurIPS 2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 403 | MLP | 0.8660
±0.0495 | |
| 410 | GrePool | 0.8630
±0.0840 | This paper |
| 425 | DGCNN | 0.8583
±0.0116 best reported | best at pub: Deep Learning on Attributed Graphs: A Journey from Graphs to Their Embeddings and Back (2018) best today: Graph Structure Refinement with Energy-based Contrastive Learning (AAAI 2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 492 | IGN | 0.8390
±0.1300 | This paper |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WL-MLP | 0.9954 | |
| 2 | GIN | 0.9934 best reported | best at pub: 1-WL Expressiveness Is (Almost) All You Need (2022) |
| 3 | GCN | 0.9727 | |
| 6 | MSH-GNN | 0.8860
±0.0050 | This paper |
| 19 | CIN | 0.8530
±0.0120 best reported | best at pub: CIN++: Enhancing Topological Message Passing (2023) best today: Weisfeiler and Lehman Go Paths: Learning Topological Features via Path Complexes (AAAI 2023) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 20 | PIN | 0.8510
±0.0150 | This paper |
| 36 | GNTK | 0.8420
±0.0150 | This paper |
| 50 | GSN | 0.8350
±0.0200 | This paper |
| 52 | N^2 | 0.8350
±0.0380 | This paper |
| 64 | PPGNs | 0.8320
±0.0110 | This paper |
| 82 | SIN | 0.8280
±0.0220 best reported | best at pub: Weisfeiler and Lehman Go Topological: Message Passing Simplicial Networks (ICML 2021) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 109 | Natural GN | 0.8240
±0.0130 | This paper |
| 127 | GrePool | 0.8210
±0.0160 | This paper |
| 131 | GraphSAGE | 0.8200
±0.0100 | |
| 254 | SEP | 0.7935
±0.0033 best reported | best at pub: Scalable Graph Compressed Convolutions (2024) |
| 373 | DGCNN | 0.7650
±0.0190 best reported | best at pub: GraphCrop: Subgraph Cropping for Graph Classification (2020) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 428 | IGN | 0.7433
±0.0271 best reported | best at pub: Towards Better Graph Representation Learning with Parameterized Decomposition & Filtering (ICML 2023) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 540 | DCNN | 0.6261 best reported |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MSH-GNN | 0.9410
±0.0330 | This paper |
| 2 | GRDL | 0.8260
±0.0120 | |
| 3 | GMN | 0.8225 | |
| 12 | CIN | 0.8050
±0.0390 best reported | best at pub: CIN++: Enhancing Topological Message Passing (2023) best today: Weisfeiler and Lehman Go Paths: Learning Topological Features via Path Complexes (AAAI 2023) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 19 | Wit-TopoPool | 0.8000
±0.0320 | This paper |
| 32 | GIN | 0.7880
±0.0410 best reported | best at pub: Permutation-Invariant graph partitioning: How graph neural networks capture structural interactions? (2023) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 33 | PIN | 0.7880
±0.0440 | This paper |
| 62 | N^2 | 0.7750
±0.0180 | This paper |
| 67 | SAGE | 0.7726
±0.0228 | |
| 74 | PPGNs | 0.7720
±0.0470 | This paper |
| 100 | IGN | 0.7660
±0.0550 | This paper |
| 102 | GSN | 0.7660
±0.0500 | This paper |
| 115 | SEP | 0.7642
±0.0039 best reported | best at pub: Scalable Graph Compressed Convolutions (2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 118 | SIN | 0.7640
±0.0330 | This paper |
| 132 | DGCNN | 0.7626 best reported | best at pub: Orthogonal Graph Neural Networks (AAAI 2021) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 149 | MLP | 0.7600
±0.0320 | |
| 187 | GNTK | 0.7560
±0.0420 | This paper |
| 236 | GMT | 0.7510
±0.0060 | This paper |
| 421 | Natural GN | 0.7170
±0.0100 | This paper |
| 501 | DCNN | 0.6130
±0.0160 | This paper |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WL-MLP | 0.9792 | |
| 2 | MSH-GNN | 0.9640
±0.0070 | This paper |
| 3 | CoCN | 0.8722
±0.0013 | |
| 4 | N^2 | 0.8670
±0.0160 | This paper |
| 7 | GSN | 0.8550
±0.0120 | This paper |
| 13 | GNTK | 0.8360
±0.0100 | This paper |
| 23 | GCN | 0.8260
±0.0220 | |
| 30 | GIN | 0.8220
±0.0210 best reported | best at pub: Scalable Expressiveness through Preprocessed Graph Perturbations (2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 61 | PPGNs | 0.8140
±0.0140 | This paper |
| 62 | GrePool | 0.8140
±0.0150 | This paper |
| 69 | SEP | 0.8130
±0.0020 | This paper |
| 93 | GMT | 0.8074
±0.0054 best reported | best at pub: Structural Entropy Guided Graph Hierarchical Pooling (ICML 2022) best today: Cluster-wise Graph Transformer with Dual-granularity Kernelized Attention (NeurIPS 2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 151 | MLP | 0.7920
±0.0240 | |
| 173 | IGN | 0.7830
±0.0250 | This paper |
| 191 | DGCNN | 0.7759
±0.0224 best reported | best at pub: CogDL: A Comprehensive Library for Graph Deep Learning (WWW 2021) best today: Explainable Graph Representation Learning via Graph Pattern Analysis (IJCAI 2025) |
| 344 | DCNN | 0.5211
±0.0070 best reported | best at pub: Graph Capsule Convolutional Neural Networks (ICML 2018) best today: Natural Graph Networks (NeurIPS 2020) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OEPG | 0.9630
±0.0090 | |
| 2 | MSH-GNN | 0.9580
±0.0090 | This paper |
| 3 | GNN-AK+ | 0.9480
±0.0080 | |
| 10 | Wit-TopoPool | 0.9280
±0.0110 | This paper |
| 13 | GIN | 0.9240
±0.0250 | This paper |
| 15 | CIN | 0.9240
±0.0210 | This paper |
| 20 | SIN | 0.9220
±0.0100 | This paper |
| 84 | GCN | 0.7060
±0.0369 |
Heterophily Benchmark
Minesweeper
Global leaderboard →Sorted by Accuracy. Highlighted rows are from other papers.
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GraphTARIF | 0.9903
±0.0019 | |
| 2 | BuNN | 0.9899
±0.0016 | |
| 3 | M3Dphormer | 0.9827
±0.0020 | |
| 5 | GAT | 0.9786
±0.0037 best reported | |
| 9 | GCN | 0.8975
±0.0052 | |
| 11 | SAGE | 0.9709
±0.0100 | |
| 13 | MSH-GNN | 0.9478
±0.0064 | This paper |
| 14 | N^2 | 0.9397
±0.0027 | This paper |
| 17 | GraphGPS | 0.9229
±0.0061 | This paper |
| 19 | GT | 0.9185
±0.0076 | This paper |
| 23 | Exphormer | 0.9074
±0.0053 best reported | best today: Neighbourhood Transformer: Switchable Attention for Monophily-Aware Graph Learning (2026) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 31 | GPRGNN | 0.8624
±0.0061 | This paper |
| 43 | MLP | 0.8000 |
