Exploiting edge features for graph neural networks

Edge features contain important information about graphs. However, current state-of-the-art neural network models designed for graph learning, eg, graph convolutional networks (GCN) and graph attention networks (GAT), inadequately utilize edge features, especially multi-dimensional edge features. In this paper, we build a new framework for a family of new graph neural network models that can more sufficiently exploit edge features, including those of undirected or multi-dimensional edges. The proposed framework can consolidate current graph neural network models, e.g., GCN and GAT. The proposed framework and new models have the following novelties: First, we propose to use doubly stochastic normalization of graph edge features instead of the commonly used row or symmetric normalization approaches used in current graph neural networks. Second, we construct new formulas for the operations in each individual layer so that they can handle multi-dimensional edge features. Third, for the proposed new framework, edge features are adaptive across network layers. As a result, our proposed new framework and new models are able to exploit a rich source of graph edge information. We apply our new models to graph node classification on several citation networks, whole graph classification, and regression on several molecular datasets. Compared with the current state-of-the-art methods, i.e., GCNs and GAT, our models obtain better performance, which testify to the importance of exploiting edge features in graph neural networks.