Prediction performance of random reservoirs with different topology for nonlinear dynamical systems with different number of degrees of freedom

Abstract

Reservoir computing (RC) is a powerful framework for predicting nonlinear dynamical systems, yet the role of reservoir topology$-$particularly symmetry in connectivity and weights$-$remains not adequately understood. This work investigates how the structure of the network influences the performance of RC in four systems of increasing complexity: the Mackey-Glass system with delayed-feedback, two low-dimensional thermal convection models, and a three-dimensional shear flow model exhibiting transition to turbulence. Using five reservoir topologies in which connectivity patterns and edge weights are controlled independently, we evaluate both direct- and cross-prediction tasks. The results show that symmetric reservoir networks substantially improve prediction accuracy for the convection-based systems, especially when the input dimension is smaller than the number of degrees of freedom. In contrast, the shear-flow model displays almost no sensitivity to topological symmetry due to its strongly chaotic high-dimensional dynamics. These findings reveal how structural properties of reservoir networks affect their ability to learn complex dynamics and provide guidance for designing more effective RC architectures.