# Extending Tabular Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models for Time-Series Data Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.05257 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05257/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 13 of its 21 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Apr 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Flow matching, time series and science](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/flow-matching-time-series-and-science/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00751/) (2019)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [AdapterFusion: Non-Destructive Task Composition for Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00247/) (2020)
- [Revisiting Deep Learning Models for Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11959/) (2021)
- [TabDDPM: Modelling Tabular Data with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15421/) (2022)
- [Mixed-Type Tabular Data Synthesis with Score-based Diffusion in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09656/) (2023)
- [Diffusion-TS: Interpretable Diffusion for General Time Series Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01742/) (2024)
- [VAEM: a Deep Generative Model for Heterogeneous Mixed Type Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11941/) (2020)
- [Generating and Imputing Tabular Data via Diffusion and Flow-based Gradient-Boosted Trees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09968/) (2023)
- [CAPTURE-24: A large dataset of wrist-worn activity tracker data collected in the wild for human activity recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19229/) (2024)
- [TimeLDM: Latent Diffusion Model for Unconditional Time Series Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04211/) (2024)
- [SoK: Behind the Accuracy of Complex Human Activity Recognition Using Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00712/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models are increasingly being utilised to create synthetic tabular and time series data for privacy-preserving augmentation. Tabular Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (TabDDPM) generate high-quality synthetic data from heterogeneous tabular datasets but assume independence between samples, limiting their applicability to time-series domains where temporal dependencies are critical. To address this, we propose a temporal extension of TabDDPM, introducing sequence awareness through the use of lightweight temporal adapters and context-aware embedding modules. By reformulating sensor data into windowed sequences and explicitly modeling temporal context via timestep embeddings, conditional activity labels, and observed/missing masks, our approach enables the generation of temporally coherent synthetic sequences. Compared to baseline and interpolation techniques, validation using bigram transition matrices and autocorrelation analysis shows enhanced temporal realism, diversity, and coherence. On the WISDM accelerometer dataset, the suggested system produces synthetic time-series that closely resemble real world sensor patterns and achieves comparable classification performance (macro F1-score 0.64, accuracy 0.71). This is especially advantageous for minority class representation and preserving statistical alignment with real distributions. These developments demonstrate that diffusion based models provide effective and adaptable solutions for sequential data synthesis when they are equipped for temporal reasoning. Future work will explore scaling to longer sequences and integrating stronger temporal architectures.