  Given a limited number of entries from the superposition of a low-rank matrix
plus the product of a known fat compression matrix times a sparse matrix,
recovery of the low-rank and sparse components is a fundamental task subsuming
compressed sensing, matrix completion, and principal components pursuit. This
paper develops algorithms for distributed sparsity-regularized rank
minimization over networks, when the nuclear- and $\ell_1$-norm are used as
surrogates to the rank and nonzero entry counts of the sought matrices,
respectively. While nuclear-norm minimization has well-documented merits when
centralized processing is viable, non-separability of the singular-value sum
challenges its distributed minimization. To overcome this limitation, an
alternative characterization of the nuclear norm is adopted which leads to a
separable, yet non-convex cost minimized via the alternating-direction method
of multipliers. The novel distributed iterations entail reduced-complexity
per-node tasks, and affordable message passing among single-hop neighbors.
Interestingly, upon convergence the distributed (non-convex) estimator provably
attains the global optimum of its centralized counterpart, regardless of
initialization. Several application domains are outlined to highlight the
generality and impact of the proposed framework. These include unveiling
traffic anomalies in backbone networks, predicting networkwide path latencies,
and mapping the RF ambiance using wireless cognitive radios. Simulations with
synthetic and real network data corroborate the convergence of the novel
distributed algorithm, and its centralized performance guarantees.
