  We consider a system of binary interacting chains describing the dynamics of
a group of $N$ components that, at each time unit, either send some signal to
the others or remain silent otherwise. The interactions among the chains are
encoded by a directed Erd\"os-R\'enyi random graph with unknown parameter $ p
\in (0, 1) .$ Moreover, the system is structured within two populations
(excitatory chains versus inhibitory ones) which are coupled via a mean field
interaction on the underlying Erd\"os-R\'enyi graph. In this paper, we address
the question of inferring the connectivity parameter $p$ based only on the
observation of the interacting chains over $T$ time units. In our main result,
we show that the connectivity parameter $p$ can be estimated with rate
$N^{-1/2}+N^{1/2}/T+(\log(T)/T)^{1/2}$ through an easy-to-compute estimator.
Our analysis relies on a precise study of the spatio-temporal decay of
correlations of the interacting chains. This is done through the study of
coalescing random walks defining a backward regeneration representation of the
system. Interestingly, we also show that this backward regeneration
representation allows us to perfectly sample the system of interacting chains
(conditionally on each realization of the underlying Erd\"os-R\'enyi graph)
from its stationary distribution. These probabilistic results have an interest
in its own.
