  In this paper, we consider the problem of locating the information source
with sparse observations. We assume that a piece of information spreads in a
network following a heterogeneous susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model
and that a small subset of infected nodes are reported, from which we need to
find the source of the information. We adopt the sample path based estimator
developed in [1], and prove that on infinite trees, the sample path based
estimator is a Jordan infection center with respect to the set of observed
infected nodes. In other words, the sample path based estimator minimizes the
maximum distance to observed infected nodes. We further prove that the distance
between the estimator and the actual source is upper bounded by a constant
independent of the number of infected nodes with a high probability on infinite
trees. Our simulations on tree networks and real world networks show that the
sample path based estimator is closer to the actual source than several other
algorithms.
