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Tuesday 8 September

Signal Processing

Distributed Physical Layer Authentication and Collaborative RSMA in Non-Terrestrial Networks via Graph Reinforcement Learning

Existing physical-layer authentication (PLA) schemes for non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) often rely on single-anchor verification, lack joint authentication-transmission design, and ignore tag privacy leakage under eavesdropping. In this paper, we consider passive, location-aware, static eavesdroppers without access to legitimate channel state information (CSI). Under this threat model, we propose secure adaptive federated authentication for multi-zone NTN systems (SAFA-MZ) that maximizes secrecy spectral efficiency (SSE) while ensuring authentication reliability, power limits, and coverage constraints. The main idea is to embed group-level authentication tags into a collaborative multi-layer rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) transmission structure. Private and common signals are jointly beamformed, artificial noise (AN) is used to reduce information leakage, and group differential privacy (GDP) protects tag information against inference attacks. In addition, users are grouped by semantic priority to allocate SSE based on information importance. We formulate a joint SSE maximization problem under authentication reliability and probabilistic secrecy constraints, optimizing high-altitude platform station (HAPS) placement, user association, and RSMA power allocation. The resulting problem is solved using a repair-based cross-entropy method (RCEM) and a graph-aware advantage actor-critic algorithm (GA2C). RCEM scales quadratically with the number of users, while GA2C scales linearly and achieves scalable, low-latency inference. Simulation results under both colluding and non-colluding eavesdroppers show that the proposed method improves average SSE by up to 135% over single-connect transmission and 21% over the scheme without AN. These results confirm SAFA-MZ offers a scalable and secure solution for dynamic NTN environments.
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All authors Parsa Rajabi, Mohammad Mirzaee, Mohammad Reza Abedi, Nader Mokari, Paeiz Azmi

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from quant-ph

A Block Tensor Train Burer-Monteiro Framework for Low-Rank Quantum State Tomography

Quantum state tomography is a fundamental technique for estimating the state of a quantum system from measured data and plays a crucial role in evaluating the performance of quantum devices. However, standard estimation methods become computationally prohibitive as the system size increases due to the exponential growth of the density matrix, describing a quantum state, with the number of qubits. We propose a low-rank tensor-network framework for mixed-state quantum state tomography based on a block tensor train (Block-TT) factorization. Specifically, the density matrix is represented as the contraction of a Block-TT with its Hermitian transpose, yielding a TT analogue of the Burer-Monteiro factorization. This parameterization guarantees Hermiticity and positive semidefiniteness by construction while compressing the number of optimization variables from exponential to linear in the number of qubits. Building on this representation, we develop single-site and two-site density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithms for estimating quantum states from compressed measurements. The resulting methods operate directly on the compressed parameterization, support adaptive rank refinement, and exploit efficient tensor-network contractions for expectation-value evaluation. The framework is applicable to a broad class of low-rank quantum states, including pure states, nearly pure states, and ground states that admit accurate tensor-network approximations. Numerical experiments demonstrate accurate state reconstruction from limited measurements together with substantial reductions in memory requirements and computational cost compared with conventional low-rank tomography methods.
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All authors Shakir Showkat Sofi, Charlotte Vermeylen, Fatemeh Mohammadi, Lieven De Lathauwer

Signal Processing

Battery-Aware Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Solar-Powered Cell-Free LEO Satellite Networks

Cell-free low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite downlinks improve coverage and macro-diversity, but intermittent solar harvesting and finite onboard batteries can make communication-only resource allocation energy-aggressive. We develop battery-aware one-layer rate-splitting multiple access (BA-RSMA) for a fixed-cluster solar-powered cell-free LEO downlink. A perturbed physical-battery Lyapunov queue couples common/private power allocation to stored energy, while robust energy causality protects against bounded harvesting uncertainty and allows harvest curtailment at battery saturation. Under a fixed-precoder scalar effective-channel model, dual and quadratic transforms yield convex fixed-auxiliary resource-allocation subproblems and monotonic alternating updates. Numerical cross-validation against a direct nonlinear-programming reference gives a maximum relative objective gap below $2.8\times10^{-7}$ over 12 representative slot–state instances. In a 20-seed battery-stressed experiment, BA-RSMA achieves 1.631~Mbit/J and reduces mean near-depletion from 24.84% under Myopic-RSMA to 6.82%, at only a 1.7% EE penalty.
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Signal Processing · Cross-listed from math.ST

MiNCE: Nonparametric, Strongly Consistent Confidence Envelopes for Band-Limited Functions and their Smoothed Spectra

Minimum-norm confidence envelope strategies offer a nonparametric approach to constructing nonasymptotic, simultaneous confidence regions for band-limited functions, exploiting the theory of Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHS). While the finite-sample coverage guarantees of these envelopes have been established, their consistency has not been analyzed so far. In this paper, we study this construction, here termed the Minimum-Norm Confidence Envelope (MiNCE) framework, and establish the strong uniform consistency of the resulting bands, both for noise-free and noisy observation models, under mild assumptions on the measurement noises. We further extend this formulation to the frequency domain, deriving nonasymptotic, simultaneous, strongly uniformly consistent confidence bands for the smoothed spectra. Numerical experiments in nonparametric regression and spectral estimation empirically confirm our theoretical results, illustrating the contraction of the confidence envelopes toward the target function as the sample size increases.
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Signal Processing

Reliable Near-Field Multi-User Positioning Informed by Two-Stage MUSIC

Near-field localization is a promising technique for high-resolution multi-user positioning in future wireless systems, but its performance is often degraded by scattering-induced coherent propagation. Existing near-field localization methods, which require separate parameter estimation and path/source association, suffer from high computation overhead and accumulated errors, and usually do not provide any guarantee on reliability. In this paper, we propose MUSIC-Net, an end-to-end near-field positioning deep learning (DL) framework informed by two-stage MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) in mixed line-of-sight (LoS) and non-LoS (NLoS) multi-path scenarios, which embeds the two-stage MUSIC objects into training to isolate the LoS-related signal subspace and to identify a surrogate distance. The proposed framework directly recovers multi-user positions without the need for involved NLoS parameter estimation or path/source association. Furthermore, we introduce split conformal prediction (SCP) to move beyond point-estimation-based positioning towards statistically guaranteed (confidence) set estimation for all users. Numerical results show that the proposed MUSIC-Net achieves lower mean positioning error (MPER) than existing benchmarks and yields tighter SCP-calibrated prediction regions, demonstrating both accurate LoS localization and efficient uncertainty quantification (UQ) in coherent multi-path environments.
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All authors Jiaying Li, Haifeng Wen, Changsheng You, Yuanwei Liu, Hong Xing

Signal Processing

Frame-Induced Doppler Self-Ambiguity in SiriusXM Satellite Signals for Passive Radar

Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service (SDARS) signals are attractive illuminators of opportunity for passive radar due to their continuous geostationary coverage and relatively high effective radiated power. However, the deterministic time-division multiplexed (TDM) framing employed by these waveforms introduces inherent self-ambiguity that can constrain coherent integration and detection performance. This paper analyzes the self-ambiguity function (SAF) of the XM/SiriusXM (SXM) waveform and explicitly links the observed Doppler periodicity to the repetition of the fast synchronization preamble (FSP) embedded in the TDM master frame. A frame-accurate XM TDM signal simulation is used to establish the expected ambiguity behavior, which is then validated experimentally using real direct-path data collected from the SXM-8 satellite. Results demonstrate pronounced and persistent Doppler replicas at integer multiples of the XM FSP repetition frequency, forming a deterministic Doppler “comb” (grating-lobe structure) that spans Doppler extents relevant to GEO-based passive radar operation with multi-second coherent processing intervals.
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All authors Khalid El-Darymli, Christoph H. Gierull, Ryan A. English, Tony Laneve

Signal Processing

Forward-Scatter Bistatic RCS of a PEC Sphere: A Mie-Theory Analysis

Forward-scatter radar (FSR) represents an extreme bistatic configuration in which the transmitter–target–receiver geometry approaches collinearity, yielding a bistatic angle near $180^\circ$. In this regime, diffraction-dominated scattering can produce bistatic radar cross sections (RCS) that substantially exceed their monostatic counterparts, a property that underpins FS and passive bistatic radar concepts. This paper presents a rigorous electromagnetic study of the bistatic RCS of a perfectly electrically conducting (PEC) sphere using exact Lorenz–Mie theory. The analysis addresses two practical objectives: (i) quantifying the sensitivity of FS enhancement to deviations from the ideal $180^\circ$ bistatic angle as a function of electrical size, and (ii) decomposing the FS response into the canonical Lorenz–Mie polarization channels $S_1$ and $S_2$, thereby establishing a polarization-resolved benchmark. The results, however, are governed by the dimensionless size parameter $ka$ and therefore generalize directly to other frequencies and bistatic configurations. By explicitly relating full-wave simulation results to Babinet-based FS scaling and optical-theorem interpretations in the high-frequency limit, the paper provides a physically transparent benchmark for FS and passive bistatic radar analysis.
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Signal Processing

3D Protraction Technique for Anchor-Free, Range-Free Wireless Localization in Industrial Warehouses via Multi-Level Binary Reachability

Three-dimensional (3D) localization is difficult in industrial facilities because fixed-node placement is constrained by hardware, power, networking, installation, and maintenance costs. This paper presents the 3D Protraction Technique (3D-PT), an anchor-free, range-free method that converts reciprocal packet detections at ordered transmit-power levels into reliability-weighted ordinal distance relations. It estimates a relative 3D configuration without Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) magnitudes, estimated ranges, surveyed anchors, or prior coordinates. In a simulated multi-height warehouse, four transmit-power levels reduce mean network-diameter-normalized RMSE by 16.0% relative to MDS-MAP(P) in both small- and medium-network regimes, and by 23.9% and 34.0% relative to CATL-reproduction, respectively. Accuracy largely saturates beyond four power levels. The results show that multi-level binary reachability provides useful geometric information beyond a single maximum-power connectivity graph.
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Signal Processing

Omnidirectional UMi Path Loss Models for 3GPP Extension Above 100 GHz Using Extensive Empirical Data Sets from 6.75 to 142 GHz

Extending standardized urban microcell (UMi) path loss (PL) models from the upper mid-band (FR3) to sub-terahertz (sub-THz) frequencies requires measurement-based comparisons spanning a wide spectral range within a unified framework. In this paper, we derive single- and multi-frequency omnidirectional PL models for UMi environments based on extensive NYU WIRELESS measurements at 6.75, 16.95, 28, 73, and 142 GHz in line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions. Single-frequency close-in (CI) and floating-intercept (FI) models for each band show that CI yields more stable and physically interpretable parameters, with shadow fading standard deviations within 0.98 dB of FI across all five frequencies. We then extend the multi-frequency PL analysis to the 7-24 GHz, 0.5-100 GHz, and 0.5-150 GHz frequency ranges using CI, close-in with frequency weighting (CIF), and alpha-beta-gamma (ABG) models. Across progressively wider frequency spans, CI and CIF maintain stable distance exponents that remain closely aligned with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) UMi interpretations, whereas ABG offers only very modest reductions in fitting error at the cost of much greater parameter sensitivity. These results support physically anchored CI/CIF formulations with a close-in free space path loss anchor point at 1 m in order to extend 3GPP-oriented UMi PL models over the entire 0.5 to 150 GHz frequency range.
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All authors Xingchen Liu, Homa Nikbakht, Mingjun Ying, Dipankar Shakya, Hitesh Poddar, Art Ishii, Daniel Abraham, Theodore S. Rappaport

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Physics-Informed Deep Learning for False Ventricular Tachycardia Alarm Reduction in the ICU

False ventricular tachycardia (VT) alarms are a leading contributor to alarm fatigue in intensive care units. We propose a deep learning framework combining a 1D SE-ResNet with ICU-realistic data augmentations and a physics-informed auxiliary reconstruction task based on the three-element Windkessel hemodynamic model, implemented as a differentiable forward simulation. By requiring the network's latent representation to produce physiologically plausible arterial pressure waveforms, artifact-driven ECG patterns are penalized while true VT remains coherent across modalities. Evaluated on the VTaC benchmark under a strict real-time protocol (10-second pre-alarm window), our method achieves a 5-point Challenge Score improvement over prior state-of-the-art. Ablation studies confirm that the physics-informed objective is the primary performance driver, providing gains in accuracy, 2x label efficiency, and more localized and clinically meaningful ECG segments.
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Signal Processing

A Material-Aware Channel Model for Efficient CKM Generation via Environment Reconstruction

Channel knowledge map (CKM) is a promising technology for environment-aware wireless communication, sensing, and localization in 6G networks. Accurate CKM generation requires precise reconstruction of the environment, including 3D geometries and scatterer materials, typically from multi-modal sensory observations such as LiDAR point clouds and sparse channel measurements. While the former is relatively easy to acquire, materials remain difficult to obtain directly from sparse channel measurements due to the lack of an explicit channel model linking them. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a material-aware channel model that explicitly characterizes the influence of scatterer materials on the wireless channel. Based on this model, an iterative gradient descent based material reconstruction algorithm is proposed. Full wave simulation results validate the developed model and the proposed algorithm, demonstrating their potentials for efficient CKM generation via environment reconstruction.
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All authors Xuancheng Zhu, Zhenjun Dong, Yong Zeng, Cheng-Xiang Wang

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from eess.SY

NL-FRA: A MATLAB package for nonlinear frequency response analysis

Nonlinear Output Frequency Response Functions (NOFRFs) provide a one-dimensional frequency-domain representation of nonlinear dynamics, enabling direct decomposition of an output spectrum into contributions from different orders of nonlinearity. NL-FRA (NonLinear Frequency Response Analysis) is an open-source MATLAB package implementing a data-driven Least Squares (LS) method for estimating NOFRFs directly from system input-output data. It provides an integrated workflow for NOFRF estimation, validation, and visualisation, together with nonlinear transmissibility analysis. The package supports different types of inputs, i.e. general band-limited, multi-one and harmonic inputs, and includes routines for identifying the frequency ranges over which each nonlinear order contributes to the output. Furthermore, since the LS approach estimates NOFRFs directly from input-output data, it can be applied to experimental measurements or data generated using any suitable dynamic model of the system. The software facilitates interpretable nonlinear frequency-domain analysis for applications including fault diagnosis, condition and structural health monitoring, and biomedical engineering.
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Signal Processing · Cross-listed from astro-ph.IM

Full Characterisation of the Polarisation Primary Beam of the GRAO 32-m Telescope

Direction-dependent instrumental polarisation is a major systematic limitation in high-fidelity single-dish radio polarimetry, yet a unified characterisation of beam leakage and the conditioning of polarisation recovery is lacking for the Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory (GRAO) 32-m telescope. We aim to establish a quantitative, direction-dependent polarimetric beam model at 5.0 and 6.7 GHz. High-resolution GRASP electromagnetic simulations of the nominal telescope configuration are used to derive the full complex Jones response and corresponding Mueller matrices, from which beam shape, beam squint, instrumental Stokes leakage, and intrinsic cross-polarisation ratio (IXR) are evaluated across the primary beam. The Stokes $I$ beams have half-power beam widths of $396.4$ and $295.3$ arcsec at 5.0 and 6.7 GHz, respectively, with main-beam efficiencies of $56.4$ and $55.6$ per cent. At 5.0 GHz, the circular-polarisation beam squint is $9.96$ arcsec ($2.5$ per cent of the HPBW), whereas no statistically significant squint is detected at 6.7 GHz. Leakage from Stokes $I$ into linear polarisation remains below $0.1$ per cent within the half-power beam but increases substantially towards the sidelobes. IXR reaches approximately $80$ dB on axis and decreases with angular offset. These results establish the intrinsic electromagnetic polarimetric response of the GRAO 32-m telescope and provide a quantitative baseline for direction-dependent calibration and subsequent observational validation.
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All authors Theophilus Ansah-Narh, Nia Imara, Benedicta Woode, Joseph Bremang Tandoh, Emmanuel Proven Adzri, Diana Klutse, Evaristus Uzochukwu Iyida

Signal Processing

Partial Superimposed Pilot-Aided Sparse Vector Transmission for High-Mobility URLLC

A partial superimposed pilot-aided sparse vector transmission (PSP-SVT) scheme is proposed for short-packet ultra-reliable and low-latency communications in high-mobility scenarios. Unlike conventional full superimposed pilot-aided SVT schemes, the proposed PSP-SVT scheme deploys only a few pilots over a subset of subcarriers. This sparse pilot structure is sufficient for basis expansion model based channel tracking while effectively reducing pilot-data interference. Based on the PSP pattern, an iterative receiver is developed to jointly perform channel estimation and data decoding. The reduced pilot interference in PSP-SVT provides more accurate initial channel estimation and data detection, thereby improving the subsequent iterative refinement and mitigating their error propagation. Moreover, the impacts of the number of PSPs and power allocation ratio on block error rate (BLER) performance are investigated to reveal the near-optimal pilot configuration. Simulation results show that the proposed PSP-SVT scheme outperforms existing full superimposed pilot-aided SVT schemes in terms of BLER with fast convergence speed.
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All authors Yanfeng Zhang, Jinkai Zheng, Hui Liang, Wen Wu, Tom H. Luan, Di Zhang, Xu Zhu

Signal Processing

CrossRAFT: Cross-Domain Complex-Valued Feature Extraction for Ultrasound Motion Estimation

Accurate multi-dimensional motion estimation is fundamental to broad biomedical ultrasound applications, primarily performed using real-valued radio-frequency (RF), analytic, and in-phase and quadrature (IQ) signals. Real-valued RF and analytic signals offer high subsample accuracy but are computationally intensive. Regardless of the signal domain used, traditional algorithms suffer from interframe decorrelation, resolution tradeoffs, and a lack of a carrier and low sampling in the lateral direction. Emerging deep learning (DL) models demonstrate improved performance and faster inference. However, existing architectures are real-valued and disrupt inherent phase coupling crucial for accurate motion estimation by treating complex components as independent channels. To address this, we propose CrossRAFT, an end-to-end trainable network designed for subsample motion estimation directly from complex-valued ultrasound signals. Built on the RAFT architecture, CrossRAFT features complex-valued encoders and a custom correlation module to explicitly extract and use phase information. We evaluated CrossRAFT across real RF, analytic, and IQ signal presentations on simulated phantoms, synthetic echocardiographic, and private in vivo echocardiographic datasets. Experimental results show that CrossRAFT estimates displacements accurately under complex tissue motion and in the challenging lateral direction. Compared to real RF-based RAFT, analytic-based CrossRAFT reduces vertical and horizontal displacement errors by 69% and 51% on the synthetic echocardiographic data, respectively. These findings demonstrate that leveraging phase information via complex-valued neural networks provides a powerful framework for ultrasound motion estimation, showing potential for clinical elastography and functional imaging.
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All authors Yang Leng, Yuchen Tang, Kai-Hang Yiu, Yik-Chung Wu, Wei-Ning Lee

Signal Processing

Efficient Deep Learning Adaptation for Cross-Environment RSS-Based Indoor Localization

Received signal strength (RSS)-based indoor localization has attracted increasing attention due to its low cost and compatibility with existing wireless infrastructures. However, RSS measurements are highly sensitive to environmental variations, making it challenging for deep learning-based localization models to generalize across different physical configurations. Driven by these challenges, this paper proposes a scenario-adaptive RSS localization framework based on backbone reuse and efficient adaptation. The proposed architecture consists of a lightweight extractor and a shared backbone, where the extractor projects heterogeneous RSS inputs into a unified feature space and the backbone captures transferable localization knowledge. During adaptation, the backbone trained from the source dataset is reused, while the extractor is optimized to adapt to the new dataset configuration. A short optimization stage is further introduced to slightly refine the backbone with a lower learning rate. Experimental results on four datasets demonstrate that the proposed training strategy enables faster convergence and improved adaptation compared with training from scratch. In addition, the proposed framework reduces training time under different dataset configurations, verifying its effectiveness and efficiency for adaptive RSS-based indoor localization.
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Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.IT

Sequential Lossy Compression With Causal Conditional Perception

In this paper, we study sequential lossy compression under a causal conditional perception criterion comparing source and reconstruction distributions given the same reconstruction history. For first-order Markov sources, we formulate the finite-horizon nonanticipative rate-distortion-perception function (NRDPF) with stagewise constraints and establish one-shot lower and upper bounds on the minimum variable-length sum rate using a strengthened strong functional-representation lemma (SFRL) and common randomness. For time-varying scalar Gauss–Markov sources under pointwise mean-squared error (MSE) and conditional squared Wasserstein-$2$ fidelity, we prove Gaussian optimality, derive a log-variance characterization, and obtain a closed-form solution that recovers the classical Gaussian nonanticipative rate-distortion function (NRDF) when perception is unconstrained and the classical Gaussian RDPF when the source is stationary and memoryless.
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Signal Processing

FedGenSC: Federated Generative Semantic Communication with Channel-Aware Adaptation

Integrating generative adversarial networks (GANs) into federated semantic communication (SemCom) is a natural progression, as generative priors can recover semantic fidelity under channel distortion that discriminative decoders cannot. However, naive GAN federation introduces three failure modes that prior work has, to the best of our knowledge, neither identified nor resolved: discriminator aggregation instability under non-independent and identically distributed (non-IID) data, semantic drift caused by divergent local embedding spaces, and channel-agnostic generation that cannot adapt to heterogeneous link conditions. We propose federated generative semantic communication (FedGenSC), which mitigates all three by employing a global generator with local-only discriminators, providing cross-client semantic information through a semantic prototype bank, and conditioning generation on the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Experiments on the Europarl dataset over Rayleigh fading channels (K=10 clients, Dirichlet {\alpha}=0.5) show that FedGenSC under non-IID data outperforms the FedDeepSC baseline across the tested SNR range, achieving up to a 58.2% relative improvement in bilingual evaluation understudy (BLEU)-1 at 18 dB. Ablation studies confirm the independent contribution of each component.
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All authors Rita Abou Fares, Razan Al Kakoun, Maher Nouiehed, Hadi Sarieddeen

Signal Processing

Masked Latent Prediction of CSI for Indoor Localization in Integrated Sensing and Communication Systems

Channel State Information (CSI)-based fingerprinting can enable accurate indoor localization but suffers from domain shift, limited labeled data, and degraded performance in multipath-rich environments. To address these challenges, we propose a self-supervised localization framework built on a Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA). Each CSI time snapshot is treated as a token, and the encoder is pre-trained by predicting the latent embeddings of masked snapshots from the visible ones, learning robust channel representations without any labels. The encoder is then frozen, and only a lightweight regression head is trained on a small set of labeled positions to estimate the user location. We evaluate the framework on the measured DICHASUS-005x dataset, a single-antenna transmitter received by a 32-antenna array in a multipath-rich indoor environment. With a 50% masking ratio, the proposed method reduces the mean localization error from 0.90 m to 0.42 m (a 53% reduction, or 0.48 m) relative to a supervised Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) baseline trained on raw CSI. Owing to its label-efficient, frozen-encoder design, the framework aligns with integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) objectives, enabling reliable sensing with minimal labeling and compute overhead.
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Signal Processing

SCALE-X: A Systematic Complexity-Aware Low-Precision Approach for Digital Predistortion

This letter presents SCALE-X, a systematic, complexity-aware, low-precision, model-based digital predistortion (DPD) technique for power amplifiers with enhanced capabilities. The proposed approach employs a novel complexity-aware coefficient pruning method, which, when combined with optimized fixed-point modeling, enables more accurate capture of quantization effects and supports better informed decisions for implementation. Targeted configuration of model order, memory depth, and coefficient bitwidth delivers dramatic cuts in computational overhead without much sacrificing accuracy. Field-programmable gate array implementation demonstrates practical trade-offs with improved overall efficiency.
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All authors Anees Rehman, Mohd Tasleem Khan, George Goussetis, Yuan Ding, João F. C. Mota, Jaiyu Hou

Signal Processing

A Foundation Model for Large-Scale Wireless Network Planning , Operation and Optimization

Wireless cellular networks form the connective tissue of human society, sustained by a continuous physical dialogue between engineered infrastructure and its surroundings. Radio signals emitted from base stations traverse terrain, diffract around buildings and scatter through streets before reaching billions of users. Together, these interactions produce the city-wide radio environment on which every network decision rests. Shaping this environment through deployment and optimization determines the connectivity societies rely on, yet learning it effectively at city scale and generalizing across diverse cities and deployments remain open challenges. Here we answer positively by introducing ChaRT, a foundation model that learns transferable radio representations from measurement reports generated by deployed cellular networks. These reports provide abundant multi-cell, multi-beam observations without dedicated campaigns, forming a scalable data foundation for city-scale learning. ChaRT embeds beam-level angular structure, network hierarchy and propagation-regime diversity in its architecture, and is pretrained through context-aware masked beam modelling and self-distillation with channel-model-constrained augmentation. We pretrain ChaRT on over one billion reports comprising 18.2 billion beam-level observations from 3,503 cells in one city. With a single set of weights, ChaRT reconstructs radio environments in unseen cities and transfers to radio map construction, new-site prediction and network parameter tuning. With only 1% of labelled data, it supports user localization, beam prediction, propagation scenario classification and estimation of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio. The learned representation further enables beamspace clustering for reusable radio-grid construction. These results establish ChaRT as a transferable foundation for network-wide intelligence.
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All authors Xinyu Qin, Wenqiang Pu, Hongcheng Dong, Bingsheng Peng, Ye Xue, Linzhi Shen, Qi Yan, Tsung-Hui Chang, Zhi-Quan Luo

Signal Processing

PAPR-Aware Multimodal Token Transmission in MLLM-Based Multiuser Networks

Task-oriented semantic communication (SemCom) empowered by multimodal large language models (MLLMs) has recently emerged as a promising paradigm for efficiently transmitting multimodal information, yet transmitting token embeddings over OFDM channels faces critical challenges due to hardware impairments, particularly the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) that severely degrades energy efficiency under nonlinear power amplifiers. In this paper, we propose a novel PAPR-aware task-oriented multimodal token transmission framework. Specifically, we propose MAPS (Multimodal AI-driven PAPR-aware Token Transmission) scheme for energy-efficient multiuser wireless communications. The key challenge is to jointly ensure inter-modal consistency, task-relevant token transmission, and PAPR reduction. To address this, we adopt a two-stage training strategy that integrates joint cross-modal alignment and PAPR reduction, followed by task-oriented fine-tuning. MAPS transmits multimodal token embeddings over an OFDM channel under a realistic Modified Rapp power amplifier. Specifically, we incorporate a trainable linear projection in the text branch for effective gradient propagation, design a balanced multimodal PAPR loss with variance-based equalization across users, and anchor the reconstruction loss to a fixed semantic target to preserve cross-modal alignment. Simulation results show that MAPS achieves balanced PAPR reduction across all modalities while maintaining strong inter-modal consistency. Under power amplifier nonlinearity, MAPS outperforms baseline schemes in both audio-visual question answering (AVQA) accuracy (64.5% gain) and task-oriented energy efficiency (64.4% gain) at an input back-off (IBO) of 3 dB, highlighting its effectiveness for energy-efficient multimodal semantic communication.
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Signal Processing

Map-Free Single-Anchor Position Localization Using Multipath Uncertainty at Upper Mid-Band

Future 5G-Advanced and 6G systems will exploit directional wideband channels for path-based localization, yet map-free indoor positioning remains challenging because extracted multipath components (MPCs) vary widely in localization reliability. This paper presents an uncertainty-aware map-free single-anchor localization framework using 16.95~GHz indoor directional channel measurements collected at NYU WIRELESS in Brooklyn, New York. Per-MPC angular covariance is estimated from the local consistency of neighboring pattern-de-embedded power delay profile (PDP) observations and propagated into geometric localization through weighted fusion of point-type and line-type constraints. Measurements across 20 links with TX–RX separations from 11~m to 97~m show that the proposed covariance-weighted method achieves a mean localization error of 3.86~m, a median of 2.66~m, and 70% of links within 5~m using five retained MPCs. It outperforms the power-weighted and unweighted variants under identical point/line constraints, as well as the literature baselines. These results indicate that local directional consistency provides reliability information beyond received power alone and demonstrate a practical map-free approach for future indoor directional systems.
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All authors Xingchen Liu, Mingjun Ying, Xinquan Wang, Dipankar Shakya, Homa Nikbakht, Daniel Abraham, Theodore S. Rappaport

Signal Processing

Understanding emotional and behavioural responses through physiological signal analysis recorded during theatrical performance

Among various cultural interventions, theatre offers a powerful medium for emotional expression, reflection, and social connection. Live performances can positively influence mental well-being. Therefore, studying audience responses during theatrical performances can provide valuable insights into the relationship between theatre, emotional experiences, and well-being. Physiological responses have emerged as an important modality for identifying patterns associated with different emotional states. However, in naturalistic environments such as live performances, analysing these signals is challenging due to the absence of explicit labels. In this study, we focus on understanding emotional and behavioural responses using physiological data collected during a live theatrical performance. Data were recorded from participants using multiple sensing modalities. In addition, a comprehensive analytical framework was employed, which included demographic analysis, visual exploration of physiological signals, participant-level observations, scene-wise physiological analysis, and intensity-based analysis using z-score normalization to summarize the findings. The findings revealed that dramatic, surprising, and intense scenes produced the strongest activation, often with concurrent increases in HR and SCL, whereas empathy-driven scenes showed lower and more stable responses. Humorous scenes elicited moderate-to-high activation, particularly in the presence of sudden reactions or loud sounds. Analyses also identified shared physiological response patterns across participants, with activation concentrated around key emotional events. These results indicate that combined HR and SCL measures can effectively capture variations in audience engagement during live theatrical performances.
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Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.IT

Non-Coherent Over-the-Air Federated Learning: Protocol, Convergence, and Device Scheduling

To mitigate the scalability bottleneck in the radio access network (RAN) in federated edge learning (FEEL), over-the-air federated learning (AirFL) exploits waveform superposition over multiple-access channels (MACs) for analog model aggregation. However, coherent AirFL typically relies on stringent PHY-layer conditions such as accurate channel state information (CSI), tight time/frequency synchronization, and frequent transceiver calibration for signal alignment. However, these requirements, if not impossible to be met, incur substantial communication and computation overhead. In this paper, we propose a non-coherent AirFL (NCAirFL) protocol over a broadband single-antenna MAC, leveraging binary dithering, unbiased non-coherent detection, and long-term error feedback to waive the need for instantaneous CSI. For NCAirFL with general smooth non-convex objectives and a constant learning rate, we establish a convergence bound achieving the convergence rate in the same order of $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{T})$ as communication-ideal FedAvg, where $T$ is the total number of communication rounds. To further improve communication efficiency under data and wireless resource heterogeneity, we also derive a lower bound on the expected single-round objective decrease in the global loss conditioned on device scheduling, building upon which a surrogate objective function is obtained for jointly optimal device selection and power control. Experimental results on MNIST and CIFAR-10 corroborate that NCAirFL achieves learning performance close to FedAvg in practical settings, with the proposed device scheduling policy substantially accelerating convergence.
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All authors Haifeng Wen, Nicolò Michelusi, Osvaldo Simeone, Yang Yang, Hong Xing

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from eess.IV

Benchmarking Regularization Methods For 3D Radio Tomographic Imaging

Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) is an important technology for 6G, enabling wireless systems to perceive their physical environment. Radio Tomographic Imaging (RTI) is a potential technique for device-free sensing in ISAC, reconstructing object locations and shapes from Received Signal Strength (RSS) measurements. It can complement other techniques, such as radar and LiDAR, by providing a narrowband modality with wavelength resolution. Recently, an extended version of RTI, known as the extended phaseless Rytov approximation (x3DPRA), has been developed to enhance RTI reconstruction quality, estimate material parameters, and extend RTI from two to three dimensions (3D). However, the 3D formulation is even more ill-posed than the 2D form, as the number of measurements is far fewer than the number of unknown voxels. In this work, we systematically evaluate and compare three distinct regularization approaches (Ridge, Total Variation, and Tensor Nuclear) within the x3DPRA framework. We provide a detailed performance analysis by evaluating both reconstruction quality and computational runtime across the three methods. Our findings show that Total Variation regularization provides the best reconstruction quality but not the fastest runtime, providing guidance for developing high-resolution 3D RTI systems for future ISAC applications.
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All authors Wanqin Ma, Yijun Chen, Alikhan Umirbayev, Jichen Zhang, Ross Murch

Signal Processing

BeamFocusNet: Beamforming-based Explicit Spatial Signal Focusing for Robust DoA Estimation under Low-SNR and Single-Snapshot Conditions

DoA estimation plays a crucial role in signal processing. Inspired by beamforming, recent works employ neural networks to estimate filters for filtering received signals to achieve DoA estimation. These methods typically generate filters by implicitly focusing signals and suppressing noise. However, this couples the two objectives, making training difficult to balance and resulting in poor robustness, especially under low SNR and limited snapshots. To address this issue, we propose the BeamFocusNet method, which generates filters through explicit signal focusing, introducing a new paradigm for neural network-based filter generation. Extensive experiments under various challenging conditions demonstrate the superiority and robustness of the proposed method in DoA estimation. Code is available at https://github.com/colaudiolab/BeamFocusNet.
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All authors Xuyao Deng, Qisheng Xu, Shuo Liu, Yong Dou, Wen Zhang, Kele Xu

Monday 7 September

Signal Processing

Large language models in medical time series analysis

Medical time series (MedTS), including electrocardiograms (ECG), electroencephalograms (EEG), photoplethysmography (PPG), and vital-sign recordings, are central to clinical diagnosis and health monitoring. As large language models (LLMs) have advanced, a growing body of work has examined how their reasoning, generation, and knowledge-integration capabilities can support MedTS analysis. Yet existing studies remain scattered, and the field still lacks a clear view of how these models should be designed, integrated into clinical workflows, and evaluated. This review synthesizes recent work on large language models for medical time series analysis (MedTSLLMs), covering both methodological progress and issues related to real-world deployment. We review model architectures, data resources, and processing pipelines, and prompt design strategies adapted for diverse clinical scenarios. We further organize existing MedTS applications, ranging from diagnostic interpretation and report generation to longitudinal health monitoring and physiological signal synthesis, highlighting task-specific design choices, common evaluation protocols, and empirical findings reported across studies. By bringing together current practices and open challenges, this review aims to provide a clearer foundation for developing, evaluating, and deploying MedTSLLMs responsibly in healthcare. We also maintain a regularly updated list of MedTSLLM studies and resources at: https://github.com/hy727/MedTSLLM-Review.
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All authors Yu Han, Cigdem Beyan, Xiang Zhang, Xiaofeng Liu, Nan Liu, Jimeng Sun, Shenda Hong, Cheng Ding, Vittorio Murino

Signal Processing

Performance Analysis of RSMA-Enabled Bistatic ISAC in LEO Networks with Holographic Apertures and Fluid-Antenna Users

This paper develops an ergodic performance framework for rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA)-enabled bistatic integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) in a low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite network with an amplitude-constrained reconfigurable holographic surface (RHS) and fluid-antenna-system (FAS) users. Deterministic angle-based common and zero-forcing private reference beams are realized through one shared multi-feed RHS amplitude state and stream-specific feed-domain precoders, and the resulting self-, leakage-, and target-direction gains are retained explicitly. Conservative private- and common-rate lower bounds are derived for both reference-port and best-of-$P$ FAS reception while preserving the same-port selection coupling. For sensing, a closed-form average bistatic sensing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is obtained under nearest-receiver association and a finite target–receiver guard distance, with extensions to angle-conditioned footprint averaging and angular scheduling. Monte Carlo results confirm the tightness of the analytical rate bounds and validate the sensing expressions. Benchmarks show that scalar RHS-efficiency models can miss strong direction-dependent effects and that nearest-ground-receiver bistatic sensing provides a $17.7$–$25.7$~dB mean SNR advantage over a favorable monostatic LEO reference for $N_{\rm RHS}=16384$ over LEO altitudes of $400$–$1000$~km. FAS gains are largest in scattering-rich regimes, while the realized shared-state RHS target gain need not vary monotonically with aperture size.
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All authors Wali Ullah Khan, Chandan Kumar Sheemar, Muhammad Adil, Symeon Chatzinotas

Signal Processing

Characterization of Beam-Squint and Beam-Split Effects in RIS-assisted Multi-Frequency Networks

Multi-frequency operation in beyond-5G and 6G systems renders the beam directions of large-aperture arrays frequency-dependent, giving rise to beam misalignment effects critical for reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs). When an RIS phase profile is configured at one frequency but illuminated at another, the reflected field may exhibit main-lobe deviation and additional dominant lobes, degrading beamforming performance. In this paper, we develop a unified analytical framework to characterize these effects for uniform planar array-based RISs under both continuous and finite-resolution phase control. We formalize beam-squint as the deviation of the maximum-gain beam from the desired elevation-azimuth angle pair and beam-split as the emergence of additional maximum-gain beams under frequency mismatch and quantization. For continuous-phase RISs, we derive necessary and sufficient peak conditions, obtain closed-form elevation-azimuth peak families, and establish feasibility conditions as functions of the frequency ratio, incidence and configuration angles, and element spacing. Extending the analysis to b-bit phase quantization, we express the quantized beampattern as a superposition of harmonic array responses via Fourier expansion of the quantization-error phasor, leading to closed-form per-harmonic peak families, dominance ordering, and feasibility conditions. To capture peak displacement induced by harmonic superposition, we further develop a perturbation-based correction leveraging dominant-harmonic curvature and residual-harmonic gradients, improving peak-location accuracy without exhaustive two-dimensional searches. Numerical simulations validate the analysis, quantify peak deviations and beam-split probabilities, and demonstrate sum-rate gains by including analytically predicted squinted/split and harmonic candidates in multi-RIS, multi-user, multi-band networks.
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