Peer Revenue Impact factor: volatile

Papers

Fresh from arXiv, typeset properly. Highlighted words trade on the market.

Electrical Engineering and Systems Science

eess Watch Electrical Engineering and Systems Science (sign in to use)

Saturday 11 April

Image and Video Processing · Cross-listed from cs.CL

AITP: Traffic Accident Responsibility Allocation via Multimodal Large Language Models

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have achieved remarkable progress in Traffic Accident Detection (TAD) and Traffic Accident Understanding (TAU). However, existing studies mainly focus on describing and interpreting accident videos, leaving room for deeper causal reasoning and integration of legal knowledge. Traffic Accident Responsibility Allocation (TARA) is a more challenging task that requires multi-step reasoning grounded in traffic regulations. To address this, we introduce AITP (Artificial Intelligence Traffic Police), a multimodal large language model for responsibility reasoning and allocation. AITP enhances reasoning via a Multimodal Chain-of-Thought (MCoT) mechanism and integrates legal knowledge through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). We further present DecaTARA, a decathlon-style benchmark unifying ten interrelated traffic accident reasoning tasks with 67,941 annotated videos and 195,821 question-answer pairs. Extensive experiments show that AITP achieves state-of-the-art performance across responsibility allocation, TAD, and TAU tasks, establishing a new paradigm for reasoning-driven multimodal traffic analysis.
Read the full abstract

Signal Processing

LLM-enabled Antenna Partitioning and Beamforming Optimization for Segmented Pinching

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) requires spatial architectures that can flexibly balance data transmission and environment sensing. Segmented pinching antenna-assisted ISAC provides such flexibility by allowing different waveguide segments to be dynamically configured for transmission and reception. However, its design involves the joint optimization of antenna deployment, segment partitioning, and beamforming under coupled communication and sensing constraints, which becomes particularly challenging when the numbers of communication users and sensing targets vary across scenarios. To endow the system with stronger adaptability to changing user and target configurations, we propose a general learning framework for segmented pinching antenna-assisted ISAC systems. Specifically, a channel state information (CSI)-induced self-graph is constructed to produce permutation-invariant representations of user-target interactions, and the resulting features are processed by a large language model (LLM) backbone with two task-specific heads for jointly predicting antenna deployment, segment partitioning, and ISAC beamforming. In addition, a user count transfer mechanism is developed to examine whether the learned deployment policy is site-specific and reusable under changed user configurations. Simulation results show that the proposed framework achieves higher communication rates while maintaining reliable sensing accuracy. Moreover, the learned deployment policy remains highly stable when transferring to other user counts, which reduces the training cost from full model retraining to beamforming head adaption.
Read the full abstract

All authors Qian Gao, Ruikang Zhong, Hyundong Shin, Yuanwei Liu

Image and Video Processing · Cross-listed from physics.geo-ph

Buried Fiber-Optic Geolocalization with Distributed Acoustic Sensing

We present a scalable method for geolocalizing buried fiber-optic cables using Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and traffic-induced quasi-static seismic signals. Assuming access to one end of the fiber, the method fuses DAS measurements with vehicle trajectories obtained from either video tracking or vehicle-mounted GPS. The fiber geometry is estimated by minimizing the mismatch between the measured and physics-based synthetic strain-rate maps. The framework combines a matched-filter initialization with neural-network-based trajectory optimization, enabling robust convergence under realistic noise and trajectory-uncertainty conditions. Simulation and field experiments demonstrate sub-meter localization accuracy, often on the order of tens of centimeters, and strong agreement with manual calibration by tap-testing. This approach provides a practical tool for mapping poorly documented underground fiber infrastructure and for supporting urban sensing applications.
Read the full abstract

All authors Khen Cohen, Natanel Nissan, Ofir Nissan, Ariel Lellouch

Signal Processing

Deep Learning-Based Physical Layer Authentication Using 5G NR Sounding Reference Signals: A Temporal Generalization Study on Real Testbed Data

Physical Layer Authentication (PLA) exploits the spatial uniqueness of wireless channel characteristics in order to authenticate devices without recourse to higher-layer cryptographic protocols, which remain vulnerable to key compromise. This paper reports a comprehensive PLA system constructed on 5G New Radio (NR) Sounding Reference Signals (SRS) extracted from a real OpenAirInterface (OAI) testbed operating in band n78 (3.5 GHz) with 40 MHz bandwidth and 30 kHz subcarrier spacing. The proposed approach extracts a 2,531-dimensional feature vector per SRS probe, combining per-subcarrier channel state information (1,248 amplitude and 1,247 differential-phase coefficients), power delay profile taps, delay spread, Doppler statistics, and nonlinear dynamics indicators. A deep one-dimensional Residual Network (1D-ResNet) augmented with Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) attention blocks is employed to classify each probe as either legitimate or spoofed. Evaluation is conducted on 20,317 over-the-air SRS probes acquired across four measurement sessions using a USRP B210 software-defined radio as the legitimate device and a commercial mobile handset as the attacker. Under a strict chronological train/validation/test split that eliminates temporal leakage, an Equal Error Rate (EER) of 3.92% is attained, with AUC = 0.962 on the held-out test set, and an authentication latency of less than 0.1 ms per probe, which is compatible with 5G Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) requirements.
Read the full abstract

All authors Sachinkumar B. Mallikarjun, Marvin Reski, Andreas Weinand, Hans D. Schotten

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.IT

Rate Loss Analysis for Multiple-Antenna NOMA with Limited Feedback

In the limited feedback downlink multiple-input single-output (MISO) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system, both the effective channel gain and the channel direction need to be quantized. The quantization error affects the feasible region of NOMA and the rate loss compared with the case of full channel state information (CSI). In this work, we analyze these effects and obtain an upper bound for the rate loss. Numerical results show that the sum rate of the limited feedback MISO-NOMA system approaches that of the full CSI as the number of feedback bits increases.
Read the full abstract

Signal Processing

Automatic Modulation Classification via Green Machine Learning

In this work, we propose an interpretable, robust, and lightweight machine learning method for automatic modulation classification (AMC) under dynamic and noisy channel conditions. It is called green automatic modulation classification (GAMC) and targets edge artificial intelligence (AI) with low computational complexity and a small model size. GAMC operates in four stages. First, raw received I/Q signals are transformed into multi-domain representations, including constellation diagrams and spatio-temporal graphs. Second, we extract a comprehensive set of statistical and topological features from time-series signals, constellation diagrams, and graphs. Third, a supervised feature learning process leverages label guidance to project high-dimensional features into robust, discriminative low-dimensional ones. Finally, a context-aware Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) soft routing mechanism ensembles predictions from downstream classifiers. Experimental results show that GAMC effectively mitigates domain shifts caused by high noise. It strikes a good balance between accuracy and efficiency, reducing the number of model parameters by $50\%$, operating at $3\%$ to $42\%$ of the computational cost of lightweight deep learning models, and maintaining higher accuracy in various SNRs.
Read the full abstract

Signal Processing

DBU-OFDM: A Trainable Deep Block-Unitary OFDM Waveform for Integrated Sensing and Communication

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a dominant waveform in modern wireless systems, yet its high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and limited adaptability hinder efficient support for integrated communication and sensing. This paper proposes deep block-unitary precoded OFDM (DBU-OFDM), a structure-preserving learning framework that enables trainable waveform adaptation while preserving the DFT-based signal structure, pilot/null resource protection, and compatibility with low-complexity frequency-domain equalization. The proposed design restricts learning to a block-unitary transformation over data subcarriers and preserves pilot and null resources for structural compatibility. The transform is parameterized by recursive Householder reflections, ensuring strict unitarity as well as differentiable, numerically stable, and complexity-controllable implementation. Results show that DBU-OFDM achieves PAPR tails close to block-pilot DFT-s-OFDM while retaining comb-type pilots, improves communication reliability in frequency-selective fading via frequency-domain diversity, and enhances range and velocity estimation in direct sensing, especially in dimension-limited settings. Over-the-air USRP experiments and FPGA prototyping further verify its practical feasibility, demonstrating low error vector magnitude (EVM), clear PAPR reduction in real transmission, and hardware throughput up to 200~MS/s with microsecond-level latency. DBU-OFDM therefore offers a practical intermediate solution between conventional model-based OFDM waveforms and unconstrained neural transceivers for next-generation integrated communication and sensing systems.
Read the full abstract

All authors Cheng Luo, Luping Xiang, Hankun Zhang, Yi Luo, Chen Huang, Yi Zhang, Cheng-Xiang Wang, Kun Yang

Signal Processing

Impact of Validation Strategy on Machine Learning Performance in EEG-Based Alcoholism Classification

Electroencephalography provides a non-invasive and cost-effective approach for analyzing neural patterns associated with alcohol dependence. However, reported classification performance in EEG-based alcoholism studies varies considerably, often due to differences in validation strategies rather than intrinsic model capability. This study presents a validation-aware machine learning framework to assess the impact of evaluation methodology on classification performance. A balanced multi-channel EEG dataset of 300 trials (150 alcoholic, 150 control) was analyzed using a structured feature representation combining statistical descriptors and spectral band interactions. Five classifiers, including support vector machines (linear and radial basis function kernels), random forest, k-nearest neighbors, and AdaBoost, were evaluated under standard and nested cross-validation protocols. Results show that conventional validation with global hyperparameter tuning introduces optimistic bias. In particular, SVM with radial basis function kernel exhibited a performance decrease of approximately 5% under nested cross-validation, indicating overestimation. Ensemble-based methods showed more stable generalization, with AdaBoost achieving the highest performance, reaching 78.3% accuracy ($\pm$4.25), an AUC of 0.868, and balanced sensitivity (78.67%) and specificity (81.33%). These findings highlight that validation strategy is a primary determinant of perceived model performance. Statistical analysis using McNemar's test further shows that most performance differences between models are not statistically significant, emphasizing careful interpretation of classification results. The proposed framework provides a reproducible and robust basis for evaluating machine learning models in biomedical signal analysis.
Read the full abstract

Systems and Control

Stability and Robustness of Tensor-Coupled Flow-Conservation Dynamical Systems on Hypergraphs

This paper develops an entropy-based stability and robustness framework for nonlinear hypergraph dynamics with conservation and flow balance. We consider generator-form systems on the simplex whose state-dependent transition rates capture higher-order (tensor) interactions among nodes. Under a tensor generalized detailed-balance (TGDB) condition, we show that the system admits a unique equilibrium and an entropy Lyapunov function ensuring global asymptotic stability. The Jacobian restricted to the tangent subspace of the simplex is Hurwitz, and its spectral gap determines the exponential convergence rate. Building on this structure, we derive first-order sensitivity bounds of the equilibrium under perturbations of the coupling tensor and establish a local input-to-state stability (ISS) estimate with respect to external inputs. The results reveal a quantitative link between the spectral gap and the system's robustness margin: larger spectral gaps imply smaller equilibrium shifts and faster recovery under structural or parametric perturbations. Numerical experiments on tensor-coupled flow models confirm the theoretical predictions and illustrate how the proposed entropy-dissipating framework unifies stability and robustness analysis for conservative higher-order network systems.
Read the full abstract

All authors Chencheng Zhang, Hao Yang, Bin Jiang, Shaoxuan Cui

Signal Processing

Graph-Enhanced LLM for SWAN-ISAC

Segmented pinching antenna assisted integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems enable flexible spatial resource utilization by allowing different waveguide segments to be dynamically configured for transmission and reception. However, the resulting design requires the joint optimization of antenna deployment, segment partitioning, and beamforming under coupled communication and sensing constraints. In this paper, we propose a general learning framework for segmented pinching antenna assisted ISAC systems. Specifically, a channel state information (CSI)-induced self-graph is constructed to capture the scenario-dependent interactions among communication users and sensing targets. Based on the learned graph representation, a large language model (LLM) backbone with low-rank adaptation (LoRA) is employed, followed by two task-specific output heads for antenna deployment and beamforming prediction, respectively. Simulation results show that the proposed framework achieves a favorable tradeoff between communication rate and sensing accuracy
Read the full abstract

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.AI

A Dual-Positive Monotone Parameterization for Multi-Segment Bids and a Validity Assessment Framework for Reinforcement Learning Agent-based Simulation of Electricity Markets

Reinforcement learning agent-based simulation (RL-ABS) has become an important tool for electricity market mechanism analysis and evaluation. In the modeling of monotone, bounded, multi-segment stepwise bids, existing methods typically let the policy network first output an unconstrained action and then convert it into a feasible bid curve satisfying monotonicity and boundedness through post-processing mappings such as sorting, clipping, or projection. However, such post-processing mappings often fail to satisfy continuous differentiability, injectivity, and invertibility at boundaries or kinks, thereby causing gradient distortion and leading to spurious convergence in simulation results. Meanwhile, most existing studies conduct mechanism analysis and evaluation mainly on the basis of training-curve convergence, without rigorously assessing the distance between the simulation outcomes and Nash equilibrium, which severely undermines the credibility of the results. To address these issues, this paper proposes...
Read the full abstract

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.CR

Organizational Security Resource Estimation via Vulnerability Queueing

We provide an approach that closely estimates an organization's cyber resources directly from vulnerability timestamps, using a non-stationary queueing framework. Traditional attack-surface metrics operate on static snapshots, ignoring the core attack-defense dynamics within information systems, which exhibit bursty, heavy-tailed, and capacity-constrained behavior. Our approach to modeling such dynamics is based on a queueing abstraction of attack surfaces. We utilize a segmentation method to identify piecewise-stationary regimes via Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) of queue length distributions. We fit segment-specific arrival, service, and resource parameters through the minimization of Kullback–Leibler divergence (KL) between the empirical and estimated distributions. Applied to both large-scale software supply chain data and multi-year private logistics enterprise cyber-ticket workflows, the model estimates organizational resources, measured in the time-varying active personnel and output rate per personnel, solely from bug report and fix timings for software supply chains, and discovery and patch timestamps in the enterprise setting. Our results provide 91–96% accuracy in resource estimation, making the dynamic queueing framework a compelling approach for understanding attack surface dynamics. Further, our framework exposes resource bottlenecks, establishing a foundation for predictive workforce planning, patch-race modeling, and proactive cyber-risk management.
Read the full abstract

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from astro-ph.IM

A Fast Direct Solver for Mutual Coupling Analysis of Large Arrays of Reflector Antennas

Mutual coupling is a dominant systematic effect in dense reflector arrays, imprinting direction-dependent and frequency-dependent structure on embedded element patterns (EEPs) and currently limiting sensitivity in precision radio measurements. Accurate modelling of these effects requires full-wave simulations of structures that are electrically large at both the array and element levels, making conventional approaches computationally prohibitive. We present a Method-of-Moments (MoM) framework accelerated by a fast direct solver (FDS). The rotational symmetry of reflector dishes is exploited to efficiently compress self-interaction blocks of the impedance matrix. Mutual interactions are treated using a broadband multipole decomposition that remains efficient and accurate for closely spaced elements. We demonstrate the method on arrays of tens of reflectors from the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) telescope. To scale to larger arrays, the FDS is used to construct macro-basis functions (MBFs) from a smaller representative array and embed them within a conventional MBF scheme. This allows the first computation of EEPs for the 320-element HERA core on a 128-core workstation.
Read the full abstract

All authors Quentin Gueuning, Eloy de Lera Acedo, Anthony Keith Brown, Nicolas Fagnoni

Systems and Control

Performance Enhancement of MVDC Aircraft Cables Using Micro-Multilayer Insulation Under Low-Pressure Conditions

The development of medium-voltage direct current (MVDC) cable systems for wide-body all-electric aircraft (AEA) requires insulation technologies capable of operating reliably under reduced-pressure environments. Conventional underground cable insulation, designed for atmospheric conditions, exhibits degraded partial discharge (PD) and dielectric performance at low pressure, limiting its applicability to aerospace systems. This work presents a controlled experimental comparison between a conventional single-layer extruded insulation system and a micro-multilayer multifunctional electrical insulation (MMEI) architecture, in which all cable components are kept identical except for the insulation. The MMEI system is implemented with only 10% of the baseline insulation thickness to evaluate the effectiveness of insulation architecture in enhancing performance. PD characteristics and dielectric strength are experimentally evaluated under DC voltage at atmospheric pressure and 18.8 kPa. Results show that the MMEI-based cable exhibits higher PD inception voltage (PDIV) and maintains a detectable PD extinction voltage (PDEV) under reduced pressure, unlike the conventional cable. Furthermore, despite its significantly reduced thickness, the MMEI system demonstrates a substantial increase in dielectric breakdown strength, withstanding voltages exceeding 20 kV compared to below 5 kV for the conventional design under low-pressure conditions. These findings demonstrate that insulation architecture, rather than thickness alone, governs performance in MVDC aerospace cables. The results highlight the potential of MMEI systems to enable lighter, more compact, and higher-performance cable designs for future electrified aviation platforms.
Read the full abstract

Signal Processing

Living Off the Grid: Continuous Range-Angle Super-Resolution for Near-Field XL-MIMO

Near-field extremely large multiple input multiple output (XL-MIMO) breaks the assumptions that make classical super-resolution effective: the receiver acquires only a limited set of compressed pilot observations, while each propagation path is jointly determined by angle and distance under a spherical-wave model. This invalidates the far-field Vandermonde structure exploited by conventional methods, and many existing near-field formulations remain only gridless by discretizing range and angle and thus inheriting mismatch, coherence, and resolution loss. This paper develops a continuous 2D super-resolution framework for hybrid near-field measurements that avoids range and angle gridding. The key idea is to reparameterize distance through inverse range, which reveals a compact spectral structure for the near-field spherical-wave manifold. Building on this observation, we introduce a panelized weighted fitting strategy that converts the range-dependent Fresnel terms into a stable transform-domain representation, resulting in a lifted mode, in which each continuous range-angle pair is embedded as a structured rank-one atom and the measurement model remains linear under hybrid combining. Recovery is then posed as a 2D atomic norm minimization, with path localization certified through a dual polynomial over the transformed domain. Numerical experiments show exact support recovery in the noiseless setting using only few compressed hybrid measurements. These results establish the proposed inverse-range atomic norm viewpoint as a new gridless foundation for near-field sensing and channel estimation in hybrid XL-MIMO and integrated sensing and communication systems.
Read the full abstract

Image and Video Processing · Cross-listed from cs.AR

A 129FPS Full HD Real-Time Accelerator for 3D Gaussian Splatting

Rendering large-scale, unbounded scenes on AR/VR-class devices is constrained by the computation, bandwidth, and storage cost of 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS). We propose a low-power, low-cost 3DGS hardware accelerator that renders full-HD images in real time, together with a hardware-friendly compression pipeline that combines iterative Gaussian pruning and fine-tuning, progressive spherical harmonics (SH) degree reduction, and vector quantization of all SH coefficients and colors. The scheme achieves a $51.6\times$ model-size reduction with a 0.743 dB PSNR loss. The accelerator uses a frame-level pipeline that integrates point-based culling and projection with tile-based sorting and rasterization, skips zero-Jacobian matrix multiplications (reducing processing elements by 63% and computation by 53%), and adopts comparison-free tile-based sorting with deterministic latency. Implemented in a TSMC 28-nm process at 800 MHz, the design occupies $0.66~\text{mm}^2$ with 1.1438 M gates and 120 kB SRAM, consumes 0.219 W, and delivers 1219 Mpixels/J at 267.5 Mpixels/s, enabling 1080p at 129 FPS. Overall, it is $5.98\times$ smaller in area, $5.94\times$ higher throughput, and delivers $7.5\times$ higher energy efficiency than prior 3DGS accelerators.
Read the full abstract

Signal Processing

Optimal Analog Beamforming and Power Allocation for Multiuser TDMA Systems

The joint design of analog beamforming and power allocation is investigated for a single radio-frequency chain multiuser time-division multiple access system under a max-min signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) criterion. A hardware-efficient phased-array architecture is considered, where the beamforming vector is shared by all users and is subject to constant-modulus constraints. For any fixed analog beamformer, the optimal power allocation is first derived in closed form, by which the original problem is reduced to phase-shift optimization only. Then, globally optimal branch-and-bound (BB) algorithms are developed for discrete and continuous phase shifts. Numerical results show that the proposed BB algorithms achieve the global optimum and provide reliable benchmarks for evaluating the performance gap of low-complexity alternating-optimization methods.
Read the full abstract

All authors Songnan Gu, Chongjun Ouyang, Hao Jiang, Xingqi Zhang

Signal Processing

Energy-Efficient Hybrid Data Computation via Coordinated AirComp and Edge Offloading

The development of 6G networks brings an increasing variety of data services, which motivates the hybrid computation paradigm that coordinates the over-the-air computation (AirComp) and edge computing for diverse and effective data processing. In this paper, we address this emerging issue of hybrid data computation from an energy-efficiency perspective, where the coexistence of both types induces resource competition and interference, and thus complicates the network management. Accordingly, we formulate the problem to minimize the overall energy consumption including the data transmission and computation, subject to the offloading capacity and aggregation accuracy. We then propose a block coordinate descent framework that decomposes and solves the subproblems including the user scheduling, power control, and transceiver scaling, which are then iterated towards a coordinated hybrid computation solution. Simulation results confirm that our coordinated approach achieves significant energy savings compared to baseline strategies, demonstrating its effectiveness in creating a well-coordinated and sustainable hybrid computing environment.
Read the full abstract

All authors Yudan Jiang, Xiao Tang, Jinxin Liu, Qinghe Du, Dusit Niyato, Zhu Han

Signal Processing

Hybrid Physical and Geometrical Optics Method for Modeling Subsurface Imaging Using mmWave FMCW Radar

A hybrid physical and geometrical optics method is proposed to model the subsurface imaging using mmWave FMCW radar. Modeling of the wave propagation for subsurface imaging can improve the interpretation of acquired data and imaging results. Full-wave simulation is common in simulating wave propagation. However, when the frequency is high such as mmWave frequency, it is difficult to implement since it costs large computation resource and time. In this paper, the physical and geometrical optics are hybridized to simulate the wave propagation in subsurface imaging scenarios. In the proposed method, physical optics method is utilized to calculate the reflection from the object and geometrical optics method is utilized to calculate the transmission of the wave through object. By combining the results from physical and geometrical optics, the wave propagation in the subsurface imaging scenarios is simulated. The synthetic-aperture radar imaging is applied to the simulated data and the image is successfully reconstructed. Further, the experiment setup is developed and the comparison between simulation and experiment is carried out. The results demonstrated that the proposed simulation method can model the subsurface imaging with mmWave FMCW radar.
Read the full abstract

All authors Kaito Ichijo, Hang Song, Xin Du, Bo Wei, Junichi Takada

Systems and Control

Digital Control of Negative Imaginary Systems Using Discrete-Time Multi-HIGS: Application to a Dual-Stage MEMS Force Sensor

In this paper, we propose a digital control approach for multi-input multi-output negative imaginary (NI) systems using discrete-time hybrid integrator-gain systems (HIGS) controllers. We show the NI property of the bimodal and trimodal discrete-time HIGS, as well as the parallel combinations of them, which are referred to as the multi-HIGS. Also, we demonstrate that linear NI systems can be asymptotically stabilized using discrete-time HIGS in digital control. We apply discrete-time bimodal and trimodal multi-HIGS controllers to a two-input two-output dual-stage force sensor with lightly damped resonant modes. To validate the theoretical findings, the closed-loop performance is evaluated in both time and frequency domains. Experimental results show that the discrete-time multi-HIGS effectively suppresses resonances while preserving favorable phase characteristics, which highlights its potential as a robust nonlinear NI controller for the digital control of NI systems.
Read the full abstract

All authors Kanghong Shi, Diyako Dadkhah, Ian R. Petersen, S. O. Reza Moheimani

Signal Processing

Wearable AI in the Era of Large Sensor Models

As an effective approach to understanding the human-centric physical world, Wearable Artificial Intelligence (AI), which leverages multimodal wearable sensors to understand human physiology and behavior, has attracted increasing attention in recent years. However, existing sensor models remain largely siloed by modality and task, lacking a unified paradigm for integrating diverse wearable modalities, training strategies, and achieving robust generalization in real-world applications. Motivated by the success of multimodal foundation models, which learn transferable representations from massive multimodal data, we argue that Large Sensor Models (LSMs), defined as foundation models trained on large-scale and multimodal wearable data, offer a promising pathway toward a more general and scalable framework for wearable AI. In this position paper, we formalize the data substrate underlying LSMs, analyze the unique challenges of large-scale wearable sensing, and articulate two directions: (i) LSMs without language capability and (ii) LSMs with language capability. We further discuss representative application areas that can be unlocked by such models. Through this paper, we encourage the community to explore LSMs as a foundational approach for the next generation of human-centric AI systems.
Read the full abstract

All authors Yize Cai, Baoshen Guo, Guobin Shen, Zhiqing Hong

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Virtual Smart Metering in District Heating Networks via Heterogeneous Spatial-Temporal Graph Neural Networks

Intelligent operation of thermal energy networks aims to improve energy efficiency, reliability, and operational flexibility through data-driven control, predictive optimization, and early fault detection. Achieving these goals relies on sufficient observability, requiring continuous and well-distributed monitoring of thermal and hydraulic states. However, district heating systems are typically sparsely instrumented and frequently affected by sensor faults, limiting monitoring. Virtual sensing offers a cost-effective means to enhance observability, yet its development and validation remain limited in practice. Existing data-driven methods generally assume dense synchronized data, while analytical models rely on simplified hydraulic and thermal assumptions that may not adequately capture the behavior of heterogeneous network topologies. Consequently, modeling the coupled nonlinear dependencies between pressure, flow, and temperature under realistic operating conditions remains challenging. In addition, the lack of publicly available benchmark datasets hinders systematic comparison of virtual sensing approaches. To address these challenges, we propose a heterogeneous spatial-temporal graph neural network (HSTGNN) for constructing virtual smart heat meters. The model incorporates the functional relationships inherent in district heating networks and employs dedicated branches to learn graph structures and temporal dynamics for flow, temperature, and pressure measurements, thereby enabling the joint modeling of cross-variable and spatial correlations. To support further research, we introduce a controlled laboratory dataset collected at the Aalborg Smart Water Infrastructure Laboratory, providing synchronized high-resolution measurements representative of real operating conditions. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly outperforms existing baselines.
Read the full abstract

All authors Keivan Faghih Niresi, Christian Møller Jensen, Carsten Skovmose Kallesøe, Rafael Wisniewski, Olga Fink

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Consensus-based Recursive Multi-Output Gaussian Process

Multi-output Gaussian Processes provide principled uncertainty-aware learning of vector-valued fields but are difficult to deploy in large-scale, distributed, and streaming settings due to their computational and centralized nature. This paper proposes a Consensus-based Recursive Multi-Output Gaussian Process (CRMGP) framework that combines recursive inference on shared basis vectors with neighbour-to-neighbour information-consensus updates. The resulting method supports parallel, fully distributed learning with bounded per-step computation while preserving inter-output correlations and calibrated uncertainty. Experiments on synthetic wind fields and real LiDAR data demonstrate that CRMGP achieves competitive predictive performance and reliable uncertainty calibration, offering a scalable alternative to centralized Gaussian process models for multi-agent sensing applications.
Read the full abstract

Systems and Control

Analysis and Enhancement of Incremental-Quantity-Based Distance Protection With Grid-Forming Inverters

Grid-forming (GFM) inverters are expected in future inverter-dominated grids. In such grids, time-domain protection schemes, for example those based on instantaneous incremental quantities (IQs), are being advocated as potential solutions to the challenges faced by traditional phasor-based protection schemes, due to their ability to process nonlinear data. However, IQ-based protection uses the superposition principle; thus, linearity is still assumed in their application, while GFM inverters are nonlinear sources during faults. This paper proposes an analytical model to study the impact of GFM inverters on the relay-measured IQs. The model is validated with PSCAD/EMTDC simulations, and is used to investigate the interoperability of time-domain IQ-based distance protection with GFM inverters employing different current limiters. Results show that time-domain IQ-based distance protection demonstrates superior dependability for close-in faults compared to that of quadrilateral distance protection with GFM inverters, and it has the possibility to be secure for external faults when quadrilateral distance protection overreaches; however, tuning of its settings is hard to generalize for various sources and faults. Taking the observed interoperability issues into account, a trip criterion for dependable and secure time-domain IQ-based distance protection is proposed, which facilitates easy-to-tune and general settings for applications with GFM inverters.
Read the full abstract

All authors Henrik Johansson, Qianli Xing, Nathaniel Taylor, Xiongfei Wang

Signal Processing

Bistatic Integrated Sensing and Communication in the Presence of a Disco Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface: Disruption, Enhancement, or Both?

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is widely regarded as one of the key enabling technologies for future sixth-generation (6G) wireless communication systems. In this work, we investigate a bistatic ISAC system in the presence of a disco reconfigurable intelligent surface (DRIS), whose random and time-varying reflection coefficients emulate a "disco ball." The introduction of the DRIS breaks the underlying assumption in existing ISAC systems that the sensing and communication channels remain static or quasi-static within the channel coherence time. We first develop a bistatic system model incorporating the DRIS and characterize all involved wireless channels. Then, an ISAC waveform design that balances sensing and communication performance is proposed by formulating a Pareto optimization problem, where the trade-off is controlled through a tunable factor. Communication and sensing performance in the bistatic ISAC system are quantified by the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB), respectively. To quantify the impact of the DRIS on the bistatic ISAC system, we derive the statistical characteristics of DRIS-induced active channel aging (ACA) channels for communications and the cascaded DRIS-based sensing channel. Then, we establish a theoretical lower bound on the SINR and closed-form CRLB expressions in the presence of a DRIS. The analysis reveals several distinctive properties of the DRIS in bistatic ISAC systems. In particular, the DRIS degrades communication performance significantly due to the introduction of ACA interference. In contrast, with respect to sensing performance, the DRIS decreases the estimation accuracy of the angle of departure (AoD) while concurrently enhancing that of the angle of arrival (AoA). Numerical results validate the derived theoretical analysis and confirm these DRIS-induced behaviors.
Read the full abstract

All authors Huan Huang, Hongliang Zhang, Weidong Mei, Minghui Min, Zhu Han

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from nlin.CG

General control of linear cellular automata

In mathematics and engineering, control theory is concerned with the analysis of dynamical systems through the application of suitable control inputs. One of the prominent problems in control theory is controllability which concerns the ability to determine whether there exists a control input that can steer a dynamical system from an initial state to a desired final state within a finite time horizon. There is a general theory for controlling linear or linearizable system, but it cannot be applied to discrete systems like cellular automata, which is the problem of that we address in this paper. We develop a general theory for linear (and affine) cellular automata, and apply it to examples of one-dimensional and two-dimensional Boolean cases. We introduce the concept of controllability matrix and show that controllability holds if and only if the controllability matrix is invertible.
Read the full abstract

All authors Franco Bagnoli, Sara Dridi, Bassem Sellami, Amira Mouakher, Samira El Yacoubi

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from nlin.CG

Control of Cellular Automata by Moving Agents with Reinforcement Learning

In this exploratory paper we introduce the problem of cognitive agents that learn how to modify their environment according to local sensing to reach a global goal. We concentrate on discrete dynamics (cellular automata) on a two-dimensional system. We show that agents may learn how to approximate their goal when the environment is passive, while this task becomes impossible if the environment follows an active dynamics.
Read the full abstract

All authors Franco Bagnoli, Bassem Sellami, Amira Mouakher, Samira El Yacoubi

Audio and Speech Processing · Cross-listed from cs.CL

ASPIRin: Action Space Projection for Interactivity-Optimized Reinforcement Learning in Full-Duplex Speech Language Models

End-to-end full-duplex Speech Language Models (SLMs) require precise turn-taking for natural interaction. However, optimizing temporal dynamics via standard raw-token reinforcement learning (RL) degrades semantic quality, causing severe generative collapse and repetition. We propose ASPIRin, an interactivity-optimized RL framework that explicitly decouples when to speak from what to say. Using Action Space Projection, ASPIRin maps the text vocabulary into a coarse-grained binary state (active speech vs. inactive silence). By applying Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) with rule-based rewards, it balances user interruption and response latency. Empirical evaluations show ASPIRin optimizes interactivity across turn-taking, backchanneling, and pause handling. Crucially, isolating timing from token selection preserves semantic coherence and reduces the portion of duplicate n-grams by over 50% compared to standard GRPO, effectively eliminating degenerative repetition.
Read the full abstract

All authors Chi-Yuan Hsiao, Ke-Han Lu, Yu-Kuan Fu, Guan-Ting Lin, Hsiao-Tsung Hung, Hung-yi Lee

Systems and Control

Natural Gradient Gaussian Approximation Filter with Positive Definiteness Guarantee

Popular Bayes filters often apply linearization techniques, such as Taylor expansion or stochastic linear regression, to enable the use of the Kalman filter structure, but this can lead to large errors in strongly nonlinear systems. The recently proposed NANO filter addresses this issue by interpreting the prediction and update steps of Bayesian filtering as two distinct optimization problems and solving them through moment matching and natural gradient descent, thereby avoiding model linearization errors. However, the natural gradient update in NANO can occasionally diverge because the posterior covariance in its iteration may lose positive definiteness. Our analysis shows that the posterior covariance is the sum of the inverse prior covariance and the expected Hessian of the log-likelihood function, and that the indefiniteness of the latter term is the root cause of update failure. To address this issue, we propose two remedies. The first approximates the log-likelihood Hessian using the Gauss-Newton method, representing it as the self-adjoint product of the Jacobian of the normalized measurement residual, which is guaranteed to be positive semi-definite. The second reformulates the covariance update as an exponential-form update of the Cholesky factor and reconstructs the covariance via its Gram matrix, which ensures positive definiteness. Experiments on three classical nonlinear systems demonstrate that the proposed NANO filter with guaranteed positive definiteness outperforms popular members of the Kalman filter family and original NANO filter.
Read the full abstract

Image and Video Processing

Compact single-shot ranging and near-far imaging using metasurfaces

We present a metasurface imaging system capable of simultaneously capturing two images at close range (1-2~cm) and an additional image at long range (about 40~cm) on a shared photosensor. The close-range image pair focuses at 1.4~cm and 2.0~cm, respectively, which forms a focal stack, enabling passive ranging with an accuracy of $\pm$1~mm from 12~mm to 20~mm through a computationally efficient depth-from-defocus algorithm for a simplified scenario. The entire system is compact, with a total track length of 15~mm, making it suitable for seamless integration into edge platforms for defense and other resource-constrained applications.
Read the full abstract

All authors Junjie Luo, Yuxuan Liu, Wei Ting Chen, Qing Wang, Qi Guo