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Electrical Engineering and Systems Science

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Wednesday 29 April

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from math.OC

Efficient Graph Partitioning under Resource Constraints: A Cutting-Plane Framework for Distribution Grids

This paper presents an optimal network topology control framework using cutting-plane methods for efficient network partitioning with controllable edges. The objective is to enable real-time reconfiguration of interconnected subnetworks while ensuring radial connectivity, resource feasibility, and structured leader allocation, which provide structural foundations for distributed controllability, stability, and coordination. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer program that integrates graph-theoretic constraints, resource flow, and network structural properties to enforce an operational hierarchy. To address the combinatorial complexity of cycle elimination and leader assignment, we propose an iterative cutting-plane framework that ensures convergence to an optimal and feasible network topology. Theoretical guarantees on optimality preservation, feasibility, and convergence are established, ensuring systematic elimination of infeasible configurations while preserving the required coordination structure. Simulations on a modified Iowa 240-bus power distribution grid demonstrate the framework's effectiveness in network reconfiguration under resource constraints. The approach achieves a median speedup of 65.4x and a best-case speedup of over 78x in a 46-switch configuration.
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All authors Duong Thuy Anh Nguyen, Harsha Nagarajan, Robert Ferrando, Russell Bent, David Fobes

Systems and Control

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization for Wave-Driven Desalination Systems

Wave-driven desalination systems are an innovative solution to the global freshwater crisis, leveraging the complementary characteristics of seawater reverse osmosis and wave energy converters. However, the high costs of this system pose a significant barrier to widespread adoption. Optimization can help these systems reach a more competitive levelized cost of water, but the highly coupled nature of the system necessitates a multidisciplinary design optimization approach. This paper presents a holistic, multidisciplinary design optimization framework for wave-driven desalination system design, integrating models for wave energy converter hydrodynamics, power take-off transmission, seawater reverse osmosis constraints, and economic analysis. This study demonstrates the impact of multidisciplinary design optimization for wave-driven desalination systems, resulting in a 69.5% reduction in levelized cost of water within this modeling framework compared to a nominal design. We demonstrate that multidisciplinary design optimization outperforms two different sequential design approaches, yielding lower levelized costs of water and substantially different optimal designs. The multidisciplinary design optimization results suggest major design changes compared to designs found in the literature. Notably, smaller wave energy converters and larger pistons, along with smaller accumulators and larger seawater reverse osmosis plant installations, are preferred within this modeling framework. These design trends are consistent across a range of sea states, suggesting potential generalizability beyond a single location. This study demonstrates the importance of holistic modeling and co-design for wave-driven desalination systems and establishes an effective optimization framework for future studies to build upon.
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Image and Video Processing

A Two Stage Pipeline for Left Atrial Wall Constrained Scar Segmentation and Localization from LGE-MR Images

Accurate segmentation and localization of left atrial (LA) ablation scars from Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE)-MRI is essential for assessing the lesion completeness and guiding ablation therapy. Incomplete or discontinuous lesions can increase the recurrence rate of the therapy and inaccurate localization can misguide treatment planning. However, reliable quantification and localization of scar in LGE-MRI is challenging. The severely class imbalanced scar voxels, thin structure of the LA wall, and weak tissue contrast often lead to unrealistic scar predictions. In this paper, we propose a two stage nnUNet based framework that takes LA anatomy into account to help with more precise scar localization and segmentation. In the first stage, an nnUNet model is trained to segment the LA cavity. In the second stage, patient specific cavity and wall signed distance maps (SDMs) are derived from the predicted anatomy to use as geometry aware inputs, and explicitly encode each voxel's signed spatial relationship to the atrial cavity and wall. This approach transforms scar segmentation from a solely intensity-based classification into anatomy-conditioned localization task, providing a continuous spatial prior that stabilizes learning for the thin atrial wall and suppresses topologically invalid predictions. To further address boundary ambiguity, we introduce a wall ROI-masked weighted loss combined with boundary uncertainty-aware supervision strategy that restricts learning to the atrial wall, while accounting for severe class imbalance. We evaluated our approach on the LAScarQS 2022 dataset and achieved a Dice of 61.1% and ASSD of 1.711mm. Our reliable and effective framework improves scar segmentation and localization accuracy by enforcing anatomical validity through geometry-aware supervision, and lowering the false positive detections far away from the atrial wall.
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Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Cross-Subject Generalization for EEG Decoding: A Survey of Deep Learning Methods

Deep learning for cross-subject EEG decoding is hindered by high inter-subject variability, which introduces a severe domain shift between training and unseen test subjects. This survey presents a comprehensive review of deep learning methodologies specifically engineered to address this cross-subject generalization challenge. To ground this analysis, we formalize the cross-subject setting as a multi-source domain problem and delineate the rigorous, subject-independent evaluation protocols required for valid assessment. Central to this survey is a systematic taxonomy of the current literature into discrete methodological families, including feature alignment, adversarial learning, feature disentanglement, and contrastive learning. We conclude by examining three critical elements for advancing robust, real-world decoding: the theoretical limitations of current methodologies, the structural value of subject identity, and the emergence of EEG foundation models.
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All authors Taida Li, Yujun Yan, Fei Dou, Wenzhan Song, Xiang Zhang

Image and Video Processing

Validating the Clinical Utility of CineECG 3D Reconstructions through Cross-Modal Feature Attribution

Deep learning models for 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis achieve high diagnostic performance but lack the intuitive interpretability required for clinical integration. Standard feature attribution methods are limited by the inherent difficulty in mapping abstract waveform fluctuations to physical anatomical pathologies. To resolve this, we propose a cross-modal method that projects feature attributions from high-performance 12-lead ECG models onto the CineECG 3D anatomical space. Our study reveals that while models trained directly on CineECG signals suffer from reduced accuracy and incoherent attributions, the proposed mapping mechanism effectively recovers clinically relevant feature rankings. Validated against a ground-truth dataset of 20 cases annotated by domain experts, the mapped explanations yield a Dice score of 0.56, significantly outperforming the 0.47 baseline of standard 12-lead attributions. These findings indicate that cross-modal averaging mapping effectively filters attribution instability and improves the localization of pathological features, combining the diagnostic expressiveness of standard ECG with the intuitive clarity of anatomical visualization.
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All authors Karol Dobiczek, Maciej Mozolewski, Szymon Bobek, Michał Szafarczyk, Peter van Dam, Grzegorz J. Nalepa

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.NE

EdgeSpike: Spiking Neural Networks for Low-Power Autonomous Sensing in Edge IoT Architectures

We propose EdgeSpike, a co-designed spiking neural network (SNN) framework for autonomous low-power sensing in edge Internet of Things (IoT) architectures. EdgeSpike unifies (i) a hybrid surrogate-gradient and direct-encoding training pipeline, (ii) a hardware-aware neural architecture search (NAS) bounded by per-inference energy and memory budgets, (iii) an event-driven runtime targeting Intel Loihi 2, SpiNNaker 2, and commodity ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers with custom spike-sparse SIMD kernels, and (iv) a lightweight local plasticity rule enabling continual on-device adaptation without backpropagation. The framework is evaluated across five sensing tasks (keyword spotting, vibration-based machine fault detection, surface electromyography gesture recognition, 77 GHz radar human-activity classification, and structural-health acoustic-emission monitoring) on three hardware targets. EdgeSpike achieves a mean classification accuracy of 91.4%, within 1.2 percentage points (pp) of strong INT8 convolutional neural network (CNN) baselines (mean 92.6%), while reducing energy per inference by 18x to 47x on neuromorphic hardware (mean 31x) and by 4.6x to 7.9x on Cortex-M (mean 6.1x). End-to-end latency remains at or below 9.4 ms across all 15 task-hardware configurations. A seven-month, 64-node wireless field deployment confirms a 6.3x extension in projected battery lifetime (from 312 to 1978 days at 2 Wh per node) and bounded accuracy degradation under seasonal drift (0.7 pp with on-device adaptation versus 2.1 pp without). Hardware-aware NAS evaluates 8400 candidates and yields a 12-point Pareto front. EdgeSpike will be released as open source with reproducible training pipelines, hardware-portable runtimes, and benchmark suites.
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Signal Processing

Optimizing Dynamic Metasurface Antenna Configurations for Direction-of-Arrival and Polarization Estimation Using an Experimentally Calibrated Multiport-Network Model

Sensing the direction of arrival and polarization of impinging signals is a key prerequisite for beamforming and interference mitigation in modern wireless communication systems. Dynamic metasurface antennas (DMAs) can multiplex direction- and polarization-dependent field information onto a single detector by sequentially switching between programmable configurations. This makes DMAs attractive for joint direction-of-arrival and polarization (DoA-P) estimation with a single radio-frequency chain. Experimental demonstrations have so far relied on random pre-measured configuration sequences because optimizing the configurations requires an accurate forward model of the fabricated DMA. Here, we use an experimentally calibrated model based on multiport-network theory (MNT) to optimize DMA configuration sequences for DoA-P estimation. Our experimentally calibrated MNT model predicts the dual-polarized far-field response of our 96-element DMA for arbitrary admissible configurations, enabling model-based optimization without additional radiation-pattern measurements. We optimize sequences using effective-rank-based surrogate objectives and compare them with random sequences as a function of the sequence length and the noise level. The optimized sequences yield the largest gains in the intermediate-SNR and intermediate-sequence-length regime, where the inverse problem is neither noise-limited nor already solved by random diversity. We also tackle a dual-source scenario involving a jammer and a desired transmitter. Our results illustrate some of the potential in the context of jamming-resilient communications that is unlocked by experimentally calibrated MNT models for fabricated DMAs.
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Signal Processing

High Coupling Tunable Acoustic Resonators in Monolithic Barium Titanate

The growing number of wireless communication bands has driven demand for compact, low-loss, and frequency adjustable RF filtering. Tunable acoustic resonators are well suited to address these needs, offering a path toward reconfigurable front ends with reduced component count. In this work, we extend upon previous conference results to investigate epitaxial barium titanate (BTO) grown on silicon as a platform for tunable acoustic resonators. We demonstrate lateral excitation of symmetric Lamb (S0) modes in 120 nm X-cut BTO membranes using a multi-cell electrode architecture that simultaneously achieves high electromechanical coupling and practical impedance levels. Devices are fabricated with laterally patterned electrodes on released BTO membranes. Under applied DC bias, ferroelectric domains align, allowing electrical excitation, frequency tuning, and quality-factor enhancement of acoustic modes. The primary resonance near 700 MHz exhibits a Bode quality factor of 175, electromechanical coupling up to 25.1%, and series and parallel resonance tunability of 2.3% and 5.6%, respectively. Voltage-dependent material parameters, including permittivity, stiffness, and piezoelectric coefficients, are extracted through a combination of modified Butterworth-Van Dyke modeling and finite-element simulation to explain the observed trends. These results highlight monolithic BTO on silicon as a promising material system for laterally excited, tunable acoustic resonators for reconfigurable RF applications.
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All authors Ian Anderson, Agham Posadas, Alexander A. Demkov, Ruochen Lu

Signal Processing

Recent Advances in mm-Wave and Sub-THz/THz Oscillators for FutureG Technologies

This paper provides a concise yet comprehensive review of recent advancements in millimeter-wave (mm-wave) oscillators below 100 GHz and sub-terahertz (sub-THz/THz) oscillators above 100 GHz for next-generation computing and communication systems, including 5G, 6G, and beyond. Various design approaches, including CMOS, SiGe, and III-V semiconductor technologies, are explored in terms of performance metrics such as phase noise, output power, efficiency, frequency tunability, and stability. The review highlights key challenges in achieving high-performance and reliable oscillator designs while discussing emerging techniques for performance enhancement. By evaluating recent design trends, this work aims to offer valuable insights and design guidelines that facilitate the development of robust mm-wave and sub-THz/THz oscillators for future communication, computing, and sensing applications.
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Systems and Control

Safe Navigation using Neural Radiance Fields via Reachable Sets

Safe navigation in cluttered environments is an important challenge for autonomous systems. Robots navigating through obstacle ridden scenarios need to be able to navigate safely in the presence of obstacles, goals, and ego objects of varying geometries. In this work, reachable set representations of the robot's real-time capabilities in the state space can be utilized to capture safe navigation requirements. While neural radiance fields (NeRFs) are utilized to compute, store, and manipulate the volumetric representations of the obstacles, or ego vehicle, as needed. Constrained optimal control is employed to represent the resulting path planning problem, involving linear matrix inequality constraints. We present simulation results for path planning in the presence of numerous obstacles in two different scenarios. Safe navigation is demonstrated through using reachable sets in the corresponding constrained optimal control problems.
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Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.RO

Stochastic Entanglement of Deterministic Origami Tentacles For Robust Robotic Grasping

Origami-inspired robotic grippers have shown promising potential for object manipulation tasks due to their compact volume and mechanical flexibility. However, robust capture of objects with random shapes in dynamic working environments often comes at the cost of additional actuation channels and control complexity. Here, we introduce a tendon-driven, robust origami tentacle gripper by exploiting a synergy between local, deterministic deformation programming and global, stochastic entanglements. Each tentacle features carefully placed holes (for routing an actuation tendon), origami creases, and a tapered shape. By tailoring these design features, one can prescribe the shrinking, bending, and twisting deformation, eventually creating deterministic coiling with a simple tendon pull. Then, when multiple coiling tentacles are placed in proximity, stochastic entanglement emerges, allowing the tentacles to braid, knot, and grip objects with random shapes. We derived a simulation model by integrating origami mechanics with Cosserat rods to correlate origami design, tentacle deformation, and collective grasping performance. Then, we experimentally tested how these entangling origami tentacles can grasp objects under gravity and in water. A stow-and-release deployment mechanism was also tested to simulate in-orbit grasping. Overall, this entanglement-enabled tentacle gripper presents a route toward robust object grasping with simple design and actuation.
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All authors Alec Boron, Bokun Zheng, Ziyang Zhou, Noel Naughton, Suyi Li

Systems and Control

Spectral Boundary Observer for Counter-Flow Heat Exchangers

We consider a system of two coupled first-order linear hyperbolic partial differential equations modeling heat transport in a counter-flow heat exchanger: one equation describes the transport of a hot fluid, and the other the transport of a cold fluid in the opposite direction. For this system, we design a boundary observer that uses only the temperature of the cold fluid measured at one boundary. Our approach is spectral: by assigning the spectrum of the operator governing the observation error dynamics to a prescribed region within the open left-half complex plane, we can freely tune the convergence rate of the observation error to zero in the $L^2$ norm. The main technical contribution is the proof that spectral stability, that is, the location of the spectrum in the open left-half plane, is equivalent to $L^2$ exponential stability of the origin for the observation error dynamics. This equivalence is established by showing that the operator governing the observation error dynamics satisfies the so-called spectral mapping property.
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Image and Video Processing · Cross-listed from cs.CV

Edge AI for Automotive Vulnerable Road User Safety: Deployable Detection via Knowledge Distillation

Deploying accurate object detection for Vulnerable Road User (VRU) safety on edge hardware requires balancing model capacity against computational constraints. Large models achieve high accuracy but fail under INT8 quantization required for edge deployment, while small models sacrifice detection performance. This paper presents a knowledge distillation (KD) framework that trains a compact YOLOv8-S student (11.2M parameters) to mimic a YOLOv8-L teacher (43.7M parameters), achieving 3.9x compression while preserving quantization robustness. We evaluate on full-scale BDD100K (70K training images) with Post-Training Quantization to INT8. The teacher suffers catastrophic degradation under INT8 (-23% mAP), while the KD student retains accuracy (-5.6% mAP). Analysis reveals that KD transfers precision calibration rather than raw detection capacity: the KD student achieves 0.748 precision versus 0.653 for direct training at INT8, a 14.5% gain at equivalent recall, reducing false alarms by 44% versus the collapsed teacher. At INT8, the KD student exceeds the teacher's FP32 precision (0.748 vs. 0.718) in a model 3.9x smaller. These findings establish knowledge distillation as a requirement for deploying accurate, safety-critical VRU detection on edge hardware.
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Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Uncertainty-Aware Predictive Safety Filters for Probabilistic Neural Network Dynamics

Predictive safety filters (PSFs) leverage model predictive control to enforce constraint satisfaction during deep reinforcement learning (RL) exploration, yet their reliance on first-principles models or Gaussian processes limits scalability and broader applicability. Meanwhile, model-based RL (MBRL) methods routinely employ probabilistic ensemble (PE) neural networks to capture complex, high-dimensional dynamics from data with minimal prior knowledge. However, existing attempts to integrate PEs into PSFs lack rigorous uncertainty quantification. We introduce the Uncertainty-Aware Predictive Safety Filter (UPSi), a PSF that provides rigorous safety verification using PE dynamics models by formulating future outcomes as reachable sets. UPSi introduces an explicit certainty constraint that prevents model exploitation and integrates seamlessly into common MBRL frameworks. We evaluate UPSi under practical simplifications within Dyna-style MBRL on standard safe RL benchmarks and report substantial improvements in exploration safety over prior neural network PSFs while maintaining performance on par with standard MBRL. UPSi bridges the gap between the scalability and generality of modern MBRL and the safety guarantees of predictive safety filters.
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All authors Bernd Frauenknecht, Lukas Kesper, Daniel Mayfrank, Henrik Hose, Sebastian Trimpe

Systems and Control

PM-EKF: A Physiological Model-Based Extended Kalman Filter for Daily-Life Physical Activity Energy Expenditure Estimation

Monitoring physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) in daily life is essential for characterizing individual health and metabolic status. Although indirect calorimetry provides gold-standard PAEE measurements, it is impractical for continuous daily-life monitoring. Consequently, wearable sensing approaches using inertial measurement units (IMUs) and heart rate (HR) sensors have attracted substantial interest. However, most existing IMU- and HR-based methods are purely data-driven and offer limited physiological interpretability. In this work, we propose a simplified physiological model that explicitly links body movement during activities of daily living to the underlying metabolic gas-exchange processes governing PAEE. The model is formulated as a nonlinear state-space system and embedded within an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), enabling principled handling of measurement noise, model uncertainty, and system nonlinearities. The proposed framework provides personalized, interpretable PAEE estimates without employing black-box models. Our model was validated using a dataset, including 9 subjects with around 50 minutes of measurements per subject, collected in our lab simulating a free-living condition. Using the respiratory data measured by COSMED K5 as reference and explained variance (R^2) as evaluation metric, our model's predicted PAEE yielded median (min-max) R^2 = 0.72 (0.60–0.87), using three IMUs (pelvis and two thighs) for capturing the body-center-of-mass motion and measured HR for the time-varying cardiac output. Our model outperformed a linear regression (LR) model (R^2 = 0.52 (0.23–0.92)) and CNN-LSTM model (R^2 = 0.65 (0.46–0.78)) on the same dataset. Notably, excluding the sensory HR measurement did not significantly degrade PAEE estimation of all three models, indicating that IMU-captured mechanical workload dominated PAEE estimation performance in our protocol.
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All authors Shuhao Que, Remco Poelarends, Valentina Breschi, Ying Wang

Systems and Control

A Control Framework for Induced Seismicity Mitigation in Groningen Gas Reservoir

Induced seismicity associated with gas production poses major operational and societal challenges, as illustrated by the Groningen field in the Netherlands. While many studies have focused on forecasting seismicity under prescribed production scenarios, fewer works address the inverse problem: designing operational strategies that minimize seismicity while maintaining production objectives. In this paper, we propose a control-oriented methodology for operating Groningen under induced-seismicity mitigation constraints. We employ a cascade model coupling pore-pressure diffusion with seismicity rate (SR) dynamics, and complement it with a stochastic event-generation procedure to convert the continuous SR field into a synthetic earthquake catalog with event times, locations, and magnitudes. From this catalog, we estimate regional SR measurements and design a robust feedback controller that computes well-rate commands to regulate the SR toward a desired reference while satisfying operational requirements, including prescribed production constraints. The proposed control architecture explicitly accounts for injection and extraction flux limits (actuator saturation). The well fluxes generated by the controller are updated at discrete-time intervals (digital control). We validate the modeling components against Groningen data and illustrate the approach through numerical experiments under different scenarios, including various control update periods and gain selections, as well as combined production with compensating injection (e.g., reinjection of nitrogen). The results illustrate how the proposed framework can reduce seismicity levels in a controlled manner while maximizing production targets.
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Signal Processing

Multi-Modal Fiber Sensing for OffshoreEnvironmental and Infrastructure Monitoring

Monitoring a 118 km subsea cable using Distributed acoustic, state-of-polarization, and Brillouin sensing captured storm-induced strain up to $\approx 0.003 \mu\epsilon$ (dynamic) and $\approx 180 \mu\epsilon$ (static), demonstrating consistent yet distinct modal responses to environmental loading.
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All authors Konstantinos Alexoudis, Florian Azendorf, Alvaro Doval, Steinar Bjørnstad, Jasper Müller, Vincent Sleiffer, Chigo Okonkwo, Tom Bradley

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Super-resolution Multi-signal Direction-of-Arrival Estimation by Hankel-structured Sensing and Decomposition

Motivated by sensing modalities in modern autonomous systems that involve hardware-constrained spatial sampling over large arrays with limited coherence time, we develop a novel framework for rapid super-resolution multi-signal direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation based on Hankel-structured sensing and data matrix decomposition of arbitrary rank, under both the $L_2$ and $L_1$-norm formulation. The resulting $L_2$-norm estimator is shown to be maximum-likelihood optimal in white Gaussian noise. The $L_1$-norm estimator is shown to be maximum-likelihood optimal in independent, identically distributed (i.i.d.) isotropic Laplace noise, offering broad robustness to impulsive interference and corrupted measurements commonly encountered in practice. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed methods exhibit powerful super-resolution capabilities, requiring significantly lower SNR and achieving substantially higher resolution probability than recent competing approaches.
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All authors Georgios I. Orfanidis, Dimitris A. Pados, George Sklivanitis, Elizabeth S. Bentley

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Hankel and Toeplitz Rank-1 Decomposition of Arbitrary Matrices with Applications to Signal Direction-of-Arrival Estimation

We consider the problems of computing the optimal rank-1 Hankel and Toeplitz-structured approximation of arbitrary matrices under L2 and L1-norm error. Such problems arise naturally in engineered systems, including the basic few-shot signal Direction-of-Arrival (DoA) estimation problem that is of importance to modern autonomous systems applications. We develop accurate and computationally efficient structured matrix decomposition algorithms for both formulations and then derive analytically grounded small-sample-support DoA estimators for practical sensing system deployments. The resulting estimators under the L2 and L1 norms are formally shown to be maximum-likelihood optimal under white Gaussian and Laplace noise, respectively. The estimators are further validated through extensive simulation studies and real-world data experiments in few-shot DoA inference.
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All authors Georgios I. Orfanidis, Dimitris A. Pados, George Sklivanitis, Elizabeth Serena Bentley

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.IT

Input Distribution Design for Ranging-Oriented OFDM-ISAC Systems Under Frequency-Selective Fading

The implementation of the \ac{isac} feature in \ac{6g} networks is most likely to be based on the framework of \ac{ofdm}. Input distribution design, or constellation design, is a crucial technique in \ac{ofdm}-\ac{isac} systems enabling a favorable balance between communication rate and sensing performance. In this treatise, we propose a computationally efficient input distribution design approach for \ac{ofdm}-\ac{isac} under frequency-selective channels, following the theoretical framework of capacity distortion. We highlight that under practical sensing constraints, the optimal strategy is to treat the kurtosis of constellations as a resource, and allocate it appropriately over subcarriers.
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Signal Processing

A New Location Estimator for Mixed LOS & NLOS scenarios

Time-of-arrival (TOA)-based localization in mixed line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environments is challenging because conventional Euclidean range models do not capture diffraction-dominated propagation. We show that the diffraction path-length model smoothly transitions between LOS and diffraction-dominated NLOS conditions, eliminating the need for explicit path classification. Although this model provides a unified geometric description of mixed LOS/NLOS propagation, the resulting 3D maximum-likelihood problem is nonconvex, and a direct Gauss–Newton estimator based on this model can converge to suboptimal local minima. This motivates the development of a class of structure-exploiting estimators. For known target height, the model induces a virtual-anchor representation of the reduced 2D problem, enabling estimators that exhibit a clear complexity–performance tradeoff: surrogate formulations provide structure and computational efficiency, while a semidefinite-relaxation formulation more faithfully preserves the original likelihood at higher cost. Building on this same structure, we develop 3D sample–polish–select estimators that reduce the global search to one dimension, solve the associated fixed-height 2D subproblems, and then apply local nonlinear refinement in 3D. The proposed estimators achieve near-Cramér–Rao lower bound (CRLB) performance with substantially lower complexity than multistart Gauss–Newton, while also being far more robust to initialization than a direct single-start Gauss–Newton estimator.
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All authors Gaurav Duggal, Richard M. Buehrer, Harpreet S. Dhillon, Jeffrey H. Reed

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.IT

Analytically Characterized Optimal Power Control for Signal-Level-Integrated Sensing, Computing and Communication in Federated Learning

In the Internet-of-Things (IoT) era, efficient functionality integration is essential to address the growing demands of communication, computation, and sensing. Signal-level integrated sensing, computing, and communication (Sig-ISCC) is envisioned, where a single waveform simultaneously supports sensing, computing and communication via over-the-air computation (AirComp). Meanwhile, federated learning (FL) is widely regarded as a promising distributed machine learning framework that enables network intelligence in a privacy-preserving and secure manner, and exhibits strong synergy with AirComp, which alleviates the communication bottleneck of FL. In this paper, we study uplink Sig-ISCC design for AirComp-FL with joint target detection. We formulate the joint power and receive-scaling control problem, where edge devices' transmitted signals should serve both sensing and AirComp purposes. The goal is to minimize the AirComp aggregation distortion subject to a joint target-detection requirement. Although the resulting problem is non-convex in the original variables, we show that it admits an equivalent convex reformulation after a suitable variable transformation. By exploiting analytical optimality properties, we develop a robust, optimal, and polynomial-time-complexity algorithm that efficiently achieves the optimal transmit powers and receive scaling factor. Simulation results validate the optimality and numerical robustness of the proposed algorithm and show its superior FL performance compared to baseline methods.
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All authors Paul Zheng, Yao Zhu, Xiaopeng Yuan, Yulin Hu, Anke Schmeink

Systems and Control

Model-Free Dynamic Mode Adaptive Control for Data-Driven Control Synthesis

This paper presents a model-free, data-driven control synthesis method called dynamic mode adaptive control (DMAC) for systems whose mathematical models are unavailable or unsuitable for classical control design. The proposed approach combines data-driven dynamics approximation with adaptive control synthesis to enable online controller design using measured system data. DMAC comprises two main components: a dynamics-approximation module and a controller-synthesis module. The dynamics approximation module estimates a local linear representation of the system dynamics directly from measurements using a matrix recursive least-squares algorithm with a forgetting factor. The estimated dynamics are then used to compute an online stabilizing controller with full-state feedback and integral action. Theoretical analysis establishes convergence properties of the recursive dynamics approximation and boundedness of the closed-loop system under the DMAC controller. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated through numerical examples involving representative dynamical systems, including an unstable linear system, the Van der Pol oscillator, and the Burgers' equation. Sensitivity studies further demonstrate the robustness of DMAC with respect to both algorithm hyperparameters and variations in system parameters.
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Image and Video Processing

Circular Phase Representation and Geometry-Aware Optimization for Ptychographic Image Reconstruction

Traditional iterative reconstruction methods are accurate but computationally expensive, limiting their use in high-throughput and real-time ptychography. Recent deep learning approaches improve speed, but often predict phase as a Euclidean scalar despite its $2\pi$ periodicity, which can introduce wrapping artifacts, discontinuities at $\pm\pi$, and a mismatch between the loss and the underlying signal geometry. We present a deep learning framework for ptychographic reconstruction that models phase on the unit circle using cosine and sine components. Phase error is optimized with a differentiable geodesic loss, which avoids branch-cut discontinuities and provides bounded gradients. The network further incorporates saturation-aware dual-gain input scaling, parallel encoder branches, and three decoders for amplitude, cosine, and sine prediction, together with a composite loss that promotes circular consistency and structural fidelity. Experiments on synthetic and experimental datasets show consistent improvements in both amplitude and phase reconstruction over existing deep learning methods. Frequency-domain analysis further shows better preservation of mid- and high-frequency phase content. The proposed method also provides substantial speedup over iterative solvers while maintaining physically consistent reconstructions.
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All authors Carson Yu Liu, Jun Cheng, Chien-Chun Chen, Steve F. Shu

Signal Processing

Pinching Antenna-Aided Spatial Multiplexing: Transceiver Design and Performance Analysis

In this paper, a novel pinching antenna-aided spatial multiplexing (PASM) architecture is conceived, which intrinsically amalgamates the benefits of flexible radiating element placement with radio-frequency (RF) chain transmission. Specifically, we leverage the deterministic phase variation along dielectric waveguides as a zero-power phase-control mechanism, where each waveguide fed by a single RF chain drives multiple pinching antennas (PAs) acquiring position-dependent phase shifts. Then, the PASM propagation environment is characterized by a realistic channel model encompassing Rician small-scale fading, correlated shadowing, and large-scale path loss. Based on this, a low-complexity vector approximate message passing (VAMP) detector is conceived, which exploits a waveguide-structured prior for jointly processing the signals associated with all PAs. Moreover, we derive an analytical upper bound on the bit error rate (BER) for the maximum likelihood (ML) detector to quantify the achievable performance limits. Finally, our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed PASM architecture achieves substantial signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain over the conventional phase-shifter-aided spatial multiplexing (PSSM), while the VAMP detector strikes an attractive trade-off between the system performance and computational complexity.
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All authors Ruijie Li, Yue Xiao, Shuaixin Yang, Gang Wu, Xianfu Lei, Ming Xiao

Signal Processing

SEP Analysis of Quantized SIMO Systems with M-PSK over Correlated Fading Channels

The average symbol error probability (SEP) of a phase-quantized single-input multiple-output system with M-ary phase-shift keying modulation and maximum ratio combining (MRC) is analyzed under correlated Rayleigh fading and additive white Gaussian noise. Building on our prior framework for independent and identically distributed Rayleigh fading, we extend the analysis to the spatially correlated case by introducing an asymptotically equivalent MRC combiner that enables tractable SEP characterization. Using this approach, we derive closed-form expressions at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) that explicitly characterize the diversity and coding gains as functions of the receive correlation structure, phase-quantization resolution, and modulation order, up to a scaling factor bounded between 1 and 2. The results show that channel correlation primarily degrades the coding gain, leading to an SNR penalty, while the diversity gain is preserved when the channel covariance matrix is full-rank. The analytical findings are validated through Monte Carlo simulations, demonstrating a tight match across a wide SNR range.
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All authors Amila Ravinath, Bikshapathi Gouda, Italo Atzeni, Antti Tölli

Signal Processing

CRLB and Parameter Estimation for OFDM-ISAC with Non-Uniform Sparse Resource Allocation

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) holds great promise in expanding the applications of wireless communication networks. However, in current communication-centric systems, the time-frequency resources available for sensing may be limited, and also usually non-uniformly and sparsely distributed across the time-frequency domain. Such a non-uniformity destroys the "thumbtack-shaped" ambiguity function of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform, leading to degraded sensing performance. To this end, this paper explores the parameter estimation algorithm for OFDM-ISAC systems with non-uniform sparse resource allocation. Specifically, for the single target case, we derive the closed-form Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for parameter estimation as a function of resource indices. Furthermore, we show that simply filling unused resource locations with zeros and applying the classic periodogram estimation is equivalent to maximum likelihood (ML) estimation, which is asymptotically optimal. For the multi-target case, we generate a virtual resource using the autocorrelation function of the original signal, which exhibits a significantly larger virtual bandwidth compared to the original signal, at the cost of higher peak-to-sidelobe ratio (PSLR). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the conventional periodogram method for non-uniform sparse resource allocation.
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All authors Wenjie Zhang, Qianglong Dai, Xiaoli Xu, Ruoguang Li, Yong Zeng

Systems and Control

Exploring Converter Control Duality in Microgrids: AC Grid-Forming vs DC Droop Control

Power electronic converters are fundamental building blocks of both AC and DC microgrids, enabling the integration of renewable energy sources, energy storage systems, electronic loads, and electric vehicles. In contrast, converter control in DC microgrids has developed along the path of droop control, which is widely adopted for decentralized DC-bus voltage regulation and power sharing. Although these control strategies share certain characteristics, their similarities remain largely unexplored due to the distinct physical domains in which they operate. To bridge this gap, we introduce a novel perspective based on the concept of duality to reveal the underlying isomorphism between the two control approaches. We show that AC grid-forming and DC I–V droop control are duals of each other in several aspects, including: (i) the small-signal model of the converter; (ii) the inner current control structure; (iii) power-sharing mechanisms based on the AC swing equation and DC capacitor power balance; and (iv) disturbance signals and dynamic response. Theoretical analysis, validated through simulations on simple converter setups, illustrates these dualities and provides new insights towards a unified control design.
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All authors Jovan Krajacic, Ognjen Stanojev, Mario Schweizer, Orcun Karaca, Gabriela Hug, Vladan Lazarević

Systems and Control

Learning to Route Electric Trucks Under Operational Uncertainty

Electric truck operations require routing decisions that remain feasible under limited battery range, long charging times, travel and energy consumption, and competition for shared charging infrastructure. These features make electric truck routing a coupled logistics and energy problem, limiting the practicality of heuristics-based methods and rendering them computationally infeasible at scale. This paper proposes a learning-based framework for the stochastic electric truck routing under charging constraints and operational uncertainty. The problem, solved by Reinforcement Learning, is formulated as an event-driven semi-Markov decision process with shared charging resources, stochastic travel and energy requirements, and realistic nonlinear fast-charging behavior. To support learning in this setting, a graph-based representation of system state and feasible decisions is introduced, together with a rule-based action mask that restricts policies to operationally admissible actions; thus, improving training efficiency. Building on this formulation, an event-driven simulation environment is developed that supports both Reinforcement Learning and benchmarking against heuristic and mathematical programming baselines. Computational experiments across a range of fleet sizes show that the proposed learning-based algorithm consistently outperforms baselines and attains performance close to optimization benchmarks in many settings, while preserving high success rates under charging congestion and uncertainty.
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All authors Stavros Orfanoudakis, Ziyan Li, Ruixiao Yang, Nikolay Aristov, Pedro P. Vergara, Chuchu Fan, Elenna Dugundji

Signal Processing

Cooperative OFDM-ISAC Networks: Performance Analysis and Resource Allocation

Cooperative integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) enables network-wide sensing by exploiting the spatial diversity of multi-base-station (BS). This paper studies performance analysis and time-frequency resource allocation for a multi-BS cooperative OFDM-ISAC network with fine-grained resource-element (RE)-level orthogonal coordination. Two fusion architectures are considered: signal-level fusion (SLF), which forwards raw echoes to a fusion center, and parameter-level fusion (PLF), which reports only local delay/Doppler estimates and their uncertainty information. For SLF, we derive the Cramér–Rao bound (CRB) for joint target position and velocity estimation. For PLF, we develop a two-stage CRB-like metric by combining local delay/Doppler uncertainty characterization with first-order geometric error propagation, and show that only an oracle ML-based PLF benchmark can asymptotically attain the SLF CRB under restrictive conditions. Based on these results, we formulate a joint RE-selection and power-allocation problem under network-wide RE exclusivity, per-BS power budgets, a communication sum-rate constraint, and a sidelobe-amplitude constraint on the delay-Doppler ambiguity function. An efficient solution is developed via Schur-complement reformulations and penalty-based alternating optimization. Numerical results validate the analysis, demonstrate effective ambiguity-sidelobe suppression and consistent localization/velocity gains over representative baselines, while revealing geometry-dependent SLF-PLF performance gaps.
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All authors Shoushuo Zhang, Rang Liu, Qian Liu, Ming Li