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Electrical Engineering and Systems Science

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Monday 4 May

Signal Processing

The interplay of signal-to-noise ratio and variance misspecification in Gaussian mixtures

We study estimation and clustering in Gaussian mixture models under variance misspecification. Observations are generated with true variance $\sigma^2$, while the component means are estimated using a likelihood with variance $\tau^2$, yielding a family of mismatched likelihood functions parameterized by the ratio $\rho=\tau/\sigma$. We show that the interplay between $\rho$ and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) induces a sharp phase diagram. Under correct specification ($\rho=1$), maximum likelihood recovers the true means, independently of the SNR. However, once the model is misspecified, two different regimes emerge. Under under-smoothing ($\rho<1$), the estimated Gaussian means are displaced from the truth, and in low SNR this discrepancy grows as the SNR decreases: for every fixed $\rho<1$, the squared error scales as $\mathrm{SNR}^{-1}$. Under over-smoothing ($\rho>1$), the fitted likelihood blurs the cluster separation, causing distinct component means to collapse towards the overall mixture center once $\rho^2$ exceeds a threshold of the form $1 + \lambda\,\mathrm{SNR}$, where $\lambda$ depends on the geometry of the true means. We further show that the hard assignment objective arises as the limit $\tau\to 0$ of the same mismatched likelihood family, and derive corresponding low- and high-SNR results for hard-assignment mean estimation and latent-label recovery. Furthermore, in low SNR, Bayes-optimal clustering is close to random guessing, and the hard-assignment target remains far from the true means. These results show that in low-SNR applications, even mild variance misspecification or hard-assignment procedures can induce substantial bias, whereas in high SNR these effects are largely absent.
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Signal Processing

On Near-Far-Field Boundaries in Wireless Systems

Near-field (NF) multi-antenna wireless communication and sensing have attracted growing research interest in recent years. A core question in this area is how to determine whether a wireless system is operating in the NF or far-field (FF) region. In this work, we propose a framework grounded in Maxwell's equations to analyze the transition region between the NF and FF, following the IEEE definition that specifies where the NF ends and the FF begins. Using this framework, we (i) compare a variety of traditional and recently introduced single-letter distance thresholds, often referred to as near-far-field boundaries, and (ii) conduct numerical experiments with both single- and multi-antenna wireless systems and with analytical models as well as full-wave electromagnetic simulations. Our results indicate that all of the considered single-letter distance thresholds are insufficient to predict the transition region between the NF and FF regions. Moreover, we highlight several important caveats associated with frequently (and recently) used NF and FF concepts.
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All authors Alexander Stutz-Tirri, Ahmad Dkhan, Hadi Sarieddeen, Christoph Studer

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.IT

Reduced-Feedback Hybrid Precoding for Wideband mmWave MIMO-OFDM Systems via Hierarchical Interpolation

In this paper, we propose a feedback-efficient hybrid precoding framework for wideband millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems. To reduce the hardware cost of radio-frequency (RF) chains and the feedback burden associated with frequency-selective digital precoding, frequency-flat analog precoders and combiners are first constructed from the dominant angle-of-arrival (AoA) and angle-of-departure (AoD) directions associated with the strongest propagation paths. For digital precoding, a shared quantized codebook is designed using the Lloyd algorithm, and a binary-search-based hierarchical interpolation method is developed to identify codeword switching locations between adjacent pilot subcarriers. By avoiding exhaustive codeword comparisons over all intermediate subcarriers, the proposed method reduces online search complexity and enables compact digital-precoder feedback. For the considered system configuration, the proposed method achieves a worst-case feedback reduction of approximately 98.34% relative to full-grid per-subcarrier feedback. Simulation results further demonstrate competitive spectral efficiency and bit error rate (BER) performance, low computational cost, and robustness under imperfect effective channel state information (CSI).
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All authors Po-Heng Chou, Jia-Qing Lin, Wei-Chen Lin, Wan-Jen Huang, Ronald Y. Chang

Signal Processing

Over-the-Air Computation via Segmented Waveguide-Enabled Pinching-Antenna Systems

A segmented waveguide-enabled pinching-antenna system (SWAN)-assisted over-the-air computation (AirComp) framework is proposed. Three transmission architectures, namely segment selection (SS), phase-shifter-free segment aggregation (SA), and phase-shifter-enabled SA, are developed for uplink signal aggregation. For each architecture, low-complexity algorithms are developed to optimize the pinching-antenna placement and the per-segment phase shifts. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches and the superiority of SWAN over the conventional pinching-antenna system (PASS). It is shown that both SS and SA achieve lower computation mean-squared error than the conventional PASS, while segment-wise phase control further improves the performance of SA.
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All authors Songnan Gu, Hao Jiang, Chongjun Ouyang, Dian Fan, Yuanwei Liu, Arumugam Nallanathan

Signal Processing

2D Waveguide-Fed Metasurfaces: Physically Consistent Modeling, Validation, and Optimization

Antenna array architectures based on programmable metasurfaces are emerging as a promising solution for scalable implementations of the eXtremely Large Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (XL-MIMO) systems paradigm, envisioned for 6-th Generation (6G), and beyond, wireless networks. However, their accurate modeling, quantifying the role of key structural features, such as strong mutual coupling and guided-wave excitation, remains challenging, amplifying the need for physically consistent representations of the constituent metamaterial elements. In this paper, capitalizing on the coupled dipole formulation, we develop a comprehensive electromagnetics-compliant framework for 2-Dimensional (2D) waveguide-fed metasurface antennas. The proposed model extends relevant existing modeling approaches by incorporating both electric and magnetic dipoles' responses, accounting for multiple excitation feeds, and enabling accurate characterization in both the near- and far-field regimes. Radiation-reaction corrections based on passivity constraints are derived and shown to ensure the passivity of the overall dipole system. In addition, we present a novel input impedance model for the considered architecture enabling explicit computation of the accepted power, and facilitating efficient beamforming design under realistic power constraints. All modeling components developed in this paper are validated against full-wave electromagnetic simulations. Furthermore, the analytical structure of the proposed model enables the formulation of a differentiable beamforming design optimization problem over both the considered metasurface geometry and its feed excitations. The presented numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed modeling framework in achieving both directive beamforming and sector-wide coverage.
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Systems and Control

Differentially Private Synthetic Voltage Phasor Release for Distribution Grids

Training machine learning models, including Grid Foundation Models (GFMs), requires large volumes of realistic grid data, yet substantial privacy concerns discourage utilities and data providers from sharing load profiles and network parameters. We study the release of synthetic voltage phasor trajectories for distribution grids under differential privacy (DP). We first fit a DP generative model to historical customer loads, then propagate synthetic load trajectories through the AC power flow equations on the true admittance matrix to produce voltage phasors. The central question is whether the randomness already present in the DP synthetic loads is sufficient to protect not only the loads, but also the network topology encoded by the bus admittance matrix. We show that it is. The implication is that a corpus of voltage trajectories can be constructed from DP synthetic loads while preserving the statistics of AC power flow, which is critical for training GFMs. This preservation of the power flow statistics stands in contrast to approaches that perturb the admittance matrix directly or inject noise into the voltage outputs, both of which distort the underlying physics. Concretely, we derive $(\varepsilon,\delta)$-DP guarantees for the released voltage trajectories with respect to the admittance matrix, meaning privacy of the network parameters is obtained without any additional noise mechanism. Our bound depends on the adjacency assumption, the Jacobian of the AC power flow, and the covariance of the synthetic DP-loads. Finally, we present a synthetic voltage generation procedure and an empirical evaluation against Gaussian output-perturbation baselines, demonstrating that our approach provides a clear advantage for enabling GFM training.
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All authors Andrew Campbell, Chenyue Zhang, Anna Scaglione, Eli Kerr, Merilyn Chesler, Sean Peisert

Signal Processing

A Scalable 256-Antenna Distributed MIMO Testbed with Real-Time Fully Digital Beamforming

Distributed massive MIMO (D-MIMO) is a promising technology for future generation wireless systems as it takes advantage of both an increased array aperture and a decentralized processing architecture and topology. In order to truly understand the possibilities and limitations of these approaches in real scenarios, practical realization of testbeds is an essential step in the technology advancement. This work presents the Lund University Large Intelligent Surface testbed – LuLIS, that can operate up to 256 coherent radio frequency (RF) chains using 16 AMD Zynq UltraScale RFSoC ZCU216 evaluation boards acting as distributed processing nodes. Real-time processing is facilitated by acceleration and distribution of MIMO processing algorithms on the FPGA fabric of the boards. The system is easily scalable, as increasing the number of antennas is done in multiples of 16 by adding more RFSoCs, which also implies addition of another processing node. The design allows up-scaling without hardware redesign, introduction of large latencies or data transfer overhead. The testbed is flexible in terms of deployment, with options of fully distributing the nodes (as in D-MIMO) or co-locating them (as in more traditional Massive MIMO). A detailed description of the implementation of the testbed is presented and initial results are shown for an uplink (UL) transmission from four single-antenna user equipments (UEs) to 64, 128 and 256 base-station antennas.
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All authors Dumitra Iancu, Vilgot Snygg, Sijia Cheng, Lina Tinnerberg, Mikael Henriksson, Emil Bergman, Anders J Johansson, Baktash Behmanesh, Ove Edfors, Liang Liu

Systems and Control

A Fresh Look on Network Synchronization

This paper gives a fresh look at network synchronization. Here we no longer analyze it from the view of mathematics, such as graph theory, while we probe into one from control theory. First, we analyze the synchronization region using the inner coupling matrix, giving up the routine method of studying the network structure. The motivation comes from the inner coupling matrix that is not subject to any restrictions like network structure, such as distance and communication strength among nodes. It can be configured at will to meet the synchronization performance if only the states of the local dynamic are measurable or observable and the communication topology is connected. Thus, it is very useful for future practical engineering design. In addition, we have an amazing finding that the network synchronization and multi-agent system consensus problems are equivalence essentially. Afterwards a unified viewpoint, that is, the essence of multi-agent consensus control is the same as that of network synchronization, is present. Here, the equivalence relation is clearly proven and proposed. Therefore, we can synthesize the inner coupling matrix for network systems or the controller gain for multi-agent systems for each other. Finally, we also present a kind of method for addressing the nonlinear complex network system. Then the effectiveness of method is verified by taking the network of the three-oscillator universal probe as an example.
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Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.CR

Design and Performance Evaluation of a BLE-Based IoT Authentication System

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is widely used in modern IoT systems because it consumes very little power, saves energy, and allows for simple device connectivity; however, maintaining security and communication reliability remains a challenge. In this paper, an authentication system is designed using industry-grade BLE-enabled nodes (nRF5340 development kit) that include a peripheral node with a keypad for entering a PIN and a central node with an LCD display. The entered PIN is sent wirelessly from the peripheral node to the central node via BLE technology, where it is verified in real time and displayed as correct or incorrect. Next, only after successful authentication can the peripheral node send data to the central node. In addition to authentication, the peripheral node can measure temperature in real time using the temperature sensor interfaced to it and send it wirelessly to the central node, where it can be displayed on the LCD interface. Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) values are collected during experiments under various scenarios to evaluate the system's performance. We see that the signal strength (measured in terms of RSSI values) is strong at close range but weak as distance increases, indicating a decaying logarithmic pattern. The system also has low latency, which allows for quick input and output, and it uses PIN-based authentication to ensure security and prevent misuse. The entire system seamlessly integrates communication, sensing, and security, making it suitable for smart access control and wireless monitoring systems, including home automation.
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Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.RO

Robust Adaptive Predictive Control for Hook-Based Aerial Transportation Between Moving Platforms

This paper presents a novel model predictive control (MPC) approach for autonomous pick-and-place between moving platforms with a hook-equipped aerial manipulator. First, for accurate and rapid modeling of the complex dynamics, a digital twin model of the quadcopter equipped with a hook-based gripper, implemented in MuJoCo, is constructed and used as the predictive model for the MPC. To handle uncertainties of the predictive model (e.g. due to aerodynamics and uncertain payloads), a robust adaptive MPC approach is proposed. By systematic integration of zero-order robust optimization (zoRO) based uncertainty propagation and an extended Kalman filter (EKF) for parameter estimation, the MPC algorithm ensures robust constraint satisfaction, high performance, and computational efficiency. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated in complex simulated scenarios and in real-world flight experiments.
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All authors Péter Antal, Andrea Carron, Melanie Zeilinger, Roland Tóth, Tamás Péni

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.RO

Feedback Motion Planning for Stochastic Nonlinear Systems with Signal Temporal Logic Specifications

We study feedback motion planning for continuous-time stochastic nonlinear systems under signal temporal logic (STL) specifications. We propose a framework that synthesizes control policies for chance-constrained STL trajectory optimization problems, with the goal of ensuring that the closed-loop stochastic system satisfies a given STL formula with high probability (e.g., 99.99%). Our approach is based on a predicate erosion strategy that transforms the intractable stochastic problem into a deterministic STL trajectory optimization problem with tightened STL formula constraints. The amount of erosion is determined by a probabilistic reachable tube (PRT) that bounds the deviation between the stochastic trajectory and an associated nominal trajectory. To compute such bounds, we leverage contraction theory and feedback design, and develop several tracking controllers. This yields a complete feedback motion planning pipeline which can be implemented by numerical optimizations. We demonstrate the efficacy and versatility of the proposed framework through simulations on several robotic systems and through experiments on a real-world quadrupedal robot, and show that it is less conservative and achieves higher specification satisfaction probability than representative baselines.
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All authors Liqian Ma, Zishun Liu, Glen Chou, Yongxin Chen

Signal Processing

TeRFS: Temporal-Evolving Radio Field Synthesis

While radio-frequency (RF) field synthesis is fundamental to wireless networking, current approaches remain constrained by static assumptions, leaving them unable to track the rapid multipath reorganization of dynamic scenes. Modeling these transitions requires addressing two coupled challenges: explicit temporal representation and the capture of discrete path lifecycles. To bridge this gap, Temporal-Evolving Radio Field Synthesis (TeRFS) is introduced. TeRFS utilizes an anisotropic spherical Gaussian (ASG) directional basis to represent sparse, sharp angular structures, bound to analytical temporal envelopes that regulate path lifecycles. This formulation induces a mathematical birth-and-death mechanism, enabling individual multipath trajectories to emerge and vanish with temporal precision, a capability beyond the reach of standard smooth interpolation. Evaluations demonstrate that TeRFS outperforms state-of-the-art (SOTA) baselines, achieving an 11.5% reduction in mean squared error (MSE) alongside a 6.9 times training speedup. Even in environments characterized by extreme structural mutation, TeRFS maintains robust tracking of dynamic reorganizations, limiting median absolute error to 1.52 dB and establishing its utility for high-mobility wireless applications. The dataset and code is available at https://github.com/zmydsg/TeRFS.
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Systems and Control

Risk-Based PV-Rich Distribution System Planning Using Generative AI

Hosting capacity (HC) assessment plays a critical role in distribution system planning under increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) and associated uncertainties in load and generation. However, conventional approaches often rely on deterministic worst-case evaluation, leading to overly conservative HC estimates. This paper introduces a risk-based framework for HC assessment that explicitly accounts for the frequency, intensity, and duration of voltage violations under uncertain operating conditions. A generative AI-based approach is employed to generate realistic, time-correlated load demand scenarios conditioned on projected energy consumption growth levels. These scenarios are then used to assess voltage violations and quantify their risk using probabilistic intensity, duration, and frequency (IDF) metrics. The results show that extreme-percentile (zero-risk) approaches significantly underestimate PV-HC by treating all violations equally, regardless of their likelihood or persistence. For instance, allowing a 5% risk level increases HC by approximately 18% for a 15 min violation duration. The proposed approach provides a practical tool for risk-informed distribution system planning under uncertainty.
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All authors Habtemariam Aberie Kefale, Weijie Xia, Nanda Kishor Panda, Peter P. Palensky, Pedro P. Vergara

Systems and Control

Efficient Multi-Market Scheduling of Virtual Power Plants via Spectral Representation of Uncertainty

As the penetration of distributed energy resources increases, harnessing their flexibility becomes critical for power system operations. Virtual power plants (VPPs) offer a promising solution. However, existing VPP market scheduling tools exhibit a tradeoff between economic performance and tractability. Stochastic formulations provide probabilistically optimal decisions but are computationally intractable for large systems due to scenario explosion. Robust approaches are more tractable but often yield conservative decisions. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a stochastic multi-market VPP scheduling framework that represents uncertainty in the spectral domain via intrusive Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE). The resulting reformulation yields a low-dimensional deterministic spectral counterpart that preserves the stochastic structure and can be solved efficiently with standard optimization tools. The proposed spectral approach is demonstrated on a DER-based VPP operating on a realistic Swiss low-voltage grid and benchmarked against a state-of-the-art scenario-based solution. Results show that intrusive PCE achieves solution quality comparable to the scenario-based benchmark, with up to a 137 times reduction in computational effort, while yielding highly accurate bidding decisions. Finally, to facilitate adoption and reproducibility, we release an open-source, application-agnostic projection tool that automates the spectral reformulation for generic single- and two-stage stochastic programs.
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Systems and Control

SkillCom: Decomposing LLM-based Semantic Communication into Task and Channel Aware Skills

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used as semantic encoders and decoders in semantic communication. However, current LLM based systems mostly remain monolithic: a single prompted model, or a tightly coupled transmitter/receiver pair, must jointly perform semantic encoding, channel adaptation, and semantic decoding. Such coupling makes intermediate decisions difficult to control, diagnose, or replace, and may cause channel corruption to propagate through a compressed source representation. To address the limitations, we propose SkillCom, a modular framework that decomposes LLM-based semantic communication into four explicit skills: semantic abstraction skill, channel-adaptive transmission skill, receiver-side repair skill, and task execution skill. These skills are interconnected through typed semantic-unit interfaces. Thus, transmission operates on structured unit-level representations rather than on one monolithic text block. This design localizes channel impairment, enables targeted repair from successfully received units, and supports stage-wise ablation and single-skill replacement under matched communication constraints. Experiments on multi-hop question answering and dialogue state tracking show that SkillCom consistently outperforms the monolithic LLM baseline, remains more robust under varying channel conditions, and exhibits task-dependent preferences over skill realizations. The results suggest that explicit skill decomposition provides a more robust and diagnosable foundation for LLM-based semantic communication than monolithic methods.
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Image and Video Processing

DriftDecode: One-Step Wireless Image Decoding via Drifting-Inspired Detail Recovery

Generative receivers for wireless image transmission can improve reconstruction quality, but diffusion-based and flow-based decoding relies on iterative inference and therefore incurs substantial latency. In wireless image transmission, however, the received signal already preserves the coarse structure of the source image. Wireless decoding is therefore better viewed as a recovery task than as image generation from scratch, and the main challenge lies in restoring channel-impaired details. Motivated by this recovery-oriented perspective, this paper proposes DriftDecode, a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)-conditioned one-step decoder for wireless image reconstruction. DriftDecode couples a one-step U-Net decoder with a drift-inspired instance-level texture loss. The loss reformulates the drifting-field mechanism from generative drifting models in perceptual feature space, guiding each reconstructed local feature toward its spatially aligned ground-truth counterpart while suppressing mismatched textures. Experiments on DIV2K and MNIST under additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels show a favorable quality-latency tradeoff. DriftDecode achieves 30~ms decoding latency, providing a 4.8$\times$ speedup over a 10-step flow-matching decoder, while consistently outperforming MSE-only training and yielding up to 1.13~dB PSNR gain on MNIST under Rayleigh fading. These results support recovery-oriented one-step decoding as an effective alternative to iterative generative decoding for low-latency wireless image transmission.
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Systems and Control

Should Small-Scale Data Centers Participate in the Day-Ahead Electricity Market?

The global race to artificial intelligence competitive advantage is challenging electricity grids by demanding growing data center capacity. Addressing this challenge requires synergistic operational strategies that integrate data centers into electricity markets while supporting grid operation. This work proposes a bilateral power purchase agreement between small-scale data centers and distribution system operators, enabling data center participation in the day-ahead electricity market. To facilitate market participation, we develop a scenario-based, risk-averse bidding strategy that leverages flexibility from local energy resources, waste heat recovery, and data center workload. The strategy jointly minimizes operational costs and carbon emissions, creating a carbon-aware cost-effective framework for data center integration in the electricity day-ahead market. The method is evaluated on a study case comparing a conventional time-of-use supply scheme with the proposed custom power purchase agreement, showing a potential 22% cost reduction, thus highlighting financial opportunities for small-scale data centers day-ahead electricity market participation. Two additional case studies illustrate the marginal effects of: (i) data center flexible workload on energy costs and (ii) virtual de-rating of grid transfer capacity.
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Signal Processing

The AECM Algorithm for Deterministic Maximum Likelihood Direction Finding in the Presence of Gaussian Mixture Noise

Gaussian mixture noise can model non-Gaussian noise and also be used when outliers are present in measurements. For deterministic maximum likelihood direction finding in Gaussian mixture noise, the Space-Alternating Generalized Expectation-maximization (SAGE) algorithm, an extension of the expectation-maximization algorithm, was applied and designed by Kozick and Sadler twenty odd years ago, which simultaneously updates DOA estimates at each iteration and cannot properly converge under unequal signal powers. In this paper, the Alternating Expectation-Conditional Maximization (AECM) algorithm, an extension of the SAGE algorithm, is applied and designed, which utilizes multiple less informative versions of the complete data and the golden section search method to update DOA estimates at each iteration sequentially (one by one). Theoretical analysis reveals that the AECM algorithm possesses nearly the same computational complexity of each iteration as the SAGE algorithm. However, simulation results prove that the AECM algorithm exhibits faster stable convergence and is more attractive in computation. Importantly, the AECM algorithm, unlike existing subspace based robust DOA estimation methods, can still be used when signals are coherent.
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Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.RO

Natural Gradient Bayesian Filtering: Geometry-Aware Filter for Dynamical Systems

Bayesian filtering is a cornerstone of state estimation in complex systems such as aerospace systems, yet exact solutions are available only for linear Gaussian models. In practice,nonlinear systems are handled through tractable approximations,with Gaussian filters such as the extended and unscented Kalman filters being among the most widely used methods. This tutorial revisits Gaussian filtering from an information-geometric perspective, viewing the prediction and measurement update steps as inference procedures over state distributions. Within this framework, we introduce a geometry-aware Gaussian filtering approach that leverages natural gradient descent on the statistical manifold of Gaussian distributions. The resulting Natural Gradient Gaussian Approximation (NANO) filter iteratively refines the posterior mean and covariance while respecting the intrinsic geometry of the Gaussian family and preserving the positive definiteness of the covariance matrix. We further highlight fundamental connections to the classical Kalman filtering, showing that a single natural-gradient step exactly recovers the Kalman measurement update in the linear-Gaussian case. The practical implications of the proposed framework are illustrated through case studies in representative nonlinear estimation problems,including satellite attitude estimation, simultaneous localization and mapping, and state estimation for robotic systems including quadruped and humanoid robots.
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All authors Chang Liu, Wenhan Cao, Zeju Sun, Tianyi Zhang, Jiayu Yuan, Yi Zeng, Ting Yuan, Yao Lyu, Wei Wu, Stephen Shing-Toung Yau, Shengbo Eben Li

Signal Processing

A Review on Quantum Satellite Communications: Challenges and Future Directions

Quantum satellite communication (QSC) is emerging as a strategic technology for secure global networking and long-distance quantum connectivity. This review prioritizes the major challenges that still hinder large-scale deployment, including atmospheric loss, beam pointing and tracking, payload constraints, synchronization, scalability, and integration with terrestrial infrastructure. To contextualize these issues, we provide only a concise overview of the core concepts and enabling technologies behind QSC, together with representative milestones such as the Micius mission. Building on this background, the paper surveys recent advances in protocols, hybrid space–terrestrial architectures, turbulence mitigation, and AI-assisted optimization. It then examines future directions, including quantum Internet integration, daylight operation, satellite-supported repeaters, and space-based quantum computing. By centering the discussion on open technical bottlenecks and emerging research trajectories, this review aims to support researchers and engineers working toward practical and resilient QSC systems.
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All authors Omar Alnaseri, Yassine Himeur, Ahmed Al Asadi, Mohammed A. Ala'anzy, Rida Gadhafi, Shadi Atalla, Wathiq Mansoor

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from math.ST

Statistics of a multi-factor function from its Fourier transform

For a phenomenon $\boldsymbol{f}$ that is a function of $n$ factors, defined on a finite abelian group $G$, we derive its population statistics solely from its Fourier transform $\hat{\boldsymbol{f}}$. Our main result is an $m$-Coefficient/Index Annihilation Theorem: the $m$th moment of $\boldsymbol{f}$ becomes a series of terms, each with precisely $m$ Fourier coefficients — and surprisingly, the coefficient indices in each term sum to zero under group addition. This condition acts like a filter, limiting which terms appear in the Fourier domain, and can reveal deeper relationships between the variables driving $\boldsymbol{f}$. These techniques can also be used as an analytical/design tool, or as a feasibility constraint in search algorithms. For functions defined on $\mathbb{Z}_2^n$, we show how the skew, kurtosis, etc. of a binomial distribution can be derived from the Fourier domain. Several other examples are presented.
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Systems and Control

Distributed Observer-based Fault Detection over Intelligent Networked Multi-Vehicle Systems

Decentralized strategies are of interest for local decision-making over multi-vehicle networks. This paper studies mixed traffic networks of human-driven and autonomous vehicles with partial sensor measurements. The idea is to enable the group of connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) to track the state of a group of human-driven vehicles (HDVs) via distributed consensus-based observers/estimators. Particularly, we make no assumption that the group of HDVs is locally observable in the direct neighborhood of any CAV. Then, the main contribution is to design local residual-based fault detection and isolation (FDI) at every CAV to detect possible faults/attacks in the sensor measurements. This distributed detection strategy enables every CAV to locally find possible anomalies in its taken sensor measurement with no need for a central processing unit. Two FDI logics are proposed with and without considering the history of the residuals. These FDI techniques are based on probabilistic threshold design on the residuals (in contrast to the existing deterministic threshold FDI techniques) with no assumption that the noise is of bounded support. This is more realistic in real-world multi-vehicle transportation systems.
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Systems and Control

Awareness in collective decision-making: Modeling and control in a game-theoretic framework

For a society to remain healthy and prosperous, people must collectively behave and act to contribute to the common good, even if there is often a tradeoff against their individual benefit. Paradigmatic examples include the adoption of sustainable behaviors and technologies to combat the climate crisis, and the mobilization for collective action to promote the rights and freedoms of repressed minorities. In this tutorial, we illustrate how game theory and network systems theory can be powerful tools to model and study this collective decision-making problem. We provide examples of how awareness of this tradeoff can impact collective change toward the societal good, exploring different problem contexts such as sustainable behavior and collective action. Finally, we review recent developments using systems and control-theoretic approaches to generate awareness and guide the emergent population dynamics towards a desired outcome, and conclude by highlighting new research and application frontiers.
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Signal Processing

Optimal Pilot Pattern Design for LMMSE Channel Estimation in OFDM Systems with Finite Block Size over Doubly Dispersive Channels

Pilot pattern design over doubly dispersive channels has regained significant research interest, driven by emerging high-mobility applications in 5G-Advanced and 6G systems, as well as recent developments in Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS) modulation. This paper addresses the design of LMMSE-optimal pilot patterns for OFDM systems over doubly dispersive channels with finite time-frequency grids. We formulate the problem as A-optimal sensor selection and propose two heuristic algorithms, both combining an initialization stage with local swap refinement. The first employs convex relaxation with randomized rounding, while the second uses greedy selection. Simulations on practical resource block dimensions demonstrate that the proposed designs consistently outperform conventional rectangular and diamond lattice patterns.
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Signal Processing

When Eavesdroppers Reason: Agentic Eavesdropping Attacks on Semantic Communication

Semantic communication (SemCom) has emerged as a promising paradigm for next-generation networks. However, its typical end-to-end joint source–channel coding (JSCC) architecture also raises serious privacy concerns. To guide future secure SemCom design, it is important to understand how serious such leakage can be. Nevertheless, existing eavesdropping attacks mainly rely on fixed-configuration solvers and often require instantaneous wiretap channel state information (CSI) to achieve effective privacy inference. This may lead future secure SemCom designs to overlook potentially severe risks. To address this, we propose a large language model (LLM)-orchestrated agentic eavesdropper. Specifically, the proposed eavesdropper forms a closed-loop workflow with three functional agents. The optimization agent adaptively performs joint semantic-and-channel inversion to recover private information from the intercepted signal without requiring wiretap CSI. The perception agent evaluates the effectiveness of the optimization agent and assesses whether the recovered private semantics are reasonable, providing feedback to the optimization agent. The refinement agent further analyzes the recovered content and uses a generative prior to refine promising candidates into more realistic and complete private reconstructions while preserving consistency with the intercepted signal. Simulation results over a MIMO Rayleigh fading channel show that the proposed eavesdropper achieves more than $75\%$ eavesdropping success rate at $\mathrm{SNR}\geq 5$~dB even without wiretap CSI, highlighting a severe privacy threat that future secure SemCom systems must address.
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All authors Shunpu Tang, Qianqian Yang, Zhiguo Shi, Jiming Chen, Xuemin Shen

Signal Processing

Waveform Design for 6G ISAC Systems Under Full-Duplex Residual Self-Interference

In this paper, the waveform design for 6G integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems is investigated, with a particular focus on the practical limitations imposed by imperfect full-duplex radios. Under such imperfections, continuous communication waveforms, such as OFDM, suffer from severe full-duplex residual self-interference (RSI) for radar sensing, which significantly restricts the long-range sensing capabilities required by emerging low-altitude wireless networks (LAWN). To address this challenge, we propose a novel time-division ISAC waveform that integrates a specially developed dual-power phase-coded pulse for sensing into the communication frame under full-duplex RSI. Specifically, the dual-power sensing pulse consists of a high-power sequence followed by a low-power sequence, effectively exploiting imperfect full-duplex operations to achieve reliable long-range sensing while eliminating the detection blind range inherent to conventional half-duplex pulse radars. Furthermore, a complementary and inverse-phase sequence group is designed to ensure perfect autocorrelation and robust cross-correlation sidelobe suppression, so as to enhance multi-target detection capability. As for sensing signal processing, a parameterized mismatched filter is developed and optimized to maximize the detection performance, tailored to the proposed pulse structure. In addition, we design a hierarchical one-dimensional CFAR-CA detector that can exploit the perfect range-domain autocorrelation characteristics of the proposed waveform to further improve the detection performance. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed design significantly improves the maximum detection range and multi-target detection capability compared to existing OFDM and LFM pulse baselines, while effectively covering the blind range for targets with small RCS.
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All authors Ning Wei, Aimin Tang, Yin Xu, Wenze Qu

Systems and Control

Frequency-Domain Compliance Assessment of Grid-Forming Devices

Grid-ForMing Inverters (GFMIs) are expected to provide voltage stiffness to the grid. Explicitly, system operators (SOs) and regulators expect GFMIs to behave like a "voltage source behind impedance (VSBI)" in the (sub)-transient time frame. SOs assess this VSBI characteristic of GFMIs during compliance by defining a pass-fail time-domain criterion. This is done by evaluating the GFMIs' active (or reactive) power/current response to step changes in voltage phase (and magnitude) at its terminals. However, this approach is prone to errors due to poorly defined measurement specifications for very fast (less than a cycle) transients. To address this, this work proposes a compliance criterion for the VSBI characteristic of GFMIs in the frequency domain based on elements of the frequency-domain Jacobian. The compliance criterion is defined in terms of the minimum expected P(s)/\theta(s) and Q(s)/V(s) Bode plot characteristics across a specific frequency range. The equivalence between the time-domain and frequency-domain criteria is established. The proposed method is demonstrated by assessing the compliance of generic NLR (formerly NREL) GFMI models in PSCAD. Furthermore, the impact of GFMI compliance on the small-signal stability of the IEEE 39-bus bulk-power system is demonstrated.
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All authors Ambuj Gupta, Muhammad Sharjeel Javaid, Balarko Chaudhuri, Mark O'Malley

Signal Processing

Context-Aware Wireless Token Communication via Joint Token Masking and Detection

The increasing use of token-based representations in language-driven applications has motivated wireless token communication, where tokens are treated as fundamental units for transmission. However, conventional communication systems overlook dependencies among tokens and allocate transmission resources uniformly, leading to inefficient use of limited wireless resources under channel impairments. In this paper, we propose a context-aware token communication framework that leverages a masked language model (MLM) as a shared contextual model between the transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx). At the Rx, we develop a context-aware token detection method that integrates channel likelihoods with MLM-based contextual priors under a Bayesian formulation, enabling robust token inference over noisy channels. At the Tx, we propose a context-aware token masking strategy that selectively omits tokens that can be reliably inferred at the Rx, allowing the available power budget to be concentrated on more informative tokens. These components are jointly designed through a shared MLM, establishing a unified Tx-Rx framework for efficient token transmission and detection. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework significantly improves reconstruction performance compared to conventional and existing token communication schemes, achieving up to 1.77X and 1.63X performance gains on the Europarl corpus and WikiText-103 datasets, respectively.
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All authors Junyong Shin, Joohyuk Park, Yongjeong Oh, Jihong Park, Jinho Choi, Yo-Seb Jeon

Sunday 3 May

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.DB

Recurring Public Transit Schedules: Stable Identification from GTFS and Similarity Analysis

Public transit schedules contain recurring service structures: many dates share the same passenger-facing timetable, while others differ because of weekends, holidays, seasons, or special events. GTFS does not encode these recurring schedules directly, so downstream scheduling, assignment, and mismatch models lack an explicit recurrent supply object. This paper formalizes recurring schedules as DayTypes, defined by the complete set of Route Pattern trips operating on a date, and develops a stable GTFS-based extraction method using H3 route-pattern keys. We then define a schedule-comparison framework with exact, time-tolerant, and structural-comparability metrics that distinguish strict timetable differences from small timing shifts and larger service changes. Validation on Japanese and Canadian GTFS feeds shows substantial schedule compression, a median of four nonempty DayTypes per agency in the pairwise-analysis sample, hierarchical nesting between service classes, and country-level differences in the persistence of exact disjointness. The resulting DayTypes provide compact Route-Pattern-time schedule sets for timetable synchronization, vehicle scheduling, demand assignment, and schedule-consolidation analysis.
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Signal Processing

PPO-Based Dynamic Positioning of HAPS-BS in Wind-Disturbed Stratospheric Maritime Networks

High-Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS) offer a promising solution for wide-area wireless coverage in maritime regions lacking terrestrial infrastructure. However, maintaining reliable performance is challenging due to dynamic ship mobility and atmospheric disturbances, particularly stratospheric wind effects on HAPS positioning. This paper proposes a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based framework for dynamic positioning of wind-disturbed HAPS-mounted base stations in maritime networks. A centralized DRL agent deployed on a coordinator HAPS controls multiple serving HAPS using radio measurements and network feedback, capturing realistic channel conditions and user mobility. A Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithm is employed to learn robust positioning policies that enhance coverage stability and system throughput under wind disturbances. Simulation results show that the proposed approach effectively mitigates wind-induced positioning deviations while ensuring reliable wide-area connectivity for maritime users.
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All authors Azim Akhtarshenas, German Svistunov, Matteo Bernabè, Kuangyu Zheng, David López-Pérez