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Tuesday 16 June

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from physics.comp-ph

Characterization of Thermal Systems from Noisy and Low-resolution Measurements Using Dynamic Mode Decomposition

Thermal monitoring in practical applications is often constrained by sparse sensing, measurement noise, and limited spatial resolution, which hinder the identification of heat transfer dynamics. In such settings, calibrating high-fidelity physical models is computationally demanding, motivating data-driven approaches. Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) provides a framework for extracting spatiotemporal structures from measurement data, but its standard formulation is sensitive to noise and degraded observations. This chapter examines the use of DMD under these constraints, focusing on preprocessing and truncation strategies that affect stability and interpretability. Two cases are considered: forced convection with thermocouple data and transient heat conduction from degraded thermal images. The number of retained modes is treated as a modeling parameter that governs the trade-off between reconstruction fidelity and noise sensitivity. The results indicate that DMD recovers dominant thermal behavior from both sparse and degraded datasets when the truncation level is appropriately selected. Low-rank models provide stable but simplified descriptions, while higher-rank models improve spatial detail at the cost of increased noise sensitivity.
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All authors M. E. P. Silva, L. S. Araujo, F. T. Colombo, A. Cunha Jr, S. da Silva

Image and Video Processing

endoExplain: A reproducible protocol for auditing score-localisation discordance in colonoscopy image classifiers

Background and objective: A high classifier score and a plausible class-activation map (CAM) are often presented together, although neither establishes that the other is reliable. We introduce endoExplain as a reproducible protocol for auditing score-localisation discordance rather than as a new detector or explanation algorithm. Methods: Content hashing separated HyperKvasir development images from 1,000 masked images before training. EfficientNet-B0, ResNet-34 and ConvNeXt-Tiny were trained with three seeds each. Scores were temperature scaled using validation data only. Grad-CAM, Grad-CAM++, XGrad-CAM, HiResCAM and Eigen-CAM were evaluated on identical image-mask pairs, alongside random and centre baselines. Outcomes combined peak localisation, overlap, a top-20% deletion response, score-threshold sensitivity and adjustment for lesion size and centrality. The selected checkpoint was transferred without retraining to three external mask cohorts. Results: Temperature scaling reduced test expected calibration error from 0.0167 to 0.0115. Among 172 reserved images with scaled score at least 0.90, peak-outside-lesion rates ranged from 4.1% to 62.2% across CAMs. Method dependence remained evident across architectures and seeds, although method rankings were not universal. Spatial alignment and deletion response were not interchangeable. A random-deletion control also produced positive logit drops, limiting specificity claims based on deletion alone. External positive-mask results were dataset dependent. A source-category audit also exposed that 149/155 test positives were dyed-lifted polyps, materially bounding classifier claims. Conclusions: endoExplain makes calibration, spatial agreement, perturbation response and transfer separately inspectable. The results caution against using a score or visually persuasive CAM as evidence of lesion localisation or model reasoning.
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Signal Processing

Centralized PPO-Based DRL for Multi-UAV-BS Positioning and Trajectory Optimization in Disaster Response Networks

Unmanned aerial vehicle-mounted base stations (UAV-BSs) constitute a flexible and effective solution for global positioning system (GPS)-free emergency and disaster scenarios, where the rapid deployment of communication infrastructure is critical for maximizing life-saving operations. In this work, we extend a centralized learning framework to a multi-UAV-BS network architecture, in which a single centralized UAV-BS – as an intelligent agent – coordinates the three-dimensional positioning and navigation of multiple UAV-BSs, while the remaining UAV-BSs actively serve ground user equipments (UEs) with uncertain positions. We formulate a fairness-aware sum-throughput maximization problem for UAV-BS coordination, which is inherently nonconvex due to the non-linear and interference-coupled throughput expressions. To address this challenge, we cast the problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and solve it using a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework based on Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO). The central agent interacts with the environment and learns optimal joint positioning policies that guide the serving UAV-BSs to provide efficient, adaptive, and resilient wireless coverage. The proposed approach exploits spatial configuration and radio signal sensing capabilities to dynamically adapt to heterogeneous UE mobility patterns. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Numerical results demonstrate that PPO shows competitive performance during both training and evaluation phases. Furthermore, comparative analysis with state-of-the-art RL algorithms, namely Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) and Deep QNetwork (DQN), shows that PPO consistently outperforms these methods in terms of convergence stability, mean reward, and network throughput.
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All authors Azim Akhtarshenas, Mario Rico Ibanez, Matteo Bernabe, David Lopez-Perez, Merouane Debbah

Image and Video Processing

SpaCE: Rethinking Spatial Capacity and Generalization in Multi-Frame Multimodal Large Language Models

Multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) have achieved remarkable empirical progress in spatial understanding through large-scale training on spatial visual question answering datasets. However, the theoretical foundations of multi-frame spatial reasoning remain entirely unexplored. We present SpaCE, a rigorous theoretical framework that characterizes the spatial reasoning capacity, sample complexity, and generalization guarantees of MLLMs operating on multi-frame inputs. We establish four main results. First, we prove an information-theoretic upper bound on spatial reasoning accuracy in terms of the mutual information between multi-frame observations and spatial targets. Second, we derive a sample complexity bound of order $\Theta(d_{\mathrm{eff}} \cdot K_{\max} / (\varepsilon^2 \cdot \delta))$, where $d_{\mathrm{eff}}$ is the effective spatial dimension and $K_{\max}$ bounds the KL divergence of the learned posterior. Third, we provide a PAC-Bayes generalization bound for multi-frame spatial reasoning under distribution shift. Fourth, we formally characterize the bias-variance trade-off between explicit 3D representations and implicit reasoning approaches, identifying the crossover conditions under which each paradigm is provably preferable. We validate our theoretical predictions on the MultiSPA, CA-VQA, and SpatialRGPT benchmarks, demonstrating that our bounds are empirically tight and that frame complementarity is the key driver of multi-frame spatial capacity. Our framework provides the first principled theoretical foundation for understanding when, why, and how multi-frame spatial reasoning in MLLs succeeds.
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All authors Mariana Costa, Camila Ferreira, Alberlucia Rafael Soarez, Alejandro Torres

Signal Processing

Unifying Adaptive Fourier and Möbius-Based Models for Efficient and Interpretable Biomedical Signal Decomposition

Oscillatory biomedical signals such as electrocardiograms (ECG) and electroencephalograms (EEG) call for decompositions that are both computationally efficient and interpretable. This paper establishes a formal connection between two finite-order frameworks that have largely evolved independently: Adaptive Fourier Decomposition (AFD), based on orthonormal Takenaka-Malmquist expansions, and the Frequency-Modulated Mobius (FMM) model, a parametric decomposition built on Mobius transforms with morphologically meaningful parameters. We prove that finite-order AFD and FMM decompositions are mathematically equivalent. Under mild regularity assumptions, we further show that their associated estimation procedures solve the same underlying optimization problem when FMM is formulated with independent Gaussian noise. The results are extended to multi-channel signals, which are central in multilead bioelectric recordings. Practically, the equivalence clarifies how fast AFD approximations, including FFT-based implementations, relate to FMM-style parametrization and component interpretability. We illustrate these implications with an EEG example evaluating approximation behavior as the number of components increases, and with an ECG use case comparing five-component decompositions on representative beats, contrasting unlabeled AFD components with physiologically identified FMM components. Overall, the proposed equivalence provides a principled basis to leverage the computational advantages of AFD alongside the interpretability of FMM in biomedical signal analysis.
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Signal Processing

Audio-visual Contrastive Alignment for Diffusion-based Visual-conditioned Speech Enhancement

Audio-visual speech enhancement (AVSE) exploits visual cues such as lip movements to recover speech in noisy environments. Recent work introduced diffusion-based unsupervised AVSE, where a speech diffusion model conditioned on visual features via cross-attention is trained and used as a data-driven prior for posterior sampling-based speech enhancement. Despite promising performance over its audio-only counterpart, the impact of explicitly enforcing cross-modal alignment in the fusion remains unclear. In this work, we propose to augment the diffusion training objective with a contrastive audio-visual loss to encourage stronger use of visual information while keeping the posterior sampling framework unchanged. Experiments across matched and mismatched test data show consistent improvements in interference suppression, signal reconstruction, and perceptual quality, with the largest gains at low SNRs. Code is available at https://github.com/ cexauce/AV-CA-DiffUSE
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All authors Colombe Mboungou, Mostafa Sadeghi, Jean-Eudes Ayilo, Romain Serizel

Signal Processing

Optical Ground Stations for Space Communications:Systems Engineering, Availability, and Service Economics Through 2030

Optical ground stations (OGSs) are becoming networked infrastructure for high-rate space-to-Earth communications, but their adoption is governed by service availability and utilization as much as by optical line rate. This paper develops a systems-engineering and service-economics assessment of the OGS sector as of June~2026. The analysis combines public flight demonstrations and operational records with scalar link-budget, availability, and cost-normalization models. Public benchmarks span 25 Mbps from interplanetary range, 260 Mbps-class lunar links, 1.2 Gbps-class ISS relay, 1.8 Gbps operational GEO relay, 120 Gbps-class direct-to-ground demonstrations in China, and 200 Gbps from LEO in NASA's TBIRD mission. The resulting conclusion is that the bottleneck has shifted from peak line rate to repeatable service under weather, acquisition, scheduling, and operations constraints. Under one explicit planning normalization - a 10 Gbps near-Earth station, annualized cost of \$2 million/year, scheduled pre-weather optical contact time of 0.5 h/day, and weather-inclusive combined efficiency $\eta=0.7$ - the fixed-cost component is of order $(3-4)\times10^{3}$ USD/TB. This number is a sensitivity anchor, not a tariff forecast; the controlling variables are duty factor, effective weather diversity, shared-network loading, and service-level allocation. The public industrial evidence is best interpreted as a stratified value chain, not as a single vendor ranking. The defensible 2030 baseline is hybrid optical+radio-frequency (RF): optical for throughput, relay, and spectrum relief; RF for continuity, contingency, and assured command paths.
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Audio and Speech Processing · Cross-listed from cs.SD

A Generalized Formalism of Auto-Regressive Decoding for Speech Processing

In speech processing, most state-of-the-art sequence prediction models rely on auto-regressive (AR) strategies to generate output sequences based on the raw predictions of the model. Despite their crucial role in the inference process, a comprehensive overview of AR strategies as a unified field is lacking, due largely to implicit and multiple definitions of next-token decoding. This context complicates the choice, comparison, and evaluation of strategies, while creating inconsistencies in the characterization of approaches as auto-regressive or not. We begin by setting explicit inclusion criteria for the field of AR search in speech processing, and derive a generalized theoretical framework to categorize and report on search strategies for neural models. We show the capabilities of this formalism in simplifying the design of benchmarks centered around the decoding process, allowing for ablation studies that are focused on search strategies.
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All authors Julia Gachot, Philipp Allgeuer, Marie S. Bauer, Stefan Wermter

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Beyond AHI: An Interpretable Causal-Discovery-Guided Framework for Sleep Recovery in Connected Health

Objective sleep assessment relies on polysomnography (PSG), yet clinical impact is often better reflected in patient-reported outcomes (PROs) such as sleepiness and fatigue. Existing summary indices, including the Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI), provide limited insight into the multidomain physiology underlying functional recovery. We propose an interpretable, causal-discovery-guided framework for deriving a hierarchical Sleep Recovery Score (SRS) from multimodal PSG. Using two large population cohorts (MESA: \(n=1{,}540\); MrOS: \(n=825\)), we apply directed acyclic graph (DAG) learning to identify candidate physiological drivers spanning respiratory burden, hypoxic burden, sleep fragmentation, sleep architecture, and autonomic regulation. Although derived from clinical PSG, these domains map naturally to sensing streams increasingly available in connected health technologies, including wearable ECG, oximetry, and sleep-stage estimation devices. To preserve mechanistic plausibility, we introduce a two-stage screening process that combines physiology-based constraints with constrained LLM-assisted auditing to identify and remove structural confounders and construct-overlapping variables. Across cohorts, these five domains emerge as recurrent physiological domains associated with recovery, and the resulting SRS shows up to \(3.4\times\) stronger alignment with perceived recovery than AHI. By linking multimodal sleep physiology to patient-centered outcomes through an interpretable, bias-aware, and domain-structured framework, this work provides a practical foundation for recovery modeling across both clinical sleep studies and emerging smart and connected health settings.
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All authors Saba A. Farahani, Elahe Khatibi, Manoj Vishwanath, Amir M. Rahmani, Hung Cao

Systems and Control

Stability of Slow-Fast Nonlinear Dynamics: Non-Periodic Case

We present sufficient conditions for the semi-global exponential stability of nonlinear systems whose dynamics have both slow and fast time variations. Unlike most existing results, the fast variation is non-periodic, thereby allowing a wider class of systems, especially switched systems with fast (non-periodic) switching and those with quasi-periodic variations; we therefore rely on general averaging to construct an average system. It is assumed that the average system admits a time-invariant equilibrium that is globally exponentially stable when the slow variation is frozen, i.e., remaining at a fixed value. This slow variation is allowed to be discontinuous in time, provided its total variation (flows and jumps) is bounded. The main result is illustrated using a nonlinear switched system with slow-fast non-periodic switching.
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Image and Video Processing

Dense Holographic Associative Memories

Associative recall – mapping an incident pattern to the stored one it most resembles – is the natural computational primitive of a high-dimensional vision front end, and it is precisely the operation a volume hologram performs natively. We show that a cascade of two volume holograms separated by a one-dimensional coded layer physically evaluates the modern Hopfield (dense associative memory) retrieval map, $\eta = V \text{softmax}(\lambda K^T x)$, exactly as a parallel optical computation, with the inverse temperature realized via optically addressed spatial light modulation in the coded-layer. Routing the input and output through a 1D code rather than directly between 2D planes supplies the separating nonlinearity the original Hopfield model lacked and, by balancing the grating-wavevector dimension count ($2+1=3$), removes the Bragg degeneracy that otherwise forces fractal sampling on a direct 2D-to-2D hologram. Faithful dense storage further demands a recording medium that captures inter-neuron connections while rejecting the field self-energy responsible for the $M^{-2}$ efficiency falloff of homogeneous photorefractives. We propose a nonlocal, gradient-responsive medium whose illumination-independent decay recovers the linear $M^{-1}$ scaling in situ, and demonstrate its reception, combination, and storage functions in a discrete opposing-diode cell. Routes to OASLM-stack and volume molecular/nanocrystal realizations are outlined.
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Image and Video Processing

GHOST-CAT: An Efficient and Practical Network for Mesh Generation from 3D Echocardiography

Recent advances in deep learning have significantly accelerated cardiac imaging workflows, from segmentation to the generation of meshes for computational modelling. Nevertheless, analysis of 3D echocardiograms presents unique challenges due to their low contrast-to-noise ratio, conical field of view, and susceptibility to acoustic shadowing. Here, we present an efficient and practical network tailored for 3D echocardiograms. Our method consists of a two-stage network that combines convolutional neural networks, graph convolutional networks, and transformers, to create accurate time-varying 3D meshes of the left ventricle that are topologically consistent and temporally coherent throughout the cardiac cycle. Our model achieved superior mesh reconstruction accuracy compared to current state-of-the-art methods on a held-out test dataset of 100 3D echo images, with a Dice coefficient of 0.87 +/- 0.05 (cavity) and 0.75 +/- 0.07 (myocardium), and mean +/- SD surface distances of 3.3 +/- 0.6 mm (endocardium) and 3.5 +/- 0.5 mm (epicardium), against reference segmentations derived from cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. The reconstructed mesh enables automated calculation of routine clinical indices, such as volume, mass, and strain, and enables advanced applications with biophysical digital twins. Source code is openly shared at https://github.com/EdwardFerdian/ghost-cat.
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All authors Edward Ferdian, Debbie Zhao, Alistair A. Young, Martyn P. Nash

Signal Processing

Cell-Free Integrated Sensing and Communication

Cell-free (CF) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) merges the CF architecture with ISAC functionalities. CF-ISAC leverages distributed access points, removes cell boundaries, and enhances coverage, spectral efficiency, and reliability. It also improves energy efficiency, enabling robust multi-user communication, distributed multi-static sensing, and seamless resource optimization. A comprehensive survey on CF-ISAC has been lacking. This monograph addresses that gap by covering the foundational principles, cooperative transmission, radar cross-section, target parameter estimation, ISAC integration levels, sensing metrics, and key applications. It also explores the advantages of multi-static sensing. Performance analysis, resource allocation, security, and user/target-centric designs are discussed. Finally, synchronization, multi-target detection, interference management, and fronthaul limitations are discussed. Advanced antenna technologies, network-assisted systems, near-field CF-ISAC, cross-technology integration, and machine learning approaches are presented.
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Audio and Speech Processing · Cross-listed from cs.SD

MagpieTTS-LF: Inference-Time Long-Form Speech Generation Without Training on Long-Form data

Neural Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems achieve remarkable quality on short utterances but long-form speech generation shows prosodic drift, speaker inconsistencies and sentence boundary artifacts. Existing approaches either compress sequences, increase context length or naively concatenate independently synthesized chunks. We present an inference-time approach called MagpieTTS-LF that enables MagpieTTS to produce coherent long-form speech without model retraining. Our method introduces three key innovations: (1) soft attention priors to guide monotonic alignment while preserving past and future context; (2) a stateful inference algorithm that maintains context across sentence chunks, ensuring prosodic continuity; (3) history-aware text encoding that uses past text for discourse-level prosodic planning. Experiments on long texts show significant improvements in long-range intelligibility, prosodic coherence, speaker consistency, and boundary naturalness compared to other baselines.
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All authors Subhankar Ghosh, Jason Li, Paarth Neekhara, Shehzeen Hussain, Ryan Langman, Xuesong Yang, Roy Fejgin

Audio and Speech Processing

Generalised Transcoding Framework for Arbitrary Spatial Audio Capture and Playback Formats

This article introduces a unified framework for the parametric analysis and reproduction of spatial sound scenes captured either as Ambisonic signals or as raw microphone array signals. The proposed method estimates time-frequency-dependent spatial metadata that characterises a variable number of primary source components and an ambience component with its own angular power distribution, whose parameters fit the observed spatial covariances of the captured signals. This metadata is used to construct spatial covariances of the target playback formats, which are then used to derive optimal mixing matrices for transcoding the scene for playback over the target reproduction system. The method additionally handles independent rotations of both capture and playback setups. Real-time implementations of the method and other existing state-of-the-art parametric renderers are compared in a listening test using simulated scenes from Ambisonic, spherical, and head-worn arrays. The results highlight perceptual benefits of the proposed framework across a diverse range of content and receiver configurations, particularly for lower-order and geometrically constrained microphone arrays.
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Signal Processing

Covert Multi-Hop Communications for Heterogeneous Networks With Multiple Wardens

This paper investigates covert multi-hop communications in heterogeneous wireless networks monitored by multiple passive wardens. To maximize network-wide covertness while satisfying a strict end-to-end rate requirement, we jointly optimize routing, modality selection, and transmit power. Under a simultaneous multi-hop transmission scheme, we analyze the detection capabilities of two distinct warden models: colluding wardens employing a central fusion center, and non-colluding wardens operating independently. For both models, we derive optimal detectors and exact expressions for the detection error probability (DEP). In addition, to reduce the complexity of evaluating the DEP, we develop highly accurate closed-form approximations based on gamma moment matching and establish rigorous DEP lower bounds using Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. Building on this theoretical foundation, we propose an efficient two-stage optimization algorithm that decouples link-level resource allocation from network-level path selection. By translating the KL divergence bounds into a novel, low-complexity routing metric, which universally simplifies to a linear summation of signal-to-noise ratios, we substantially reduce the computational overhead compared to conventional per-hop detection-based metrics. Finally, numerical simulations validate the theoretical analysis and demonstrate the near-optimal performance of the proposed framework.
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Systems and Control

Constellation-Level Power Allocation for LEO Space-Based Solar Power

Space-based solar power (SBSP) has recently gained renewed attention as an appealing technological advancement for providing continuous clean energy using space-based infrastructure. However, the potential of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations for SBSP remains largely unexplored and lacks detailed simulation-based studies. In this paper, we introduce a novel LEO SBSP system model and conduct a 24-hour system-level simulation of a Walker 4x5 LEO SBSP constellation at an altitude of 450 km, beaming 2.45 GHz microwave power to eight ground stations (GSs) under a greedy allocation policy. The model includes orbital propagation, eclipse cycles, the satellite power chain, Goubau-Brown beam coupling, ITU-R P.618 atmospheric attenuation, and onboard battery dynamics. The results confirm that the peak DC power delivered reaches 1.986 MW, while the mean per-site delivery at the served GS ranged from 40 to 75 kW. Two of the eight GSs received no service during the run, as their passes were consistently ranked lower under the greedy policy than competing links at the same step. The incident peak power density (PD) at the rectenna remained within the 3.35-5.72 W/m$^2$ range, below the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) general-public exposure limit. For a 20-satellite Walker LEO at this altitude, realistic per-site delivery is 50-100 kW, and the rectenna should be sized to the operational incident PD of order 5 W/m$^2$ rather than to a Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO)-era 100 W/m$^2$ rating.
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Signal Processing

Deep-Learning-Based Pixelated Microwave Filter Design and Characterization using Electro-Optical Electric-Field Measurements

Traditional microwave filter design typically relies on iterative parameter tuning and predefined topologies, which limits design space and increases development time. This study uses a deep learning approach combining convolutional neural networks with genetic algorithms to automate pixelated microwave filter synthesis. To validate the approach experimentally, both S-parameter and spatial electric-field measurements were analyzed. The synthesized low-pass filter demonstrated excellent agreement between simulated and measured performance, achieving a 7 GHz passband with over 20 dB suppression beyond 9.5 GHz. Electro-optical measurements, for the first time, revealed electric field patterns that resemble coupled transmission-lines or stub structures, providing insight into the emergent characteristics of AI-generated designs.
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All authors Han Zhou, Richard Bannister, Caspar Pierce, Haojie Chang, David Widen, Ludvig Fornstedt, Gabriel Melin, Alexander Bohlin, Pontus Lindeberg Fredriksson, Dilbagh Singh, Christian Fager, Koen Buisman

Signal Processing

Deep Learning-Driven Inverse Design of Doherty Power Amplifiers Using Pixelated Combiners and Dual-State Impedance Synthesis

The output combiner of a Doherty power amplifier (PA) integrates load modulation, impedance matching, and phase compensation within a single network, making its design and synthesis highly challenging. In this paper, we propose a three-port Doherty combiner design methodology that combines deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), pixelated layout representations, and genetic algorithms (GA) with dual-state impedance synthesis to address both peak and back-off power conditions. As a proof of concept, two GaN HEMT Doherty PA prototypes incorporating three-port pixelated combiners are designed and fabricated. Both prototypes achieve a measured saturated output power exceeding 44.2 dBm with peak drain efficiency above 71.2% within 2.6-2.8 GHz. Furthermore, a drain efficiency as high as 64% is measured at the 6-dB back-off level. After applying digital predistortion, each prototype achieves an adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) better than -51.3 dBc.
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All authors Han Zhou, Haojie Chang, David Widen, Christian Fager

Systems and Control

Learning-Based Decision Making for Combustion Phasing Control in Multi-Fuel CI Engines with Latent Fuel Reactivity Estimation

Multi-fuel compression-ignition engines offer fuel flexibility but introduce uncertain, time-varying fuel reactivity, represented by cetane number (CN), which complicates cycle-to-cycle combustion-phasing control. This work formulates CA50 regulation under latent CN variation as a partially observable sequential decision problem and systematically evaluates controllers with increasing temporal and representational capacity, including LinUCB, history-augmented contextual bandits, observation-only DDPG, recurrent DDPG, and a proposed GRU-guided RL framework. A Gaussian-process surrogate trained on experimental multi-fuel engine data provides a controlled and reproducible evaluation environment. Results show that myopic and fixed-history bandit methods degrade under CN variation, observation-only RL suffers from latent-state aliasing, and generic recurrence is insufficient when CN evolves rapidly. The proposed framework learns a compact GRU-based representation of fuel reactivity from combustion history and conditions both actor and critic on this estimated signal rather than oracle CN. By training the policy on the same imperfect fuel-reactivity information available at deployment, the controller avoids train-deploy inconsistency in conventional online estimate-then-control pipelines. Across unseen CN trajectories, the policy achieves stable CA50 regulation with mean absolute tracking error below 0.25{\deg} CA at the training setpoint, while producing smooth, physically consistent SOI and glow-plug-power actuation. These results show that combustion control under latent, continuously evolving fuel dynamics requires more than standalone estimation or generic recurrence. By aligning fuel-reactivity inference with control policy learning, the proposed framework enables reactivity-aware decision-making using the same estimated state available during deployment.
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All authors Rajasree Sarkar, Aditya Satish Patil, Arunava Banerjee, Ihsan Berk Altiner, Zongxuan Sun, Kenneth Kim, Chol-Bum Mike Keown

Image and Video Processing

Structural MRI Synthesis for Alzheimer's Disease via Conditional Diffusion on Anatomical Masks

Recent advances in generative machine learning models have significantly improved medical imaging, offering promising solutions for data augmentation, privacy preservation, and improved model generalization. However, synthesizing high-quality structural MRI data for Alzheimer's Disease (AD) remains challenging due to the subtle, region-specific, and progressive anatomical changes associated with neurodegeneration. In this paper, we extend the Med-DDPM conditional diffusion model – originally designed for brain tumor synthesis – to generate 3D structural MRIs specifically tailored to AD. We adopted Med-DDPM due to its established stability and structural fidelity compared to other generative models, which makes it particularly suitable for capturing the subtle anatomical changes characteristic of AD. Our approach conditions the diffusion process on anatomical segmentation masks derived from the ADNI dataset, incorporating key AD-relevant brain structures into the generation process. We systematically evaluate the quality and utility of the synthetic images by training segmentation models on real, synthetic, and hybrid (mixed) datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that segmentation models trained exclusively on synthetic data achieve comparable Dice scores (0.6532) to those trained on real data (0.6513), while exhibiting significantly enhanced recall. Notably, models trained on hybrid datasets (mixing real and synthetic images) outperform both real and synthetic-only baselines, achieving a Dice score of 0.7244. These findings underscore the successful use of conditional diffusion models for generating anatomically accurate, AD-specific synthetic MRIs, and highlight their potential for enhancing training data availability, improving diagnostic accuracy, and promoting research reproducibility in neuroimaging studies.
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All authors Muge Zhang, Muhammad Ali Khaliq, Jamal Alsakran, Byeong Kil Lee, Jeeho Ryoo

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.CR

Learning Red Agent Policy from Observations for Neurosymbolic Autonomous Cyber Agents

With sophisticated cyber-attacks becoming increasingly prevalent, modern networks require intelligent autonomous cyber-defense agents trained via Reinforcement Learning (RL). These agents employ neurosymbolic approaches such as behavior trees with learning-enabled components (LECs) to learn, reason, adapt, and implement security rules while maintaining critical operations. However, these autonomous networks are partially observable systems, i.e., the cyber-attacker's (red agent's) actions are not observable, making it difficult for the defender to predict red actions, learn red policies, or assess the attacker's intrusion levels. To address this, we propose a Policy Learning Technique using imitation learning to learn policies for partially observable RL agents with discrete states and discrete actions. We apply this technique in an autonomous cyber environment to predict red agent's actions from network observations and defender actions. Integrated with a neurosymbolic cyber-defense agent, our method effectively handles different red policies and achieves high prediction accuracy across diverse simulated scenarios.
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All authors Ankita Samaddar, Sandeep Neema, Daniel Balasubramanian, Xenofon Koutsoukos

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from math.PR

Finite-Time Queue Peak Laws in Stochastic Networks: Logarithmic Scaling After Geometric Thresholds

We study finite-horizon queue peaks in generalized switches, a standard stochastic-network model in which many queues share constrained service resources. Arrivals may be dependent, nonstationary, and responsive to the system history; the only load condition is uniform interior slack, meaning the conditional mean arrival vector stays in a fixed contraction of the capacity region. We show that this slack reshapes the finite-time peak law for drift-minimizing scheduling policies such as MaxWeight. The square-root envelope that is sharp without slack persists only up to a geometry-dependent threshold; beyond that threshold, the running maximum grows only logarithmically with the horizon, both with high probability and in expectation. The mechanism is self-normalization: in the current queue direction, the projected fluctuation scale is normalized by the stabilizing drift scale. This removes capacity geometry from the logarithmic coefficient, while geometry remains in the threshold. Matching lower bounds show that both the logarithmic term and a geometric threshold are unavoidable. When finite-time state-space collapse is available, the threshold can be sharpened using local bottleneck geometry. For generalized input-queued switches, we obtain finite-time peak bounds with tight logarithmic coefficients. Simulations illustrate the two-phase envelope, local geometric refinements, and variance-sensitive improvements predicted by the theory.
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Signal Processing

Receiver-Aware Analysis and Verification of the Spectral Separation Coefficient Under Interference-Induced Degradation

Interference poses a significant challenge to satellite-based positioning systems, making it essential to accurately quantify the effects of specific interference types on receiver performance and the resulting reliability of position computation. In current practice, interference effects are often quantified using receiver-independent metrics, with receiver-specific front-end characteristics either idealized or only implicitly considered. In this paper, we address this limitation by explicitly incorporating receiver-specific front-end characteristics into the computation of interference effects and validating the resulting receiver-dependent analysis experimentally. Therefore, we record a real-world open-field dataset comprising 210 distinct interference scenarios and compute the receiver-dependent spectral separation coefficient (SSC) and interference impact for a specific receiver module. Furthermore, we verify the computation using a controlled dataset generated with a radio frequency constellation simulator (RFCS), employing the same receiver module and replaying similar interferences classes. The comparison of results obtained in both environments demonstrates the robustness of the interference impact computation.
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All authors Lucas Heublein, Fabian Benschuh, Alexander Rügamer, Felix Ott

Signal Processing

Channel Charting for Position and Orientation

Channel charting (CC) in real-world coordinates is a recently proposed self-supervised machine learning method that maps high-dimensional channel state information (CSI) to user equipment (UE) position. In this paper, we extend CC to also estimate UE orientation, which can further assist tasks such as beamfinding, precoding, and beam- and cell-assignment. To this end, we propose a novel orientation triplet loss that accounts for angle periodicity and an alignment loss that embeds estimated orientations in real-world coordinates in a self-supervised fashion. Using real-world CSI measurements from a standard-compliant 5G NR system, we demonstrate that the proposed method achieves position and orientation estimation accuracy close to that of supervised approaches trained with ground-truth labels.
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All authors Daniel Richner, Reinhard Wiesmayr, Frederik Zumegen, Christoph Studer

Signal Processing

Spatial and Temporal Generalization of CSI-based Neural Positioning

Channel state information (CSI)-based neural positioning learns a mapping from CSI measurements to user equipment (UE) positions using neural networks. However, most existing performance evaluations utilize randomly partitioned train/test CSI-dataset splits, which fail to reflect the generalization requirements of practical deployments and present optimistic results. In this paper, we study the spatial and temporal generalization of neural positioning with standard-compliant Wi-Fi and 5G NR systems for three real-world CSI datasets acquired in indoor and outdoor environments. We assess generalization with two different architectures, a conventional multilayer perceptron (MLP) and a novel transformer architecture, to unseen spatial regions, unseen UE trajectories, and CSI measurement campaigns separated by one week. Our experiments show that both architectures generalize well in space and time, and the proposed transformer consistently outperforms the MLP in positioning accuracy while requiring fewer model parameters.
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All authors Till-Yannic Müller, Frederik Zumegen, Reinhard Wiesmayr, Christoph Studer

Audio and Speech Processing

Grounding Spoken LLMs in Multi-Speaker Audio via Diarization Conditioning

We propose diarization-conditioned spoken language models (SLMs), a strategy for extending SLMs to far-field multi-talker audio. Rather than adapting the decoder via Serialized Output Training, which risks catastrophic forgetting, we condition the acoustic encoder on diarization masks to extract target-speaker representations, keeping the decoder frozen. We instantiate this as Dixtral, integrating a Diarization Conditioned Whisper (DiCoW) encoder into the Voxtral SLM. On AMI, NOTSOFAR-1, LibriSpeechMix, and Mixer6, Dixtral outperforms Gemini 3.0 Flash, VibeVoice, and Voxtral Mini Transcribe V2 on speaker-attributed transcription by 29.0%, 19.8%, and 16.0% absolute cpWER respectively. On a novel long-form multi-speaker QA benchmark, zero-shot Dixtral matches Gemini on far-field content understanding, and when fine-tuned surpasses both Gemini and Voxtral operating on close-talk across all tasks.
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All authors Alexander Polok, Samuele Cornell, Sathvik Udupa, Jan Černocký, Shinji Watanabe, Lukáš Burget

Systems and Control

Decentralized Decision-Making for Finite-State Systems over Finite Alphabets is Undecidable

This paper investigates decentralized decision-making for finite-state transition systems, i.e., discrete-event systems, under finite communication alphabet constraints. We consider a general decentralized observation framework in which a plant is observed by multiple local agents that transmit symbolic messages over a finite alphabet to a memoryless fusion center. The fusion center then produces a binary decision according to a prescribed fusion rule. We study the fundamental question of whether there exist local decision maps that enable exact reconstruction of a given regular specification language from decentralized observations. Contrary to classical results that rely on specific monotone fusion rules such as conjunction and disjunction, we show that the problem becomes undecidable even under a severely restricted information architecture: binary local decision alphabets and a fixed exclusive-or (XOR) fusion rule. The proof is based on a reduction from the Thue word problem, a classical undecidable problem in rewriting systems. We further show that decentralized supervisory control, decentralized fault diagnosis, and decentralized fault prognosis are also undecidable under finite communication alphabets. Our results reveal that existing decidability results fundamentally rely on structural properties of fusion rules, in particular their monotone order-preserving nature. In contrast, non-monotone fusion rules such as XOR break this structure, leading to undecidability even in highly restricted settings.
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Audio and Speech Processing · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Embedded Machine Learning for Microcontroller-Class Edge Devices: Data, Feature, Evaluation, and Deployment Pipelines

Embedded machine learning moves inference from cloud services to resource-constrained devices that must acquire data, preprocess signals, run a model, and act within tight limits on memory, energy, and latency. This paper presents a systems-oriented synthesis of an embedded machine-learning workflow for microcontroller-class platforms. The emphasis is placed on engineering decisions that are often hidden in generic machine-learning introductions: sampling and buffering, feature extraction as dimensionality reduction, validation under class imbalance, model/runtime co-design, and streaming deployment. Two representative signal families are used throughout the paper. The first is inertial motion recognition, where a two-second, three-axis accelerometer window is transformed from raw samples into root-mean-square and spectral features before classification. The second is keyword spotting, where audio is sampled, anti-aliased, transformed into mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, and processed by a compact one-dimensional convolutional network. The paper concludes with practical design rules for robust on-device inference, including data curation, quantization, thresholding, scheduling, and field monitoring.
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Systems and Control

Verifiable computations for dynamic encrypted control

Encrypted control can preserve the privacy of data and parameters while the necessary computations can be outsourced to a cloud server. To ensure the integrity of the received values from the cloud, i.e., that they have not been changed, however, strong assumptions or verification algorithms are needed. Previous methods require computationally expensive cryptographic protocols or are only applicable to static computations. In this paper, we present a novel type of verification algorithm for linear dynamic encrypted control. We utilize system-theoretic input-output properties of the controller for artificial challenge signals, which are processed in the cloud in parallel with the requested control input, to check the correctness of the results at the plant. This results in almost no additional computational load, wrong computations are revealed with high probability, and no replay attacks are possible.
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