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Electrical Engineering and Systems Science

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Monday 13 July

Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.DC

Decentralized Gradient Descent: Bottleneck Regimes and Budget Complexity

Decentralized gradient descent (DGD) is widely used for solving distributed optimization problems over networks of agents. While its convergence properties are well understood, less is known about the communication and computation resources required to attain a prescribed accuracy. In this paper, we study DGD from a resource-aware perspective and characterize the communication-computation budget required to attain a target error level. We develop a bottleneck-centric framework in which different factors dominate the optimization dynamics at different error scales. Specifically, we identify operating regimes governed by initialization, objective heterogeneity and network connectivity, gradient noise, and communication noise. To capture these effects, we introduce two fundamental quantities: the gradient-Diversity-to-Network-connectivity Ratio (DNR) and the Gradient-to-Communication-noise Ratio (GCR). We show that these quantities determine the sequence of bottlenecks encountered during optimization and the corresponding budget-optimal operating strategy. Using a multi-stage analysis, we derive optimal stepsize selections and explicit budget-complexity bounds that quantify the budget resources required to attain a prescribed accuracy. The resulting expressions reveal how the overall budget decomposes into contributions associated with successive bottlenecks and provide insight into the fundamental tradeoffs among objective heterogeneity, network connectivity, gradient noise, and communication noise.
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Systems and Control

Multi-Fidelity Uncertainty Propagation with Model Adaptation to Local Cislunar Dynamics

As the number of missions to cislunar space increases, the population of space objects in this region is expected to grow, making efficient uncertainty propagation essential for space situational awareness (SSA). This is complicated by the cislunar domain's vastness, chaotic dynamical environment, and limited availability of measurements. This paper presents an adaptive multi-fidelity uncertainty propagation method that dynamically adjusts the included perturbing forces based on position in cislunar space, minimizing computation time while maintaining a prescribed modeling accuracy. The proposed adaptive method is then integrated into a multi-target tracking framework to reduce the computational cost of track prediction without sacrificing accuracy, which is important for managing the growing number of objects in cislunar space. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated in simulated test cases relevant to upcoming cislunar missions and SSA applications, resulting in a significant reduction in computational cost compared to a non-adaptive approach while achieving equivalent or superior accuracy.
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Systems and Control

Generating Physically Plausible Parachute Dynamics with Deep Generative Modeling

Accurately modeling the dynamics of planetary parachute and entry vehicle systems is critical for Entry, Descent, and Landing events such as vehicle separation and sensor activation. These dynamics are difficult to capture with traditional system-identification methods as parachute motion is highly nonlinear, the governing equations are not fully known, and relevant test data are scarce and expensive to acquire. In this work, we sidestep these challenges by leveraging a physics-aware generative modeling approach that learns parachute dynamics directly from data. The proposed method, Symplectic Parachute Generative Adversarial Network (SPar-GAN), adapts a Hamiltonian generative architecture to the parachute setting by conditioning on canopy design and freestream velocity, while enforcing conservation of energy through symplectic integration. We apply SPar-GAN to subscale parachute tests conducted at the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex and show that it reproduces qualitatively accurate pitch-yaw dynamics of different parachute configurations while recovering a compact two-degree-of-freedom phase-space consistent with canopy axisymmetry. These results suggest that physics-constrained generative models can characterize parachute dynamics across operating conditions and may help reduce the volume of physical testing required to assess performance.
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Systems and Control

WULPUS PRO: Multi-mode Ultra-Low-Power Wearable Ultrasound and Array Imaging with CMUT Support

Wearable ultrasound enables continuous monitoring of physiological processes such as muscle dynamics, bladder volume, and cardiovascular activity. Existing fully wearable ultra-low-power platforms are limited to shallow, low-channel A-mode sensing, while larger multi-mode systems are too bulky and power-hungry for true wearability. We present WULPUS PRO, a runtime-programmable wearable ultrasound acquisition platform measuring $39\times21\times6 \mathrm{mm}$ and weighing $5 \mathrm{g}$. It integrates $30 \mathrm{V}$ excitation, 16 time-multiplexed channels, a low-noise receive front-end with up to $70 \mathrm{dB}$ gain, $14 \mathrm{MHz}$ bandwidth, time-gain compensation, and $45 \mathrm{dB}$ SNR. The platform supports deep-tissue echo acquisition up to $2.2 \mathrm{MHz}$ in RF-sampling mode and $8 \mathrm{MHz}$ in envelope-detection mode. We demonstrate B-mode imaging in a 16-channel ultra-low-power wearable with sub-millimeter axial and millimeter-scale lateral resolution in phantom experiments, while consuming $40 \mathrm{mW}$ at $50 \mathrm{Hz}$ PRF and under $60 \mathrm{mW}$ at $300 \mathrm{Hz}$ PRF. WULPUS PRO supports both piezoelectric and capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers, enabling integration with skin-conformal polymer-based CMUT arrays. As a host-agnostic acquisition front-end, it exposes standard data and power interfaces for BLE- and Wi-Fi-based wearable hosts. We demonstrate wireless transmission with external BLE and Wi-Fi modules and project 1-2 days of BLE operation at $50 \mathrm{Hz}$ PRF and over 3 h of Wi-Fi streaming at $300 \mathrm{Hz}$ PRF using a $300 \mathrm{mAh}$, $6.4 \mathrm{g}$ Li-Po cell. WULPUS PRO establishes a new class of fully programmable, B-mode-enabled, ultra-low-power wearable ultrasound platforms.
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All authors Sergei Vostrikov, Federico Villani, Cedric Hirschi, Jinhao Lu, Jonas Welsch, Martin Angerer, Edmond Cretu, Robert Rohling, Andrea Cossettini, Luca Benini

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from math.OC

LQG solution for POMDP without estimating states: A minimum variance approach

This paper investigates the control of discrete-time linear time-invariant (LTI) systems subject to incomplete and corrupted measurements. Specifically, we focus on designing a Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) controller without relying on explicit state estimation. By leveraging minimum variance duality, our approach allows the current control input to be represented as a linear function of available measurements and previously applied inputs, successfully reducing the task to a tractable deterministic optimization problem. We provide theoretical justification for this framework and demonstrate its practical effectiveness through numerical experiments.
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Systems and Control · Cross-listed from math.OC

Exact Solutions to a Class of Constrained Optimal Control Problems via Lossless Convexification for Digital Control

This article establishes a new numerically viable technique for solving a class of constrained, nonconvex, continuous-time optimal control problems (OCPs) for linear systems that commonly arise in aerial and aerospace applications. The lossless convexification technique is employed to translate the original nonconvex OCP with annular control magnitude constraints into a convex problem, and then by finitely parametrizing the control space with piecewise constant functions, an efficient numerical approach is established that guarantees exact solutions while ensuring the satisfaction of an uncountable family of constraints over a compact time interval. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated on a spacecraft landing problem involving three degrees of freedom (DoF), underscoring its potential for real-world aerospace guidance and control tasks.
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Signal Processing

Dynamic Online Processor-Native Inference for State Estimation

Sensor-rich data-driven applications increasingly use Bayesian approaches to infer latent states of dynamic systems from noisy sensor measurements and physical models. Yet the computation of the likelihood remains an essential bottleneck for accurate posteriors and performant inference. This paper presents a Bayesian filtering technique that uses processor-native uncertainty tracking for both uncertainty propagation and inference. The technique implements deterministic hierarchical importance restructuring through a native operation, giving deterministic latency and bounded memory use for arbitrary models written as program code. Benchmarks across three nonlinear state-space systems compare the approach against particle filters and Monte-Carlo-based likelihood estimators. The technique enables deterministic approximate filtering with as high as 805$\times$ average speedup against direct Monte Carlo work at matched result quality for model evaluation, and Pareto-dominant accuracy-latency trade-offs for posterior inference while remaining competitive in RMSE with baseline particle filters.
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Image and Video Processing

Calibrated Selective Prediction Using Deep Ensembles for ROI-Based Thyroid Nodule Ultrasound Classification Under Dataset Shift: A Retrospective Evaluation

Background: Deep learning models can classify thyroid nodules on ultrasound, but reliable clinical decision support also requires calibrated probabilities, uncertainty estimation, and selective referral, particularly under dataset shift. Methods: We developed a calibrated deterministic five-member deep ensemble for ROI-based thyroid nodule classification and selective image-based triage. TN5000 was used for model development, five-fold cross-validation, member-wise vector-scaling calibration, and fold-specific threshold selection. TN3K served as an independent external dataset-shift evaluation. The framework used ConvNeXt-Tiny with squeeze-and-excitation attention, ensemble-mean malignancy probability, and mutual information (MI) as an ensemble-disagreement score. A three-tier policy assigned images to No-FNA suggestion, FNA recommendation, or radiologist review. Results: On pooled out-of-fold TN5000 predictions, the ensemble achieved AUC-ROC 0.9395, AP 0.9715, ECE 0.0088, and Brier score 0.0813. At 50% nominal MI retention, 7.2% of cases received a No-FNA suggestion, 39.9% an FNA recommendation, and 52.9% radiologist review, with 98.3% No-FNA NPV and 99.83% malignancy capture. On TN3K, AUC-ROC decreased to 0.7870, AP to 0.7254, ECE increased to 0.1899, and Brier score to 0.2281. The frozen TN5000 policy assigned 83.7% to review, 1.0% to No-FNA, and 15.3% to FNA recommendation. No malignant image entered the No-FNA pathway, but FNA-recommendation PPV fell to 76.6%. Conclusion: The framework showed strong internal discrimination and calibration, but limited external threshold transportability. Selective prediction may help identify images unsuitable for automated triage, but local recalibration, threshold validation, and prospective clinical evaluation are required before deployment.
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All authors Md. Sadibul Hasan Sadib, Md. Mohayminul Mukit, Rahmatul Kabir Rasel Sarker, Tahmid Alam Tamim, Md. Monir Hossain Shimul

Signal Processing

HAPS-Complemented Terrestrial Networks

We consider a downlink multicell multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system in an urban region, with a focus on improving the capacity of cell-edge user equipments (UEs). These UEs typically experience lower rates than near UEs because of shadowing, path loss, and inter-cell interference (ICI). To address this issue, we integrate a high-altitude platform station (HAPS) with the terrestrial network as a relay for edge-UE transmissions. We assume that the HAPS operates in full-duplex (FD) mode and exploits its large physical size to enhance passive self-interference (SI) suppression by separating its transmit and receive antennas. In the proposed scheme, each terrestrial base station (BS) forwards edge-UE data to the FD-HAPS, which then relays the data to the intended edge UEs. To design beams at both BSs and HAPS, we formulate a sum-rate maximization problem for under total transmit-power and minimum quality-of-service (QoS) constraints. To solve the resulting non-convex problem, we develop a centralized algorithm based on successive convex approximation (SCA) and alternating optimization (AO) for fast convergence. Simulation results show that relaying information via FD-HAPS significantly improves the capacity of cell-edge UEs compared with a terrestrial-only network.
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Image and Video Processing

Analyzing Image Encoder Choices and Graph Homophily in GCN Frameworks for Breast Ultrasound Classification

Breast ultrasound is widely used for screening, yet automated analysis remains challenging due to speckle noise, acquisition variability, and weak separation of benign and malignant cases in standard ultrasound imaging. Graph convolutional networks (GCNs) have recently emerged as a promising approach by leveraging relationships among similar patient samples. However, it remains unclear how the choice of image encoder influences graph construction and downstream classification performance. In this work, we systematically evaluate five image encoders spanning convolutional and transformer-based architectures for GCN-based breast ultrasound classification. Image embeddings are used to construct cosine similarity k-nearest-neighbor graphs, which are classified using a single-layer GCN with a linear classification head. Across three patientwise cross-validation folds, higher-capacity encoders consistently improve graph homophily and downstream classification performance, yielding gains in accuracy, AUC, sensitivity, specificity, and F1-score. Moreover, test-set graph homophily exhibits a strong linear correlation with classification accuracy, with higher-capacity encoders consistently occupying the high-homophily, high-accuracy region suggesting that encoder-driven improvements in graph structure are a key mechanism underlying the observed performance gains. These findings establish encoder selection as a critical factor in graph-based breast ultrasound classification and identify graph homophily as a key indicator linking representation quality to downstream classification performance.
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All authors Sabahattin Mert Daloglu, Ceren Coskun, Harvey Castro, Soner Hacihaliloglu, Ilker Hacihaliloglu

Image and Video Processing

HPC-Enabled Video-based Coastal Wave Parameter Estimation Using V-JEPA and Deep Spatiotemporal Learning

High deployment cost, poor spatial coverage and susceptibility to storm conditions are all challenges faced by traditional in-situ methods. This paper presents a video-based and high performance computing (HPC) enabled deep learning framework for joint sensor free estimation of five coastal wave parameters, namely significant wave height (Hs), maximum wave height (Hmax), peak period (Tp), zero upcrossing period (Tz) and wave direction (theta) from monocular coastal video. The proposed architecture comprises of a V-JEPA (self supervised) ViT Small backbone for robust spatiotemporal feature extraction in visually challenging scenarios, a dual-stream SlowFast temporal encoder for broad bandwidth representation of wave motion in both hydrodynamic breaking and swell regimes, an optical flow stream based on Farneback optical flow algorithm for adding saliency information to the structure with emphasis on hydrodynamically active wavelength bands of waves, and a multi-task regression layer with dispersion constraints (Airy wave dispersion lambda_p = 0.1). The model was trained on an NVIDIA DGX A100 cluster and was early stopped at epoch 31 and achieved Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.451, 0.578, 0.643, 0.680 and 0.832 for Hs, Hmax, Tp, Tz and wave direction respectively, with generalization ability to geographically diverse held out test data sites. While operating in a data-limited regime (6 annotated training scenes), the framework demonstrates statistically significant temporal correlations (PCC of 0.451 to 0.832), confirming proof of concept feasibility; R2 values (max 0.246) indicate that variance capture will improve with larger annotated datasets.
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All authors Abubakar Hamisu Kamagata, Dharm Singh Jat, Attlee Munyaradzi Gamundani, Saravanakumar Paramasivam, Babangida Sani, Aliyu Zakariyya

Systems and Control

Contraction Certification from Streaming Data: Wasserstein Robustness and Compositional Stability for Interconnected Nonlinear System

Streaming contraction certificates, which determine in real time whether observed data is sufficient to certify a safe control action, face two structural challenges: the disturbance distribution shifts during operation, and the system consists of coupled subsystems whose joint model is unavailable. This paper addresses both. First, we develop a Wasserstein-robust certificate beta_cert(t,epsilon) = beta_hat(t) - rho(t)(1+2epsilon(t)), where epsilon(t) is estimated online from the empirical excess kurtosis of recent residuals, so the certificate degrades gracefully under distributional shift rather than failing catastrophically. Second, we prove that local certificates beta_A and beta_B, estimated independently from each subsystem's data, compose into a network-level guarantee via beta_net = (beta_A+beta_B)/2 - sqrt[(beta_A-beta_B)^2/4 + gamma^2] > 0 whenever gamma < sqrt(beta_Abeta_B), with no joint model required. On a five-node G5 benchmark under three noise regimes - Gaussian, heavy-tailed Laplace, and spike events - the Wasserstein certificate remains valid in 73% of spike-regime timesteps versus 33% for the Gaussian baseline (2.2x improvement), while the Gaussian certificate never authorizes deployment during the spike window. The compositional framework correctly identifies all three coupling regimes from local data alone, with gamma_warn = sqrt(beta_A*beta_B) is approximately 0.98, precisely predicting network-level contraction loss.
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Signal Processing

Detection of sUAS in Urban Environments using Multi-Antenna Micro-Doppler Radar

Sensing and early detection of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) are critically important in modern-day defense. In dense urban and indoor environments, detection becomes extremely challenging due to dense multipath, fading, low-altitude flight, and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) radio-frequency propagation. This paper presents a continuous-wave multiple-input multiple-output radar and a deep learning model for sUAS detection using NLOS signals. The radar operates at 2.47 GHz, and spectral correlation densities derived from rotational micro-Doppler signatures from the rotor blades are used as inputs to the deep learning model. Experimental results demonstrate an overall detection accuracy of $86.11\%$ across a dataset of five drone types, confirming the feasibility of sUAS detection in dense urban environments without direct line-of-sight conditions.
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All authors Chamindu Liyanage, Chirantha Kurukulasuriya, Chathuni Wijegunawardana, Wikum Kumara, Chamira U. S. Edussooriya, Arjuna Madanayake

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from math.OC

Sparse Robust Optimal Control in Continuous-Time: A Computationally Viable Approach

This article presents a novel, numerically viable algorithm for solving sparse robust optimal control problems in continuous time. We consider a constrained linear noisy system governed by an ordinary differential equation (ODE), with an $L^1$-type objective function in line with the sparse optimal control literature. The resulting optimal control problem is shown to admit a semi-infinite programming (SIP) formulation. Building upon this insight, we develop a new framework that enables the computation of exact solutions – to our knowledge, the first such achievement in the context of sparse optimal control. We demonstrate that a finite and computationally viable convex optimization problem can be solved to recover, in a lossless manner, both the optimal value and the corresponding optimizers of the original SIP, while also guaranteeing satisfaction of uncountably many constraints. We also show that the parameter-dependent noisy systems and the minimum attention problem fall into our framework and can be solved efficiently via our algorithm. The efficacy of our algorithm is illustrated through a benchmark numerical example.
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All authors Siddhartha Ganguly, Ashwin Aravind, Souvik Das, Masaaki Nagahara, Debasish Chatterjee

Systems and Control

Active Noise Floor Estimation for Reliability-Optimal POMDPs: A Value-of-Noise-Information Approach

Finite Reliability Representations (FRR) certify when a cell-constant policy is sufficient for reliable decision-making in a partially observed system with a known physical noise floor. In practice, however, sensing and execution noise can be latent and context-dependent. This paper develops a certificate-aware active disambiguation framework for an unknown physical noise parameter theta = (sigma_y, sigma_u), with the sensor-only case obtained by fixing sigma_u. We define the Value of Noise Information (VoNI) as the expected excess FRR certificate gap caused by using a reliability cover calibrated to the current estimate rather than to the realized noise parameter. We bound VoNI using action-value model mismatch and FRR radius inflation, showing that noise estimation has low decision value in sub-crossover regimes where the FRR certificate is insensitive to theta, but becomes valuable when posterior uncertainty can invalidate the current cover. A bi-level decision maker uses a posterior over theta, obtained from innovation statistics, execution residuals, or another online estimator, and triggers diagnostic probing only when uncertainty threatens the FRR certificate. We also interpret VoNI as a tractable, certificate-aware approximation to a high-level finite POMDP for latent sensing-execution regime disambiguation. Under stationary, identifiable, and persistently exciting regimes, we establish posterior consistency and convergence of the induced policy loss to the FRR approximation floor. Closed-loop UGV simulations with EKF-based innovation residuals show earlier detection of abrupt sensing-noise jumps, lower drift-tracking error, and substantially fewer probing actions than posterior-entropy exploration over 50 Monte Carlo trials.
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Audio and Speech Processing · Cross-listed from cs.RO

Casting Everything to Online API Services? A Survey of Integrating Localized Speech Recognition Models in Robotic Systems

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has become a critical component of modern robotic systems because it is one of the most natural and intuitive ways for humans to interact with robots. A commonly used method is to directly use API services online. But is that all we can do? This article provides an overview of how ASR technologies are integrated into various intelligent robots and machines. We discuss the evolution of speech recognition from established approaches to state-of-the-art deep learning models, such as OpenAI's Whisper. We also list large-scale datasets and open source toolkits that have been widely used in both industry and academia. We structure the survey around ASR model families, deployment strategies in robotics (especially ROS-based, cloud-based, and hybrid solutions), and several real-world robotic platforms. Finally, we outline the challenges of deploying robust speech recognition in robots and discuss future directions, including multimodal interaction in diverse and dynamic environments. This paper can help social robotics researchers better navigate the emerging domain of language-based natural human-robot interaction.
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All authors Sheng Li, Jing Li, Felix Schijve, Jun Hu, Emilia Barakova

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.RO

MIRA: A Modular Open-Source Micro-UAV for Indoor Research

Indoor robotics research increasingly relies on micro-UAV platforms whose airframes, electronics, and control software are open to modification. Off-the-shelf platforms often lack the low-level access that such modifications require, while building a custom vehicle demands substantial engineering effort before the first flight test, leaving many laboratories working within constraints that limit the scope of their research. We present MIRA (Modular Indoor Research Architecture), an open-source micro-UAV for indoor research, built around a replicable 3D-printed PLA airframe with detachable arms and a containerized low-level software package that manages the companion-to-autopilot communication bridge via Micro XRCE-DDS. Designed as a white-box architecture, its core subsystems, including the companion computer, are individually replaceable without firmware refactoring, which supports local fabrication, crash-localized repair, and component substitution from existing laboratory inventory. We characterize MIRA through autonomous flights comprising takeoff, hovering, trajectory tracking, and landing within an optical motion-capture volume. The communication pipeline sustains a median companion-to-autopilot latency of 0.02 ms, with the external motion-capture link as the main remaining latency source, and time-domain analysis shows that structural vibration remains stable during dynamic maneuvers and below the reference level adopted in this work. All design files and software are released openly to support replication and extension by other laboratories.
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All authors Lucas K. de Oliveira, Felipe Tommaselli, João Aires Marsicano, Marco S. Tayar, Pedro A. R. Saraiva, Gianluca Capezzuto, Ricardo V. Godoy, Marcelo Becker

Audio and Speech Processing

Synchronized Three-Dimensional Vocal-Tract Motion for Speech Synchronization via Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture Alignment

Modern neural speech systems can generate intelligible waveforms, but they usually hide the physical speech-production state that produced the sound. Conversely, biomechanical vocal-tract models expose articulatory structure, contact behavior, airflow routing, and geometric constraints, but direct physical waveform synthesis remains less robust than modern neural vocoders. A duration-preserving acoustic carrier supplies the listening waveform, while a corrected three-dimensional vocal-tract model supplies synchronized jaw, lip, tongue, velum, laryngeal, oral-airflow, and nasal-airflow motion. A joint-embedding predictive architecture (JEPA)-style representation and a reinforcement learning/cross-entropy method (RL/CEM) trajectory-selection loop align articulatory actions to the acoustic carrier and to physical-plausibility constraints. The evaluation contains 12 3D recordings covering 24 minimal-pair stimuli. On the 24-word set, the carrier obtains good automatic speech recognition (ASR) results (an 8.33% WER, a 4.17% CER), a UTMOS score of 3.174, a mean JEPA score of 0.864, and a mean timbre-guard score of 0.947.
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Signal Processing

DeepRT Engine: A Unified GPU-Parallel Ray-Tracing Framework with Hybrid SBR-IM Path Search for 6G Digital Twin Channel

Digital twin channel (DTC) aims to establish a real-time digital counterpart of physical wireless channels for reproducing and predicting site-specific propagation characteristics. As a high-precision channel computation method for realistic propagation scenarios, ray tracing (RT) serves as a key enabler for DTC construction. However, conventional RT suffers from high complexity under serial path-searching workflows. This letter proposes DeepRT Engine (DeepRT-E), a parallel RT acceleration architecture with a three-stage physically-inspired pipeline for real-time DTC construction. Firstly, DeepRT-E constructs a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) to partition the scene and reduce redundant ray-surface intersections. Secondly, the shooting and bouncing rays (SBR) algorithm is executed through a ray-level parallel tracing framework to identify candidate surface sequences and prune the search space of the image method (IM). Finally, a parallel batched IM solver refines the retained candidates for accurate propagation-path recovery. Simulation results show that DeepRT-E reduces runtime by 96.3% and achieves a converged error of only 0.001 dB, outperforming Wireless InSite and Sionna in efficiency and accuracy.
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All authors Tao Wu, Li Yu, Yuxiang Zhang, Jianhua Zhang, Qixing Wang, Guangyi Liu

Signal Processing

Scalable Rate-Splitting Precoding via Recurrent Structure-Preserving Graph Neural Networks

Graph neural network (GNN)-based precoding has demonstrated strong potential for scalable multi-user beamforming in multi-user multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) systems under space division multiple access (SDMA). However, direct extension to rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) is non-trivial due to the coupled common/private-stream structure inherent to RSMA, which requires a fundamentally different graph representation and permutation equivariance structure. Motivated by this, we propose a recurrent structure-preserving graph neural network (RS-GNN) for scalable RSMA precoding. RS-GNN constructs precoder-dependent graph features at every refinement layer, enabling closed-loop interference-aware message passing, and recovers the common and private precoders through an analytically grounded structure-based reconstruction via a differentiable linear solver. This design decouples the learnable parameters from fixed system dimensions, enabling generalization to unseen system sizes without retraining. We formally prove that RS-GNN satisfies mixed permutation equivariance with respect to both user and antenna orderings, and show that RS-GNN reduces to conventional SDMA precoding as a special case by deactivating the common-stream branch. Simulation results demonstrate that RS-GNN achieves near-WMMSE sum-rate performance with significantly lower online inference time, while generalizing robustly to unseen system sizes; its SDMA special case consistently outperforms existing GNN-based precoders across unseen antenna and user configurations, SNR regimes, and channel distributions.
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Audio and Speech Processing

Qwen-Audio-VAE Technical Report

We introduce Qwen-Audio-VAE, a suite of low-bitrate, fast-encoding continuous audio autoencoders designed for scalable general audio generation. The model is built around a simple but important principle: an audio VAE should not only reconstruct diverse audio with high fidelity, but also produce compact latent representations fast enough to support large-scale text-to-audio training. Qwen-Audio-VAE combines a causal encoder-decoder, window Transformer blocks, and multi-discriminator training to achieve a strong balance between reconstruction quality and compression rate. The model is trained at scale on 5 million hours of multi-domain audio, enabling robust reconstruction across heterogeneous acoustic conditions. To further improve computational efficiency, we adopt an asymmetric encoder-decoder backbone and introduce latency-aware encoder pruning to maximize encoding throughput. Experiments on public speech, music, and sound reconstruction benchmarks show that Qwen-Audio-VAE generalizes well across diverse audio domains and is particularly efficient, requiring only 541 ms to encode 32 minutes of audio. Overall, Qwen-Audio-VAE provides a high-quality, compact, and high-throughput representation backbone for efficient general audio generation.
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All authors Ziyue Jiang, Dake Guo, Zekai Zhang, Hangrui Hu, Ting He, Xinfa Zhu, Xiong Wang, Yongqi Wang, Jiapeng Wang, Wenxiang Guo, Zhifang Guo, Chenfei Wu, Dayiheng Liu, Jin Xu

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.RO

Coordinated Incremental Trajectory Tracking of a Tailsitter Drone

This paper derives an analytical differential flatness transform for a tailsitter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) under coordinated flight conditions using a simplified aerodynamic model. The proposed framework is formulated exclusively using rotation matrices, avoiding the ambiguities inherent to Euler angle representations. The method extends the applicability of an existing state-of-the-art differential flatness-based controller to flight regimes involving a significant vertical velocity component, where the previous approach becomes inapplicable. The proposed framework is validated experimentally with trajectories that highlight its advantages in these regimes.
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Audio and Speech Processing · Cross-listed from cs.SD

Teaching Speech Enhancement Models to Sing: Domain Adaptation from Speech Enhancement to Singing Voice Separation

State-of-the-art speech enhancement models benefit from large-scale labeled datasets, whereas singing voice separation models suffer from limited available training data. To address this limitation, we formulate singing voice separation as domain adaptation from speech enhancement to singing voice separation. We investigate two fine-tuning strategies: full fine-tuning and parameter-efficient fine-tuning using Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) on a discriminative and a generative model. Models with either adaptation strategy outperform the same architectures trained from scratch by 0.29-1.8 dB in Signal-to-Distortion-Ratio. Full fine-tuning yields the highest singing voice separation performance, but catastrophic forgetting degrades speech enhancement performance. LoRA fine-tuning achieves competitive singing voice separation performance while preserving the original speech enhancement capability with only 6-12% additional parameters compared to the base speech enhancement model. Furthermore, the generative model shows improved generalization to an unseen test set. The results demonstrate that adapting pretrained speech enhancement models is an effective strategy for training singing voice separation models in data-scarce scenarios.
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Signal Processing

Stochastic Analysis of Successive Interference Cancellation in a Narrow-Beam LEO Uplink

This paper investigates uplink coverage probability, i.e., the SIR distribution, and SIR order statistics at a low Earth orbit satellite base station (LEO BS) with narrow Gaussian antenna beams. The user equipments (UEs) connected to the satellite radio access network are distributed according to a Poisson point process (PPP) on the Earth's surface. We propose a novel framework for stochastic geometry analysis of the SIR using a Gaussian mixture shadowing model, derive tractable expressions for the mean, variance, and probability density function, and analyze the SIR distributions for the three strongest UEs under successive interference cancellation (SIC). Furthermore, we propose a gamma distribution model for the interference distribution. We show that SIC enables each LEO BS to serve multiple UEs per beam cell, improving user fairness while preserving the network throughput. The observations imply design recommendations for next-generation non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) LEO networks. The analytical insights are validated against Monte Carlo simulations.
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Signal Processing

OwnDPDLab: A Flexible Open-Source Testbed for Wideband DPD Algorithm Benchmarking

5G and Beyond-5G standards require digital predistortion (DPD) algorithms to operate on increased signal bandwidths. Wideband laboratory test hardware is cost-intensive, and openly available solutions lack flexibility. The OwnDPDLab provides a highly flexible, affordable, open-source, and openly accessible system. It is based on the RFSoC 4x2 and supports full control of center frequency, sampling mode, output power, and input attenuation at a signal bandwidth of up to 1 GHz. The system's capability is demonstrated by linearizing a laboratory power amplifier using a 196.608 MHz orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal with 256-QAM modulation using both a memory polynomial and an augmented real-valued time-delay neural network in the first and second Nyquist zone. The system achieves a normalized mean squared error improvement of up to 23 dB and an adjacent channel leakage ratio improvement of up to 11 dB, using DPD.
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All authors Marvin Jaeger, Philipp Luetke, David Kopyto, Georg Frederik Riemschneider, Omar Jabi, Alexander Koelpin

Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.RO

WarpMPC: Large-Batch MPC on GPU via ADMM with Unrolled $LDL^\top$ Factorization

This paper introduces numerical optimizations for maximizing throughput on GPU when solving large batches (10,000 to over 100,000) of sequential quadratic programming (SQP) iterations, where all problems have the same structure. The optimizations are implemented in a toolbox WarpMPC for model-predictive control (MPC) in JAX and Warp. Based on the insight that all MPC problem instances in a batch share the same sparsity in time, cost, and constraints, we propose unrolling sparse linear factorizations and solves, which dominate alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) solver runtime. We avoid memory access bottlenecks and wasting computations via optimized memory layout, padding-reducing segmentation of the unrolled factorization, and dependency level scheduled backsolves, additionally accelerating sensitivity computation. We achieve throughputs of 8,000 to 250,000 SQP iterations per second on nonlinear cartpole, quadrotor, and humanoid robot benchmarks, outperforming baselines by 3$\times$ to 25$\times$. We illustrate practical usefulness by synthesizing a dataset and training a neural network approximation of an MPC in under 4 minutes that stabilizes a nano quadrotor in hardware experiments.
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All authors Henrik Hose, Se Hwan Jeon, Charles Khazoom, Sangbae Kim, Sebastian Trimpe

Signal Processing

Spatial and Temporal Correlation of Interference in a Narrow Multibeam LEO Satellite Random Access Network

Interference is a limiting factor in the emerging dense low Earth orbit (LEO) networks. In the LEO network, the interference is spatially and temporally correlated. At narrow-beam LEO base stations (BSs), spatial interference can vary significantly, and multipath fading introduces temporal variation. While developing novel stochastic geometry analysis in a multibeam scenario, we explore spatio-temporal interference correlation in the LEO uplink. We derive a closed-form expression for the spatio-temporal interference correlation coefficient. As an application of the analysis, we show that the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) entails significant spatial clustering. In this regard, we demonstrate that an appropriately designed grant-free random access scheme, particularly slotted ALOHA, can mitigate spatial SIR clustering over the beams while preserving average throughput. Furthermore, we propose a novel gamma distribution model for the interference power distribution and a Lomax distribution model for the SIR.
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Systems and Control · Cross-listed from math.OC

Copositive Characterizations of Convex Hull Pricing

Due to the nonconvex binary constraints of unit commitment (UC), no uniform linear pricing scheme supports the optimal dispatch. Convex hull pricing (CHP) and copositive duality pricing (CDP) both address this problem. CHP derives the price from the subgradient of the value function of the convex hull relaxation of UC. CDP refers to several different pricing mechanisms that can be constructed from the dual multipliers of the completely positive programming reformulation. In this work, we define a centralized convex hull price over the joint feasible set of UC and prove that, under non-degeneracy, it coincides with the marginal copositive duality price. Numerical experiments on the Scarf example validate this equivalence and quantify the pricing gap introduced by the semidefinite restriction.
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Signal Processing · Cross-listed from cs.LG

DiffEEG: A Self-Supervised Denoising Diffusion Model for Learning EEG seizure-related Representations

Deep learning for EEG-based seizure detection faces critical challenges: severe annotation scarcity and extreme class imbalance, where ictal events comprise less than 10% of clinical recordings. We present DiffEEG, a 9.6M-parameter self-supervised foundation model that addresses both limitations through denoising diffusion pre-training and reinforcement learning (RL)-based fine-tuning. Pre-trained on 1.3M unlabeled segments from the Temple University Hospital Seizure Corpus (TUHSZ), DiffEEG learns generic neural representations via a 1D U-Net with multi-head self-attention. For downstream adaptation, a reinforced decision layer employs policy gradient optimization to directly maximize F1-score, prioritizing sensitivity to rare seizure events over overall accuracy. Under strict patient-wise evaluation (279 patients, Leave-One-Fold-Out), DiffEEG achieves 61% accuracy and 59% F1 for 4-class seizure subtyping, and 81% accuracy with 85% weighted F1 for binary detection, maintaining clinically viable seizure recall (59%) despite extreme imbalance (6.7% prevalence). Segment-level evaluation establishes an upper bound of 97.6% accuracy, confirming strong architectural capacity. DiffEEG demonstrates that diffusion-based pre-training combined with metric-aware reinforcement learning enables clinically deployable seizure monitoring with minimal labeled data requirements.
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All authors Abdulkader Helwan, Lina Abou-Abbas, Hussein El Amouri, Belkacem Chikhaoui, Khadidja Henni

Signal Processing

Millimeter-Wave Dual-Polarized Omnidirectional Reference Antennas for Total Array Gain Evaluation

The present manuscript introduces a compact millimeter-wave dual-polarized reference antenna module designed for performance comparison of handset antenna arrays in multipath environments. Both vertically- and horizontally-polarized fields are covered with sufficiently wide impedance bandwidths and low gain variation along the horizontal plane. When integrated into a compact dual-polarized antenna module, the mutual coupling between the antennas is well controlled to ensure minimal distortion in the radiation patterns. Measurements confirm that the proposed antenna module achieves the designed low gain variation and almost identical realized gains for the two polarizations.
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All authors Bing Xue, Juha Tuomela, Katsuyuki Haneda, Clemens Icheln