Signal Processing
Does the Heart Show Your Pain? Tackling the X-ITE Pain Challenge with Self-Supervised ECG Representation Learning
Dominika Kunc, Przemysław Kazienko and Stanisław Saganowski
Accurate recognition of pain using physiological signals remains a challenging problem due to pain's subjective nature and high inter-individual variability. In this study, we investigate self-supervised representation learning (SSL) methods applied to unimodal electrocardiogram (ECG), complemented by
multimodal pretraining, including accelerometer (ACC) signals from the chest. We focus on classifying low versus medium pain levels on the X-ITE Pain
dataset. Our results reveal that while ECG-based models show limited classification performance,
multimodal pretraining improves learned representations by capturing cross-modal dependencies. Notably, we observe substantial inter-subject variability in model performance, suggesting that pain-related ECG patterns may be subject-specific. Visualizations indicate distinct subject-specific clustering but no clear separation by pain levels, highlighting the complexity of pain detection from ECG alone. We discuss limitations of unimodal input, label noise, and generalization across subjects and propose future directions. This work advances the understanding of physiological signal representation learning for pain recognition and sets the stage for more robust, clinically relevant wearable pain monitoring solutions.
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Systems and Control · Cross-listed from math.DS
Contraction Analysis of Holomorphic Dynamical Systems via the Intrinsic Kobayashi Metric
Soumic Sarkar
This paper studies incremental stability of holomorphic dynamical systems through the infinitesimal Kobayashi metric, an intrinsic pseudometric on complex
manifolds invariant under holomorphic transformations and free of the coordinate dependence inherent in auxiliary Riemannian or Hermitian formulations. Contraction is formalized as an upper Dini-derivative inequality on the Kobayashi metric along trajectories; the passage from this differential condition to exponential distance contraction follows the classical Finsler-metric contraction mechanism of Forni and Sepulchre, instantiated here for the case in which the Finsler structure is the Kobayashi metric itself. Since the intrinsic condition is difficult to verify directly, a practical criterion is developed through a smooth Hermitian metric, the complex-Hermitian analogue of the classical real
matrix contraction inequality: contraction with respect to such a metric implies intrinsic contraction on forward-invariant compact subsets, the two notions related through explicit local equivalence constants. Building on this, a Nagumo-type invariance result is established for
Laplacian-coupled holomorphic networks, giving verifiable conditions for forward invariance in a class of systems not previously treated this way, and the framework extends to feedback-controlled holomorphic systems, with consequences for
equilibria and periodic orbits following directly from intrinsic contraction. Numerical experiments on a network of coupled holomorphic oscillators verify the Hermitian condition analytically on a proven invariant set, and reveal that the observed synchronization rate substantially exceeds this guaranteed rate; the gap matches, to three decimal places, a closed-form combination of the node-wise rate and the network graph-
Laplacian spectral gap, identified here as a target for a network-aware extension rather than resolved in full.
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Image and Video Processing · Cross-listed from cs.CV
MBO Scheme for Local Chan–Vese Segmentation
Kevin Bui and Adina Ciomaga
Robust to intensity inhomogeneity, the local Chan–Vese (LCV) model extends the classical Chan–Vese (CV) image
segmentation method by incorporating local statistical information around each pixel. Originally, the LCV model was solved using a finite difference scheme, following the approach used for the CV model. As an alternative to the finite difference scheme, a more efficient
algorithm based on the Merriman-Bence-Osher (MBO) scheme was later developed for the CV model. In this paper, we derive a similar MBO-based
algorithm to solve the LCV model and propose an efficient implementation. The
algorithm is developed for both two-phase and multiphase
segmentation, and an extension to color images is also discussed. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, we apply it to a variety of grayscale and color images, including medical and microscopy images.
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Systems and Control
Critical Inertia Estimation for the Three U.S. Interconnections
Jiaojiao Dong, Sneha Fariha, Rocio Uria Martinez et al. (+2 more)
The rapid integration of inverter-based resources (IBRs) is reducing system inertia across U.S. power grids, raising concerns about frequency stability following large contingencies. This paper presents a simulation-based assessment of critical inertia, defined as the minimum system inertia required to prevent first-stage under-frequency load shedding (UFLS) after the largest credible contingency, across the three major U.S. interconnections: Eastern Interconnection (EI), WECC, and ERCOT. Reduced-inertia scenarios are created by progressively replacing synchronous generators with IBRs, and dynamic simulations are performed using full-scale PSS/E and PowerWorld models. The results show that ERCOT reaches critical inertia at approximately 58 percent IBR penetration, compared with above 90 percent for WECC and approximately 67 to 68 percent for EI. Current IBR shares in the U.S. portions of EI, WECC, and ERCOT are 16 percent, 33 percent, and 44 percent, respectively, indicating varying proximity to critical inertia thresholds. These findings highlight the importance of full dynamic simulations to accurately estimate critical inertia and guide transmission planning under high renewable penetration scenarios.
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All authors Jiaojiao Dong, Sneha Fariha, Rocio Uria Martinez, Wen Wang, Yilu Liu
Audio and Speech Processing · Cross-listed from cs.SD
DRONEAUDIONET: Noise Suppression for Drone Audition-based Search and Rescue
Chitralekha Gupta, Soundarya Ramesh, Yifei Luo et al. (+1 more)
Microphones mounted on
UAVs enable aerial acoustic scene analysis applications such as search-and-rescue, wildlife monitoring, and industrial inspection. However, drone rotor noise often dominates the mixture signal at SNRs well below -10 dB, making source recovery extremely challenging. Existing enhancement and source separation methods are typically designed for near-balanced mixtures and degrade substantially in drone audition settings. In this work, we propose DRONEAUDIONET, a drone noise suppression method that reframes a source separation model as a drone noise
estimator. To better model drone-dominant mixtures, we introduce a learnable mask-scaling mechanism that allows mask magnitudes beyond unity, together with an additive residual correction term for improved drone estimation and source recovery. We train and evaluate our model on a publicly available drone audition
dataset and test generalizability on an out-of-domain
dataset with unseen drone hardware and flight modes. Results show that DRONEAUDIONET consistently improves downstream sound classification performance, with the largest gains observed for human vocal sounds. Our findings demonstrate the importance of drone-specific modeling for robust aerial acoustic perception and highlight the potential of source separation methods for real-world drone-assisted search-and-rescue.
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All authors Chitralekha Gupta, Soundarya Ramesh, Yifei Luo, Suranga Nanayakkara
Audio and Speech Processing
REIMU: Efficient Heterogeneous Hierarchical Reasoning for SSL-Based Speech Deepfake Detection
Kwok-Ho Ng, Tingting Song, Bingwen Feng et al. (+1 more)
The increasing realism of
speech generated by text-to-
speech and voice conversion systems poses growing challenges to media integrity and voice authentication. Self-supervised learning (SSL) has substantially advanced
speech deepfake detection, where downstream backbones conventionally process SSL representations through a single forward pass. This work investigates the practical effectiveness of recurrent hierarchical
reasoning for this task. We term this controlled study REIMU and systematically compare conventional single-pass backbones, weight-shared recurrence, homogeneous HRM, and heterogeneous HRM across four Base-scale SSL frontends. We further examine heterogeneous high- and low-level modules that combine self-
attention with linear
attention. Experiments on the ASVspoof 2019 and 2021 evaluation sets show that recurrence and hierarchical decomposition do not inherently improve detection, whereas heterogeneous operator assignment provides a more competitive configuration. Notably, the heterogeneous design remains competitive while using 10.8% fewer downstream parameters than the matched baseline, demonstrating its potential for parameter-efficient
speech deepfake detection.
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All authors Kwok-Ho Ng, Tingting Song, Bingwen Feng, Peiya Li
Systems and Control · Cross-listed from physics.class-ph
Conserved Quantities of Optimal Continuous-Thrust Trajectories in A Central Gravitational Field
Aimar Negrete and Ossama Abdelkhalik
This paper presents a mathematical derivation for three new conserved quantities in the motion of spacecraft on optimal continuous-thrust trajectories in a central gravitational field. The process presented in this paper is rooted in Noether's
theorem that connects the point
symmetries of a dynamic system with the associated conservation laws of the system. In the approach presented in this paper, the system's Lagrangian is modified to account for the non-conservative control force. Using this generalized Lagrangian, the action functional to be minimized is written. Then, Killing equations are formulated to find the dynamic
symmetries for this system. In this paper a process is laid out for how to solve the Killing equations; Noether's
theorem is applied to this solution of the Killing equations to write the conserved quantities of the system. Conserved quantities are presented for both the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional trajectories in several different coordinate frames. Numerical simulations and mathematical proofs are used to demonstrate that the computed quantities are conserved.
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Signal Processing
Experimental Verification on LoS-MIMO Transmission in 300-GHz Band
Kazuhiko Tamesue, Seiji Nishi, Kunihisa Jitsuno et al. (+3 more)
In this study, we conducted Line-of-Sight (LoS) 2x2 multiple-input multiple-output (
MIMO) orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing (OFDM) transmission experiments in the 300-GHz band to investigate the potential for channel capacity enhancement. A circularly polarized patch
antenna, supporting both crossand co-polarization, and a 2x2
MIMO transceiver equipped with a Pre-Correction scheme were developed. Experimental evaluation was carried out under conditions of a stream spacing of 0.3 m and a transmission distance of 1.9 m. As a result, in both coand cross-polarized
antenna configurations, the off-diagonal components were suppressed below -20 dB, and 2-stream transmission with 16-QAM modulation achieved a throughput of 13.1 Gbit/s and a spectral efficiency of 6.55 bit/s/Hz. Furthermore, future research directions toward advanced spatial multiplexing based on channel correlation analysis are discussed. These results demonstrate the feasibility of highcapacity fixed wireless links and provide practical design insights for long-distance transmission.
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All authors Kazuhiko Tamesue, Seiji Nishi, Kunihisa Jitsuno, Toshio Sato, Takuro Sato, Tetsuya Kawanishi
Signal Processing
An Uncertainty-Driven Hybrid Deep Learning Approach for Broad-Coverage RF Modulation Recognition
Nurettin Safak, Durdu Can Yerdeyatar, Muhammet Sefa Demirel et al. (+3 more)
Automatic RF modulation recognition is of critical importance in spectrum monitoring, electronic warfare, and cognitive
radio applications, where low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions and the growing diversity of modulation schemes limit the performance of existing methods. This paper proposes an uncertainty-driven hybrid deep learning architecture for recognizing RF signals over a broad modulation space. The proposed approach carries out a multi-stage classification process by combining spectral information obtained through low-cost FFT-based preprocessing with time-frequency features extracted from short-time
Fourier transform (STFT) spectrograms. The architecture comprises a 2D convolutional neural network (2D CNN)-based path for fast, low-latency primary classification, MC Dropout-supported
Bayesian uncertainty estimation for assessing classification reliability, and a BiLSTM-based secondary decision mechanism activated under high-uncertainty conditions. The proposed system is evaluated in a controlled simulation environment spanning different SNR levels and modulation classes. Experimental results show that the primary 2D CNN path achieves $83.3\pm0.7\%$ accuracy with an inference time of only 0.138 ms per sample, providing superior performance compared with traditional rule-based and classical machine-learning approaches. Furthermore, the obtained findings reveal the limitations of compact spectral feature representations and classifiers lacking temporal modeling, particularly in disambiguating FSK-based modulations. The uncertainty estimation module offers promising results for detecting low-confidence decisions, and the proposed approach demonstrates the potential of a low-latency and scalable solution for real-time RF modulation recognition.
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All authors Nurettin Safak, Durdu Can Yerdeyatar, Muhammet Sefa Demirel, Alperen Marasli, Taha Eren Atmaca, Ozgun Ersoy
Systems and Control
Impedance Control via Generalized Output Regulation
Hélio Jacinto Cruz Neto, Victor Shime and Thiago Boaventura
Achieving a desired impedance during physical interaction remains a central problem in compliant control. In many practical implementations, admittance control combined with linear position controllers is employed, but this structure typically results in only approximate impedance behavior. This paper establishes a rigorous equivalence between the impedance realization problem and the generalized output regulation theory, and shows that, under the admittance architecture and assuming the inner position controller is restricted to linear combinations of commonly used signals, a unique control law exists that achieves exact compliant control. The resulting controller introduces additional terms with respect to a conventional PD formulation, while preserving a simple structure. Numerical simulations are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach under nominal conditions and in the presence of model uncertainties, and to compare its performance against a standard PD controller. The results demonstrate improved interaction performance and robustness, supporting the theoretical analysis.
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Signal Processing
Symbiotic FAS Strategies for 6G UAVs Assisted Backscatter Networks
Nagla Abuzgaia, Abdelhamid Salem, Ahmed Elbarsha et al. (+1 more)
This paper investigates a fluid
antenna system (FAS) enabled symbiotic
radio (SR) network featuring a
UAV mounted FAS communicating through a wireless power transfer (WPT) signal with a remote cluster head and an ambient tag. To evaluate system reliability, we derive the upper (UB) and lower (LB) bounds for both the composite and backscatter (BcS) outage probabilities, formulate the coexistence outage probability (COP), and present an asymptotic analysis that explicitly characterizes the system's spatial diversity and coding gains. We propose three novel symbiotic strategies; maximum backscatter selection (MBS), joint balanced selection (JBS) and threshold aware priority selection (TAPS) and compare them with the conventional maximum composite gain selection (MCGS) and random selection methods. Under a joint optimization framework, the macroscopic
UAV 2D spatial placement and microscopic realization - level port selection were formulated. Since the joint outage Pareto frontier is highly non-convex, the computationally expensive epsilon-constraint method identified the optimal knee-point. While the symbiotic novel TAPS strategy demonstrated identical performance in a single step with linear O(MN) complexity. Moreover, an asymptotic closed form mobility analysis under Jakes' fading model proves that the symbiotic FAS tracking protocol consumes under 10% of the channel coherence time. Simulation results and COP heat maps validate the optimal coexistence performance at the ideal
UAV coordinates with 60% reduction in the required transmit power.
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All authors Nagla Abuzgaia, Abdelhamid Salem, Ahmed Elbarsha, Khaled Rabie
Audio and Speech Processing
Experience-Calibrated Contrastive Decoding for Mitigating Hallucinations in LM-Based Text-to-Speech
Chenlin Liu, Minghui Fang, Zhonghao Bi et al. (+3 more)
Language model-based text-to-
speech (LM-based TTS) remains vulnerable to
speech hallucinations that deviate from the target text. Existing mitigation mainly relies on architectural changes or additional training, while decoding-time control remains underexplored. We present a conditional information view that distinguishes text-derived
alignment information from experience information supplied by acoustic context and learned
speech regularities. We hypothesize that an important class of
hallucinations begins when
alignment support is insufficiently reflected in the selected
token at a vulnerable transition. Using predictions from the same
speech LM with and without text conditions, we propose Experience-Calibrated Contrastive Decoding (ECCD), a training-free method that strengthens
alignment support while preserving useful experience information. ECCD preserves the original expert distribution, applies only positive
alignment enhancement, and calibrates its strength using set-level experience compatibility. Across four models, ECCD reduces WER/CER by up to 55.6% in all SeedTTS-Eval settings and 24 of 25
multilingual CV3-Eval settings. A listening test yields a CMOS gain of $+0.644$ while retaining strong speaker similarity. Further analysis shows that
alignment influence and decision-level gain vary within linguistic units and are lower at first-error boundaries than at matched correct boundaries. Overall, these extensive experiments and analyses identify conditional information control as a promising decoding-time direction for mitigating
speech hallucination.
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All authors Chenlin Liu, Minghui Fang, Zhonghao Bi, Zekai Su, Rong Wang, Jiqing Han
Audio and Speech Processing
Band-Count Dense Modal Estimation with Fixed-Frequency Differentiable Resonator Refinement
Minhui Lu and Joshua D. Reiss
Task B of the 1st DAFx Parameter Estimation Challenge requires estimating the frequencies, decay rates, gains, and number of modes in a dense plate-reverb impulse response. Weak and overlapping modes make sparse peak detection prone to severe undercounting. We train an ExtraTrees regressor on simulator-generated data to predict mode counts in four frequency bands. These counts define dense frequency grids, after which a differentiable all-pole resonator model refines decay and gain while keeping frequency fixed. On two separate synthetic validation sets, the system reduces a local challenge-style error by about 66% relative to the official default peak-picking baseline. The improvement is mainly associated with lower mode-count mismatch, while decay and gain remain the largest error sources. These findings support separating modal-density estimation from continuous parameter fitting.
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Audio and Speech Processing
Simulation-Based Plate-Reverb Parameter Estimation from a Single Impulse Response
Minhui Lu and Joshua D. Reiss
We present a simulation-trained, non-iterative
estimator for Task A of the 1st DAFx Parameter Estimation Challenge. Each unnormalized plate-reverb impulse response is summarized by amplitude, spectral, and decay descriptors, and an ensemble of tree regressors estimates the six target parameters in one pass. Across two independent synthetic validation sets, the normalized models outperform the training-set mean and an earlier raw-regression baseline. On a shared set, the final ensemble also outperforms a single run of the official default PSO at substantially lower inference cost. Since the official labels are hidden, parameter accuracy is measured on simulator-matched data, and the released responses support only audio-side consistency checks. The
estimator returns point estimates without uncertainty.
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Signal Processing
A Machine Learning-based Non-precipitating Clouds Estimation for THz Dual-Frequency Radar
Kazuhiko Tamesue, Zheng Wen, Shotaro Yamaguchi et al. (+6 more)
Accurate measurement of non-precipitable clouds is important for early prediction of heavy rainfall disasters caused by extreme weather events. However, microwave cloud radar cannot observe the early stages of cloud development from non-precipitation clouds (cumulus) to cumulonimbus. In this paper, we propose a terahertz dual-frequency cloud radar using 150 GHz and 95 GHz bands to detect cloud particles in cumulus smaller than 10 {\mu}m. Using a
dataset generated by the ITU-R
radio propagation model, we estimate the
liquid water content of non-precipitation clouds and water vapor content in atmospheric gases, respectively, by using a machine learning-based approach. The effectiveness of using the dual wavelength ratio as an explanatory variable is examined.
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All authors Kazuhiko Tamesue, Zheng Wen, Shotaro Yamaguchi, Hiroyuki Kasai, Wataru Kameyama, Toshio Sato, Yutaka Katsuyama, Takuro Sato, Takeshi Maesaka
Signal Processing
Precoded Non-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing with Subcarrier Index Modulation
Prakash Chaki, Takumi Ishihara and Shinya Sugiura
In this paper, we propose a novel precoded non-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (NOFDM) with subcarrier index modulation (SIM) to increase spectral efficiency for multicarrier systems. The proposed NOFDM-SIM scheme is constituted by a filterbank multicarrier system under reduced subcarrier spacing, where precoded index modulated symbols are mapped onto the subcarriers. The detrimental effects of inter-carrier interference (ICI) resulting from the non-orthogonality between subcarriers are efficiently mitigated with the aid of
eigenvalue-decomposition-based precoding. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed precoded NOFDM-SIM system exhibits a similar peak-to-average power ratio to OFDM and OFDM-SIM counterparts while achieving the bit error ratio limit of zero-ICI OFDM.
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Signal Processing
Spatially Reconfigurable Antenna Systems for 6G: EM-based Channel Modeling, Measurements, and Orientation Design
Chen Xu, Yizhu Yan, Gengbo Wu et al. (+2 more)
Spatially reconfigurable
antenna systems (SRASs) are recognized as a key physical-layer technology for sixth-generation (6G) systems. By dynamically adjusting each
antenna element's spatial configuration, e.g., position and orientation, SRASs can revamp favorable channel conditions for reliable high-rate data transmission. However, in widely adopted channel models,
antennas are typically modeled as ideal isotropic radiators, and the vectorial nature of electromagnetic (EM) propagation is neglected. This oversimplified model precludes full exploitation of the degrees of freedom offered by SRASs for performance enhancement. To address this issue, in this paper, by leveraging the theoretical framework of spherical vector wave expansion, we develop an EM-based channel model tailored for SRAS-enabled multiple-input multiple-output (
MIMO) systems. The proposed EM-based channel model is applicable to
antennas with arbitrary structures and intrinsically accounts for the vectorial nature of EM propagation, thereby enabling accurate characterization of EM effects such as polarization mismatch on channel gain. Full-wave simulations and experimental measurements are conducted, and the results show excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. Simulation results also reveal that
antenna orientation exerts a more pronounced influence on the achievable rate than
antenna displacement. Therefore, building upon the derived channel model, a
manifold optimization method is proposed to maximize the sum-rate of an SRAS-enabled multiuser-
MIMO system by optimizing
antenna orientations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme improves the sum-rate by up to 16.6% and 19.3% compared to systems employing movable
antennas and conventional fixed
antennas, respectively.
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All authors Chen Xu, Yizhu Yan, Gengbo Wu, Shu Sun, Xianghao Yu
Systems and Control · Cross-listed from cs.RO
Grasp Execution Without a Planner: Configuration-Space Grasp Distance Fields with Certified Safety & Guaranteed Quality
Clinton Enwerem, John S. Baras and Calin Belta
Mainstream plan-then-track approaches to multifingered grasp execution entail selecting a grasp, planning a collision-free trajectory, and tracking the resulting trajectory via a feedback controller. Pose-estimation error during execution or scene motion can invalidate this open-loop commitment and trigger replanning. We thus present Grasp Distance Fields (GDFs), smooth softmin distances to finite sets of arm-hand grasp configurations. Using their negative gradients as feedback, we jointly select and execute grasps without planning a trajectory. A CBF-CLF quadratic program (QP) enforces self-collision, workspace, object, and obstacle-clearance constraints, while its CLF slack quantifies obstruction of task progress. We bound the softmin approximation error by $\log N/\rho$ and prove forward invariance of the filtered safe set. To handle changes in contact
topology, we combine a hysteretic contact-mode transition with a wrench-quality CBF that limits degradation of the realized force-closure margin relative to hold onset. Using our method, a fixed-base manipulator and a Unitree G1 equipped with the same underactuated hand grasp and lift 46 of 50 test objects amid clutter and moving obstacles. The realized grasps also retain a median 94% of their synthesized quality margin, and each QP solve requires 0.09 ms within a 20 ms control interval. Project page: www.clintonenwerem.com/gdf.
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