Papers

This paper aims to contextualize the requirements for Quantum Computing (QC) algorithms to achieve a quantum advantage in solving the alternating current power flow (ACPF) problem, with a focus on runtime complexity. First, we establish a benchmark for a QC iterative solver to demonstrate an advantage over the classical Newton-Raphson Load Flow (NRLF) algorithm. Next, we derive a baseline expression for the end-to-end runtime complexity of any Gate-based QC algorithm as $\Omega(N \kappa/\varepsilon),$ reflecting dependence on system size $N$, condition number $\kappa$, and error tolerance $\varepsilon$. Finally, we highlight key areas where QC algorithms may offer potential benefits over NRLF in addressing the standard ACPF problem.

In this paper, we introduce the approximate strong upper alternating simulation (ASUAS), a new behavioral relation for transition systems. Building on this relation, we construct upper- and lower-sparse abstractions for monotone systems that together form a complete abstraction pair: any controller synthesized for the upper-sparse abstraction can be refined into a controller for the original system, and the absence of a controller for the lower-sparse abstraction implies the absence of a controller for the original system. A key feature of our approach is the ability to provably tune the conservativeness gap between the two abstractions by tuning the space-discretization parameter. We further extend these results, beyond the model-based setting, to data-driven systems, where the abstraction is constructed directly from finite sampled data, without requiring an explicit system model. The theoretical results are illustrated through simulations.

This paper proposes a novel ultra-low profile transmitted metasurface to generate enhanced non-diffractive orbital angular momentum (OAM) beams, employing a sparse feed array (SFA) to create a quasi-plane wave excitation for the first time. Our simulation indicates that with uniform amplitude excitation, the non-diffraction performance of Bessel beam produced by metasurface, surpasses that of conventional single-feed excitation. Based on this principle, a 5 * 5 sparse feed array is introduced and positioned less than one wavelength from the metasurface, ensuring a quasi-uniform amplitude excitation across all units. Further, this metasurface leverages its flexible phase control capability and integrates the spatial phase, OAM phase, and axicon phase to generate an enhanced high-order Bessel beam. The simulated results confirm a successful non-diffractive Bessel beam generation carrying OAM with mode l = +2, exhibiting reduced beam divergence and higher gain. This design also offers benefits of ultra-low profile, high aperture efficiency, low structural complexity.

The rapid growth of AI-driven data centers is introducing load behaviors that are not explicitly represented in conventional composite load models. This paper presents DC-CLM, a workload-aware extension of the WECC composite load model that incorporates UPS-supported IT demand, mixed motor/VFD cooling loads, auxiliary demand, and training, inference, and idle workload profiles. A rule-based supervisory state machine represents grid, battery, and diesel operating states and captures temporary IT-load isolation and workload-dependent restoration following voltage recovery. The model is implemented in MATLAB/Simulink using positive-sequence phasor-domain simulation and evaluated under fault-induced delayed voltage recovery (FIDVR) conditions. For a study system with a 100~MW conventional composite load and a 200~MW data-center load, the long-duration voltage recovery is governed mainly by conventional stalled-motor thermal dynamics, while the first 100~ms after fault clearance is strongly workload-dependent. Training and inference produce approximately 50–52~mpu voltage variation and 751–755~MW active-power variation, compared with approximately 36~mpu and 654~MW for idle operation. The results demonstrate the value of incorporating data-center-specific load dynamics into transmission-level stability studies while highlighting the need for future measurement-based validation and more detailed converter-level modeling.

Recent audio-language models are increasingly evaluated on recognizing, describing, and reasoning about audio, but expert-facing applications require a different capability: producing feedback that identifies problems and suggests corrective actions grounded in the input. We introduce VocalCoachBench, a benchmark for evaluating audio-language models on expert vocal coaching feedback for singing. VocalCoachBench contains 515 recordings annotated by 18 professional vocal trainers, yielding 1,056 expert submissions and 12,051 atomic coaching claims. It comprises a same-song subset for controlled comparison and a diverse-song subset for segment-grounded feedback across varied songs and recording conditions. To accommodate the open-ended nature of expert feedback, VocalCoachBench sep- arates deterministic structured targets from claim-based assessment of free-form diagnosis and corrective guidance. Human annotation analysis shows that expert agreement varies strongly with label granularity, motivating hierarchical structured metrics and claim-based evaluation of open-ended feedback. Experiments with 12 recent audio-language models reveal a consistent gap: while models can compare performances and identify broad issue domains in free-form feedback, Top-3 fine-grained issue-label identification remains below label-prior baselines and strict diagnosis alignment stays below 7%. To our knowledge, VocalCoachBench pro- vides the first public testbed for evaluating audio-grounded expert feedback for singing, moving audio-language evaluation beyond description toward analytic feedback.

The precise locating of trapped victims is arguably the most challenging issue in SAR operations, particularly when infrastructure is destroyed and SAR teams only have low-power beacon signals from smartphones to search with. This paper presents a framework for centralized and cooperative UAV-based localization with deep learning-based channel classification and 3D environment-adaptive target estimation. A CNN-LSTM classifier is employed based on a dataset generated at 867.5 MHz with NYUSIM. This classifier labels the individual links of a UAV to a target. Then, these labels activate specific localization solvers: a first-order Taylor-expanded WLS method for LOS settings, an LSRE-SOCP method with iterative refinement for NLOS, and a hybrid projection-based scheme for mixed environments. Through exhaustive simulations, this paper shows that the proposed framework significantly reduces runtime and yields high localization accuracy even when the transmit power and path-loss conditions are unknown. The method can be used in diverse propagation scenarios, making it easy to deploy in reality. The whole NYUSIM-generated dataset is made publicly available to support future research on disaster-aware wireless localization.

There has been a tremendous amount of image processing and machine learning research to measure and classify disease progression from live optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging of the retina. The images considered here are large, complex, three-dimensional (3-D) and difficult to visualize effectively. Many current supervised machine learning approaches, e.g. neural networks, are non-metric meaning that any features or measurements generated can introduce systematic distortion that may be correlated with underlying non-meaningful physiological differences. Here we present a metric learning approach using the normalized compression distance (NCD) combined with anisotropic structure-enhancing filters to quantify and visualize the principal differences among a collection of 3-D retinal images. We validate the NCD-measured structural differences between pairs of images against the physician-measured change in visual field function, achieving a prediction error of $\sim$ 0.5 dB, more accurate than non-metric deep learning approaches. The normalized compression vectors (NCV) are proposed as a feature set measuring visual differences among a collection of 3-D microscopy images. The utility of the NCV for visualizing and measuring patterns of change is demonstrated for a human with moderate non-progressing glaucoma and for a non-human primate model using intraocular pressure setting manipulation. We conclude with a brief simulation of non-metric embedding features, e.g. from neural networks, introducing class-correlated statistical distortion.

Despite advances in 3D ultrasound, most percutaneous cardiac interventions still rely on 2D visualization, limiting depth perception and spatial understanding. To address this challenge, we developed an Extended Reality (XR)-based platform that enables real-time six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) catheter tracking and visualization within a patient-specific 3D heart model. The system combines a custom machine-vision algorithm for 5-DOF catheter tracking with a 3D-printed electromechanical encoder that measures catheter roll, providing complete 6-DOF motion reconstruction. In a proof-of-concept study, 20 novice medical students navigated an intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) catheter to six anatomical targets using either immersive 3D visualization or a conventional 2D cathlab-style view. Participants in the 3D condition completed the task in 54.6 seconds and traveled 1,939 mm on average, compared with 267.5 seconds and 7,854 mm in the 2D condition. Therefore, the XR-based 3D system was more than 5x faster and required ~5x less catheter travel. The 3D mode also improved targeting precision and reduced performance variability. Participants consistently rated immersive visualization higher for accuracy, speed, usability, and clinical value. Kinematic analysis showed smoother depth-axis navigation in 3D, whereas 2D users relied on repeated corrective movements. These findings demonstrate that XR-based visualization can substantially improve procedural training efficiency, precision, and motor control.

Humans achieve stable and adaptive grasps by seamlessly integrating visual perception and tactile feedback, a capability that remains challenging to replicate in robotic systems. Existing robotic grasping approaches predominantly rely on visual inputs and lack mechanisms for tactile-guided adaptation after contact, limiting robustness and generalization. To address this challenge, we propose a unified visuo-tactile-fusion grasping framework that integrates grasp generation, feasibility prediction, and adaptive refinement. At its core, our method introduces an efficient visuo-tactile representation that tightly fuses object geometry with tactile feedback by associating tactile signals with finger identities. This unified representation supports contact-aware grasp pose generation during planning and tactile-guided refinement after contact, enabling the system to reason about fine-grained finger-object interactions and adjust grasps dynamically. Comprehensive experiments in both simulation and real-world environments demonstrate that our approach significantly enhances grasp success rates and generalization across diverse objects.

We introduce the Theory of Certified Information Persistence Systems (CIPS), a universal mathematical framework for computing the maximal certified persistence of information in cyber-physical systems (CPS). CIPS provides an axiomatic foundation that separates the continuous evolution of state validity from discrete, memoryless control interventions. By accommodating digital sampling and execution latency through robust set contraction, the framework mathematically isolates a system's maximal certified persistence horizon — a strict theoretical upper bound on safe autonomous operation relative to the system's defined metric growth bounds. Our central representation theorem proves that CIPS provides a universal representation framework: every empirically safe scheduling policy, is structurally isomorphic to a conservative surrogate evaluation within a canonical CIPS. By dynamically targeting this latency-compensated canonical horizon, the framework minimizes conservatism relative to the bounding assumptions, achieving an optimal certified scheduling policy, minimizing computational and network interventions while mathematically guaranteeing continuous physical safety.

Deep learning (DL) classifiers trained on I/Q samples achieve high accuracy for IEEE 802.11 protocol identification of overlapping signals, but their performance degrades sharply when channel conditions at deployment differ from those encountered during training. We present WhiteNet, a framework that addresses the problem of channel variability in I/Q samples. The central idea is spectral whitening, a physics-grounded preprocessing step that suppresses frequency-selective fading while preserving protocol-discriminative features. To reduce dependence on costly multi-transmitter over-the-air captures for training, we complement it with a synthetic overlap mixer featuring a physically accurate per-transmitter channel and shared-receiver signal chain for pre-training without extensive field data collection. On public over-the-air IEEE 802.11 data, WhiteNet closes a substantial portion of the accuracy gap caused by unseen channel conditions while using 7.7 times fewer parameters than the prior state of the art, and optionally distills to compact variants for coarse spectrum awareness on power-constrained edge devices.

Speckle fundamentally limits coherent imaging by introducing multiplicative, spatially correlated noise that obscures scene structure. Removing speckle noise from dynamic scenes–that do not benefit from conventional speckle averaging–is particularly challenging. We introduce a training-free framework that combines a spatiotemporal implicit neural representation with an aperture-aware maximum-likelihood formulation to recover dynamic, speckle-free imagery directly from noisy observations. The coherent likelihood explicitly models the aperture-dependent spatial covariance of speckle, enabling adaptation to arbitrary pupil geometries without retraining. A matrix-free implementation based on FFT-accelerated operators, stochastic approximations, and conjugate gradients makes optimization practical for realistic image sizes. Meanwhile, a blind holdout criterion provides automatic early stopping without clean reference data. Simulated and laboratory results demonstrate improved spatial fidelity, temporal consistency, and robustness to varying speckle statistics relative to classical, unsupervised, and supervised baselines.

Motivated by the rapid growth of data centers, we develop a model to evaluate bringyour-own-capacity (BYOC) mandates and flexibility accreditation in capacity markets for new large loads with shared supply-chain constraints. With efficient pricing, BYOC mainly reallocates procurement between grid-built and self-built capacity and therefore has little welfare effect, while flexibility delivers a modest gain by reducing the effective capacity requirement. Under administrative price caps, mandates can improve static welfare by forcing data centers to internalize the full cost of capacity. The welfare ranking of the two instruments depends on supply-chain stress. At low or moderate stress, only the flexibility instrument raises welfare. Under severe stress with capped prices, the welfare gain from the BYOC obligation can exceed the gross flexibility benefit. The two instruments differ in their effects on a neighboring market: a unilateral BYOC mandate can crowd out its capacity investment, while flexibility produces essentially no spillover at our calibrated benchmark. Finally, applying current capacity non-performance penalties to flexible loads may lead to financial incentives that are too weak to induce truthful flexibility reporting.

Data center power systems are increasingly exposed to weak-grid conditions due to the rapid growth of converter-dominated networks and highly dynamic artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. In centralized uninterruptible power supply (UPS) architectures, the front-end rectifier continuously processes the incoming facility power, making its dynamic performance critical for ensuring stable operation and reliable power delivery to information technology (IT) equipment. Under weak-grid conditions, conventional phase-locked loop (PLL)-based proportional-integral (PI) rectifier controllers may exhibit instability due to strong interactions between converter control dynamics and grid impedance. This paper investigates the stability of centralized UPS data center systems operating under weak-grid conditions using a detailed switching-level model developed in MATLAB/Simulink and validated in real time using an OPAL-RT platform. To enhance weak-grid stability and improve converter-grid interaction, a voltage-modulated direct power control (VM-DPC) strategy with adaptive reactive power support is applied to the front-end rectifier. The proposed approach directly regulates active and reactive power without PLL synchronization while dynamically supporting the point of common coupling (PCC) voltage during rapid IT load variations. Results demonstrate that conventional PI-based rectifier control becomes unstable under SCR<=2 conditions, leading to dc-link oscillations and degradation of downstream power delivery. In contrast, the proposed VM-DPC strategy restores stable operation, improves system damping, and maintains reliable power transfer to highly dynamic IT loads under weak-grid operation.

Increasing penetration of inverter-based resources in today's power systems requires substitution of the contribution from synchronous generators to dynamic voltage stability and inertial response. However, established approaches for power system planning are sequential, as stabilising measures are only considered at a later stage of the planning process. We investigate the advantages of an integrated approach for power system planning, where stabilising measures are considered simultaneously with the expansion of generation, transmission, and storage systems via simplified stability constraints on inertia and voltage stability. We find that system costs are reduced with the integrated approach and that the dual-use option of grid-forming battery energy storage systems is favoured over other stabilising measures like static synchronous compensators.

High shares of distributed energy resources (DERs) transform distribution systems into active participants in integrated transmission and distribution (ITD) operations. Linear models enable scalable distribution-level flexibility aggregation but can misclassify AC feasible operating points, whereas direct nonlinear aggregation becomes costly, especially in multiperiod ITD coordination. This paper reformulates transmission-distribution coordination within a hierarchical optimization framework and introduces a non-iterative predictor-corrector aggregation method. By leveraging path-following techniques from real-time optimal control, the approach achieves tractable computation with guaranteed error bounds. Across 24 radial distribution-network cases and seven meshed variants, including the real KIT Campus North grid, the proposed method yields substantially lower sampled false- and lost-flexibility rates than linear surrogates and a convex relaxation. On two 24-period ITD testcases, the formulation reduces end-to-end wall-clock time by factors of 6 relative to the corresponding centralized formulation, primarily through dimensionality reduction.

This paper assesses the accuracy of the "added length method" (also known as port extension or channel offset) for de-embedding coaxial-to-waveguide transitions in the X-band, comparing it to full waveguide calibration on both Keysight and Rohde & Schwarz VNAs. The study examines the trade-offs between cost and measurement accuracy, highlighting the feasibility of using these mathematical correction techniques in the absence of dedicated waveguide calibration kits or full S-parameter characterizations of the transitions. The analysis concluded that when using coaxial-to-waveguide transitions the added length method produces accurate results for transmission measurements only.

Oral health issues affect billions of people globally, but the cost and limited access to professional dental care hinder preventive oral healthcare. Research relies on clinical-grade sensors, unavailable for public self-screening. This study introduces a tooth localisation and numbering model for smartphone photographs. We developed a customised Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Network pipeline trained on 1,272 annotated smartphone images. To address variability in patient-generated health data, the pipeline incorporates two domain-informed mechanisms: a masked gray-world white-balancing algorithm to mitigate artificial colour casts and an anatomically constrained detection layer to enforce structural validity and suppress false positives. The system was evaluated using internal and external testing, descriptive ablation study and training stability analysis. On the internal test set, the model achieved an instance-mask AP50 of 0.818, class-aware PQ of 0.780, and operational F1 of 0.884. On the external dataset, the model achieved an instance-mask AP50 of 0.901, class-aware PQ of 0.832, and operational F1 of 0.928 despite differences in population, sensors, and acquisition protocols. The inference pipeline is available as an open-source, containerised API. These results demonstrate that consumer-grade smartphone imagery can support automated tooth-level anatomical mapping, offering a scalable, potentially low-cost foundation for remote screening and tele-dentistry in resource-constrained environments.

The development of deep learning over the past decade has revolutionized medical imaging segmentation, allowing the extraction of precise descriptors from large volumes to characterize pathologies. Data augmentation is a technique widely regarded as a way to improve model training. It includes simple transformations like spatial operations or intensity modifications, but also more advanced synthesis techniques. Their goal is to generate new realistic samples from an existing dataset to diversify the images used during training. Among them, several propose different mixing strategies to combine real samples. However, one of their major shortcomings is to yield limited variability in terms of generated lesion shapes and locations. In this work, we introduce a novel image synthesis method, called OTLesMix, that leverages Wasserstein barycenter and optimal transport plan to generate realistic and diverse samples. We evaluated our method on three brain lesion segmentation tasks, on which it improves the Dice score compared to a model trained without synthetic data by 2.9 to 6.6 points, and outperforms state-of-the-art mix-based methods.

This work addresses joint access point (AP) selection and precoding for sum-rate maximization under statistical channel state information (CSI) in multi-AP multi-user systems. To this end, we propose two approaches. The first method is an iterative alternating optimization algorithm that updates the precoding vectors via the stochastic WMMSE (SWMMSE) algorithm and the assignment variables via a projected gradient descent step. The second method is a graph neural network (GNN)-based framework that solves the same problem in a single forward pass during inference. Building on an attention-based Edge-GNN architecture, we extend it to a multi-AP scenario, enabling the joint learning of assignment variables and precoding vectors from statistical CSI alone. Results show that the GNN outperforms the iterative algorithm across the tested signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) range and generalizes to varying numbers of users with comparable performance. Both approaches are also compared to various baseline techniques.

We propose a neural cyclic redundancy check (CRC) predictor for the 5G New Radio (5G NR) physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) that enables early link-adaptation decisions for Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC). The predictor combines a lightweight convolutional neural network (CNN) with a fixed front-end that extracts multi-scale time-frequency energy features from the received signal and least-squares channel estimates. We investigate two complementary front-end realizations - a wavelet scattering front-end built from fixed Gabor filters, and an FFT-based scattering front-end that applies bandpass masks in the frequency domain with geometric scale spacing. Drawing on neural-receiver design principles, the predictor estimates the post-decoding CRC outcome directly from the received resource grid, bypassing the conventional equalization and decoding chain. We further introduce the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) index as an auxiliary conditioning input that adapts the decision boundary to the operating code rate. Experiments on a multi-MCS 5G NR PUSCH dataset show that the hybrid scattering predictors substantially outperform a pure CNN baseline, with MCS conditioning further improving reliability across varying channel conditions. Both front-ends are compatible with GPU-accelerated inference and are lightweight enough to be deployed within a real-time baseband pipeline. We further demonstrate an evidential deep learning extension that quantifies epistemic uncertainty in a single forward pass using a conservative decision rule.

Despite advances in artificial intelligence (AI) across multiple sectors, today's AI tools, including deep learning and generative AI, still fail when embedded into physical systems, such as robots and vehicles operating under real-world physical laws. This stems from their inability to maintain reliable world models for long-horizon planning under uncertainty and generalize to unseen scenarios. In this context, wireless networks, through pervasive sensing and communication, can orchestrate physical intelligence. However, current architectures optimize throughput, latency, and reliability and cannot support real-time physical AI coordination, requiring agents to maintain shared spatiotemporal context. To address these challenges, a network of holonic digital twins (HDT-Nets) framework is proposed to deliver real-time physical AI inference through holonic agents that actively reason about their environment rather than passively mirror physical assets. Each HDT is realized as a hierarchical structure spanning the physical agent and network edge, reasoning autonomously at the local level while cooperating with neighboring HDTs to form collectively intelligent units. In HDT-Net, causal Markov blankets spanning sensing, communication, and control determine which agents must coordinate and enable counterfactual reasoning over multi-domain interventions. Active inference within these boundaries unifies perception, action, and learning by minimizing expected free energy while deciding which beliefs to transmit based on their cognitive value to the receiver. Category theory ensures that transmitted beliefs preserve semantic structure across heterogeneous agents with incompatible representations. Finally, integrated information theory quantifies when collective intelligence exceeds independent operation and how network intelligence evolves through coordinated learning and information exchange.

In this work, we introduce and experimentally validate a numerical model for a Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output Distributed Acoustic Sensing (MIMO-DAS) system that accounts for dynamic perturbations of fiber birefringence and of the common optical phase of the backscattered signal (or polarization-averaged phase, shared by both polarization tributaries). The MIMO-DAS system probes the fiber using polarization-multiplexed constant-power coded sequences that are suited for coexistence of DAS with WDM data transmission over the same fiber. We study the effect of both axisymmetric and anisotropic events on the two quantities. We demonstrate, through numerical simulations and lab experiments, the estimation of effective birefringence magnitude in static conditions, and the joint estimation of common phase and effective birefringence magnitude in the case of dynamic longitudinal strain and anisotropic transverse strain. This allows for event discrimination and increased sensitivity to disturbances that act transversely on the fiber, since polarization will be responsive to perturbations that break cylindrical symmetry, while the phase will strongly respond to longitudinal strain.

The distribution system is becoming a fundamental part for enabling the energy transition. The fault causes may be several and of different nature, embracing a variety of specializations. This review aims at providing an integrated overview of moisture effects across underground Medium Voltage (MV) cable systems and their accessories. The study collects both literature contributions and practical experiences derived from distribution system operators and research projects on the topic. The findings highlight that the choice of the insulation material is fundamental for mitigating the various consequences of the moisture ingress, linked to chemical and physical processes, as well as mechanical, thermal, and electrical factors, all of which are analysed in detail in the paper. The paper examines the effects of moisture on different types of materials, both traditional and innovative, and discusses diagnostic techniques to detect moisture ingress from the surrounding environment as well as internally generated moisture. The path towards increasing MV distribution reliability, reducing outages, and support the energy transition with more robust distribution infrastructure, is hence achievable through improving moisture management across design, installation, monitoring, and maintenance.

Relational inductive biases are essential for capturing structural dependencies among data. This study investigates a dual-level relational framework for image classification, bridging the gap between implicit representation learning and explicit structural modelling. We begin by establishing a baseline using an EfficientNetB3 architecture. To move beyond standard convolutional biases, we adopt a patch-based strategy, employing a convolutional masked autoencoder to learn implicit inter-patch relationships through self-supervised reconstruction. We then extend this approach by incorporating explicit relational modelling, organizing the learned embeddings into various graph topologies, including grid-based, random, and k-nearest neighbour structures. Experimental results on the ISIC-2018 and ISIC-2019 skin lesion diagnosis benchmarks show that combining implicit inter-patch modelling with explicit graph-based message passing yields the best performance. On the ISIC-2018 test set, the baseline model achieves a balanced accuracy of 76.17%, which improves to 77.12% with implicit patch-based relational modelling. The fully integrated grid-structured Graph Attention Network further increases performance to 79.27%. Similarly, on ISIC-2019, the implicit approach reaches 59.84% balanced accuracy, while the combination of implicit and explicit modelling yields 60.67%.

Adaptive algorithms are widely used for estimation of linear time-varying systems, such as communication channels. Their tracking performance depends on the level of noise, characteristics of time variations, and the algorithm parameters. Optimizing these parameters and predicting the algorithm performance is an important task. In this paper, we present an approach for analysing the tracking performance of recursive least squares (RLS) adaptive algorithms in channels with time variations described as wide-sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS) random processes characterised by a power spectral density (PSD). We focus on exponential RLS and sliding-window RLS (SRLS) algorithms, for which general formulas for the mean square deviation (MSD) as a measure of the tracking performance are obtained in terms of spectral moments of the PSD. As examples, they are specified for random processes with uniform, Jakes' and autoregressive PSDs. These results are further generalized to RLS algorithms with delays, e.g. processing delays or delays introduced in non-causal adaptive RLS algorithms, and to the SRLS-L algorithm with approximation of channel time variations using Legendre polynomials. Numerical examples show good match between the analytical MSD and simulation results.

Hyperspectral change detection (HCD) has found numerous key applications, such as land cover monitoring. The majority of benchmark HCD algorithms are semi-supervised methods, and some of them can even achieve very low sample labeling rates. However, in some practical scenarios, such as those requiring immediate detection responses for onboard edge computing, we need to achieve the zero-label requirement as ground-truth labeling would not be available onboard for newly acquired images. In this work, we propose a fully unsupervised HCD algorithm, together with a lightweight model, quite suitable for onboard detection missions. Based on an iteratively augmented training set that safely collects some unchanged pixel samples, we learn an iteratively refined spectrum calibration function that eventually compensates the variability of acquisition conditions (often observed in bitemporal images), thereby making the changed pixels easily detectable by analyzing the calibrated spectra. The proposed hyperspectral looping unsupervised calibration and incremental detection (HyperLUCID) algorithm is not only computationally efficient (around 1 to 2 orders of magnitude faster than most benchmark HCD methods), but has also achieved state-of-the-art results (around 93.6% to 97.9% overall accuracy) on several real benchmark HCD datasets. Source codes: https://github.com/IHCLab/HyperLUCID.

Task offloading in space–air–ground integrated networks (SAGIN) yields non-convex signomial or polynomial programs with cubic couplings. Sequential geometric programming (SGP) approximates them via exponential cone representations, which exceeds the second-order cone programming (SOCP) ceiling of embedded code generators such as CVXPYgen. We derive a difference-of-convex (DC) representation exactly certified over the reals by quantifier elimination and apply the convex–concave procedure (CCP), whose SOCP subproblems remove this structural obstacle to future embedded code generation. Comparisons with the BARON global solver show that SGP and CCP both attain near-global solutions. CCP further reduces the average solution time from SGP's $0.1012$~s to $0.0113$~s, an $8.9$-fold speedup.

Orchestrated collectives of large language model (LLM) agents that debate and vote are an emerging form of computational intelligence: the intelligent behaviour resides in the interaction, not in any single agent. They improve task accuracy, yet remain black boxes at the system level: there is no principled test of convergence, no bound on the rounds needed, and no faithful account of what drove a decision. This paper develops a novel framework based on Koopman operator theory and validates its theoretical guarantees on multi-agent consensus dynamics. Treating the collective as one nonlinear dynamical system on a communication graph, we read its essential behaviour off the spectrum of its Koopman transfer operator, an exact linear representation of the nonlinear dynamics estimated from interaction traces. The spectrum yields three machine-checkable certificates: the sub-dominant eigenvalue $\lambda_2$ fixes the intrinsic timescale of reasoning and yields a convergence deadline computable before the debate runs; its eigenvector names the coherent factions the collective reasons in, and $|\lambda_2|$ certifies when that explanation is valid; and the leading spectral coordinates form a compressed, auditable message basis. On an attention-consensus model, the deadline tracks observed convergence with log–log correlation $0.93$ and bounds it in 96% of 24 configurations; attribution is exact whenever the spectrum certifies metastability; eight of 32 coordinates preserve the decision at 99.7% fidelity; and a certificate learned from 15 debates held on 60/60 held-out debates. The study runs in minutes on a CPU, making spectral certification a practical layer for trustworthy collective reasoning.

Beamforming plays a key role in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems. However, conventional beamforming design normally requires accurate instantaneous channel state information (CSI) and iterative optimization, which incur substantial pilot overhead and computational complexity. Recognizing that radio propagation is intrinsically governed by the physical geometry, we develop a 3D Gaussian splatting for environment-aware beamforming (GSBF) pipeline based on multi-modal data, which characterizes the environment through a persistent 3D Gaussian representation. Specifically, GSBF models the environmental scattering response with reciprocity-preserving bidirectional spherical Gaussian (Bi-SG) kernels and performs two-sided electromagnetic rasterization to render an angular propagator map. The rendered map is then aggregated through an over-complete array-manifold dictionary and projected to the constant-modulus beamformers, thereby synthesizing beams directly from the access point (AP) pose and user position without online instantaneous CSI. Simulations demonstrate that GSBF consistently outperforms baselines such as exhaustive beam alignment (EBA) with lower latency.