Papers

In this paper, we introduce generalized Hankel/Toeplitz matrices (GHM/GTM) and the associated generalized Vandermonde decomposition for nonuniform array signal processing and multi-dimensional super-resolution. The proposed framework was discovered from the study of resolution limit theory and extends the classical Hankel/Toeplitz structure by allowing substantially more flexible sampling geometries while preserving the underlying low-rank Vandermonde factorization. Through devising an optimal algorithm based on this GHM framework, we derive the state-of-the-art upper bound estimate for the computational resolution limit (CRL) of source-number detection in general $d$-dimensional super-resolution problems. For segmented sampling sets, whose geometry is closely related to sparse and distributed arrays, we establish deterministic lower bounds for the minimum singular values of the associated generalized Vandermonde matrices and derive corresponding stability and number-detection guarantees for multi-clump source configurations. To address the computational bottleneck of conventional multi-level Hankel constructions in high dimensions, we further introduce randomized GHM constructions whose matrix dimensions scale with the effective degrees of freedom rather than with the full tensor-product grid, together with deterministic recovery guarantees conditional on the realized Vandermonde factors. We also extend the framework to source localization by developing GHM-based MUSIC algorithms for nonuniform measurements, with stability characterized through the conditioning of the generalized Vandermonde factors. Numerical experiments on synthetic data demonstrate that the proposed GHM-based methods achieve competitive resolution and recovery accuracy while substantially reducing matrix size and computational cost, especially in high-dimensional settings.

A valid control barrier function (CBF) certifies if its represented safe set can be rendered forward invariant, and the sign of its value indicates whether a state is safe or not, but it does not quantify a degree of safety beyond the binary indication. In this paper, we show that among valid CBFs representing the same safe set, interior values and gradients can be changed arbitrarily, so neither quantity determines a degree of safety that is independent of how the set is represented. We also show that whether a candidate CBF-based inequality constraint is feasible does not by itself quantify a degree of safety. In particular, infeasibility can occur either because the safe set is not controlled invariant or because the candidate CBF representation fails. This motivates our distinction between intrinsic and representational infeasibility. Finally, we introduce the invariance authority demand (IAD), a representation-independent degree of safety that quantifies the control authority required for controlled invariance and can be used to guide set or actuator repair.

Reliable operation of modern distribution networks requires timely identification of operational risks and anomalous events under pervasive uncertainty. In practice, operators must identify risks that are inherent in stochastic yet in-distribution conditions, and anomalies that correspond to out-of-distribution behaviors such as unusual load patterns, extreme weather or cyber-physical attacks. This paper addresses this joint risk and anomaly identification problem for optimal distribution network operation and proposes a deep reinforcement learning framework that is explicitly uncertainty aware. We integrate distributional and Bayesian deep reinforcement learning to realize a second- order uncertainty quantification scheme that decomposes total uncertainty into aleatoric and epistemic components, which are respectively used to characterize inherent risk and out-of- distribution anomalies. The resulting epistemic estimates drive both exploration during training and out-of-distribution detec- tion with fallback control during deployment, whereas aleatoric estimates are used to characterize intrinsic operational risk. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of our DRL agent and the effectiveness of the uncertainty quantification.

Kernelized graph methods - spectral clustering, diffusion maps, and sparse kernel -regression graphs - that use Gaussian kernels depend on the choice of Gaussian bandwidth sigma, which governs the spectral character of the local kernel operator. When sigma is too small, the kernel overestimates local complexity and treats each sample as an independent direction; when sigma is too large, the kernel collapses multiple directions together, the condition number diverges, and all geometric discrimination is lost. We propose a choice of scale to make the spectral complexity of the kernel consistent with the intrinsic complexity of the underlying manifold. We propose a per-node bandwidth criterion that operationalizes this principle by jointly matching the kernel's effective rank to the local intrinsic dimension estimated via minimum spanning tree, anchoring the search in the manifold-consistent log-log scaling regime. We evaluate SSL embeddings from six encoders on CIFAR-100, showing that adaptive bandwidth consistently improves leave-one-out (LOO) classification and label propagation (LP) accuracy over fixed-bandwidth methods and competing adaptive methods.

A Fourier-curve constellation adds artificial noise along the tangent at the transmitted symbol, giving each symbol candidate its own rank-one noise covariance. A Chase retransmission repeats such a symbol, and the receiver can either accumulate the candidate metrics before forming bit log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) or add bit LLRs formed in every round. The rounds are independent given the symbol but not necessarily given one label bit, so summed exact per-round LLRs do not in general equal the joint LLR. For a fixed labeling, equiprobable symbols, and conditionally independent rounds, we derive exact identities for this difference under exact and max-log reduction, with equality conditions: each difference equals the gap between two nonnegative class corrections, which are nondecreasing in the number of rounds and vanish for binary signaling. With a rate-1/2 LDPC code after four rounds, the per-round matched Fourier receiver needs 1.97 dB more per-slot SNR at block error rate 0.1 than the covariance-ignorant joint Euclidean receiver. After four rounds, per-round exact reduction costs 2.7 dB on the Fourier link and 1.5 dB on Gray 64-QAM in bit-metric generalized mutual information, and 1.6 dB in block error rate with a 5G NR LDPC code, whereas joint max-log reduction costs less than 0.1 dB. Controls with Gray labeling, isotropic noise, and no tangent noise show that this loss does not require candidate-dependent covariance. The Fourier receiver should therefore accumulate the matched candidate metrics and reduce them to bits at each decoding attempt.

Aggregating building heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) loads unlocks substantial demand-side flexibility for power systems. Yet multi-zone coupling creates intricate interdependencies and uncertainty propagation, complicating the quantification of aggregate flexibility. To address this issue, this paper proposes a coupling-aware two-level aggregation framework. At the building level, tailored Gaussian elimination and coordinate transformation techniques are employed to recast the high-dimensional thermal dynamics as an equivalent lower-dimensional analytical expression. This expression streamlines the subsequent aggregator-level stage by (i) clarifying the propagation of zone-level uncertainties to the building-level interface, (ii) decoupling intra-building multi-zone coupling from inter-building aggregation, and (iii) providing full-dimensional building-level flexibility sets that enable tractable reformulation. At the aggregator level, existing geometric aggregation approaches are generalized by a newly developed matrix-transformation technique. This technique effectively constructs inner approximations between polytopes of different dimensions, producing closed-form images of high-dimensional multi-zone HVAC flexibility in power subspace. The resulting inner approximation is then recast as a customized separatable linear program that efficiently determines the optimal aggregate parameters. Case studies validate the effectiveness of our framework, highlighting its accuracy, reliability, and scalability.

Aggregating distributed energy resources (DERs) aims to encode their collective flexibility into a single set for efficient grid dispatch. However, existing aggregation methods are overly conservative for heterogeneous DERs due to two main challenges: 1) dimensional heterogeneity, which complicates the combination of flexibilities across different time dimensions, and 2) type heterogeneity, where diverse and irregular DER profiles hinder accurate approximations, resulting in significant flexibility loss. To resolve these challenges, this paper propose a novel preference-oriented aggregation method for reserve dispatch. For dimensional heterogeneity, we extend existing techniques by reformulating the Minkowski sum as a polytope projection problem using a matrix transformation technique. By unifying DERs in a higher-dimensional space and projecting them back into the aggregate feasible region, the proposed technique effectively aggregates dimensionally heterogeneous DERs. For type heterogeneity, we further develop a distributed aggregation-dispatch coordination framework that incorporates reserve dispatch preferences into aggregation. This framework effectively captures the critical, active aggregate flexibility prioritized in optimal reserve dispatch, thereby significantly reducing the flexibility loss when aggregating type-heterogeneous DERs. Numerical tests validate the effectiveness of our method in addressing both heterogeneities and highlight its promising potential for power systems with high reserve requirements.

Terminal arrival scheduling and descent procedure design are studied in two largely separate literatures. Scheduling models reduce each aircraft to a travel time and deliver target landing times, and fuel-efficient descent procedures are designed one aircraft at a time with the schedule taken as given, although both decide where an arriving aircraft absorbs delay before final approach. Existing formulations therefore cannot trade a slower, earlier-configuring descent against level track miles, a schedule that is efficient in time can be expensive in fuel, and autonomous or reduced-crew operations will need a single trajectory plan that ground automation and the flight management system both accept. To close this gap, we propose a four-dimensional terminal arrival scheduler that selects each aircraft's lateral path extension, glideslope-capture distance, and flap-deployment trigger speeds in one decision. We evaluate every candidate idle-thrust descent offline with a wind-aware backward plan and a six-degree-of-freedom forward simulation that returns descent time, fuel burn, minimum track length, and stabilized-approach feasibility, and a rolling-horizon scheduler commits one verified descent and one extension per aircraft under wake-separation constraints and observed entry winds. Two Atlanta terminal airspace case studies quantify the benefit. We show that co-optimized continuous descents save about 15% of fleet fuel below saturation in a free-descent environment and that delayed deceleration saves about 23%, while on the six published Runway 8L arrival flows the charted altitude floors remove 31% of the design lattice and reduce the savings to 9–10% and 20–21%, respectively. We also find that wind moves single-aircraft descent fuel by 34–81% yet explains at most 4% of fleet fuel variance, because aircraft-specific wind effects average out across a scenario.

Recent studies have shown that oscillating phasors arise from beating waves caused by interharmonics. This finding has led to an interharmonic-based oscillation source-location method. But waveform data needed for the method are less available than PMU synchrophasor data. This paper investigates whether interharmonics can be extracted directly from phasor data for similar applications. The results show that, for certain oscillation phenomena, phasor data can support interharmonic extraction and oscillation source location. Sensitivity studies have identified the requirements, and a cloud-based software tool is developed for PMU-based source location.

The Balearic Islands are striving to achieve 100% renewable energy, which poses new challenges in operating the power system securely and reliably. With a higher integration of inverter-based resources (IBRs) and a reduced presence of conventional synchronous generators, the system strength, particularly short circuit levels, becomes weaker and more susceptible to disturbances; and the total inertia of the system becomes lower. Technology enablers are planned to achieve energy transition in the Balearic power system: a new 2x200 MW VSC-HVDC link (bipole with metallic return), Synchronous Compensators (SC) and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), as fully-integrated network components. Detailed ElectroMagnetic Transient (EMT) simulation studies may be needed to analyse stability of the system, due to the high amounts of power-electronics devices in the system. This paper describes the implementation of an EMT model of the Balearic power system.

Multi-detector programs such as Earth 2.0 (ET) require detector characterization across different technologies, operating conditions, and production batches, together with consistent procedures for operation, characterization, and device selection. Traditional laboratory workflows often distribute camera control, illumination, image analysis, and report generation across detector-specific programs and manual steps, slowing iterative development and hindering standardized characterization. We address this gap with PixelXVision, a layered software platform that combines a common camera SDK, preset-based configuration, and a runtime plugin system. Detector-specific behavior is configured through declarative presets, allowing the same host interface to operate CCD, CMOS, and infrared detectors without model-specific core changes. Characterization procedures are implemented as plugins that use a shared object manager to access camera, illumination, storage, and database services. Each run links raw frames, measured operating conditions, configuration, analysis products, and reports into a traceable archive with a queryable index. The platform supports lightweight deployment for iterative single-detector development and structured workflows for multi-detector campaigns. The platform has been applied in characterization testing across CMOS, CCD, and HgCdTe cameras, and its configurable architecture can accommodate additional camera models for subsequent CCD testing for WFST without model-specific changes to the core host software. For operational troubleshooting, the platform integrates ChatPixel, a knowledge-base assistant that provides answers with cited sources when it has relevant information.

Non-Latin handwritten character recognition (HCR) remains understudied. Dominant methods consider it as generic image classification, which uses model scale to implicitly learn stroke structure. Structural-prior efficiency—the principle that explicitly encoding script-geometric regularities as architectural inductive biases can be both more accurate and require fewer parameters. We introduce GraphemeNet, a unified multi-script architecture, governed by two orthogonal binary axes. Axis 1 operationalises stroke-level geometric regularity via Persistent Scaffold Injection (PSI): a script-specific asymmetric convolution injects a stroke scaffold as a weighted residual at every encoder stage, continuously anchoring learned features to script geometry—distinct from skip connections, auxiliary losses, or attention reweighting. Axis 2 selects between global average pooling with gated fusion and cross-scale attention with a Stroke Topology Module (STM), depending on whether glyph discrimination requires spatial relational reasoning. A Linear Capsule Routing (LCR) with $O(n)$ routing is shared universally. On fourteen benchmarks across eight writing systems, the architecture generalises with only scaffold and decoder topology varying per script, consistently challenging, outperforming published baselines, and establishing structural-prior efficiency as a broadly applicable principle for multi-script HCR.

Overfitted codecs have demonstrated promising performance for image and video compression. In particular, for image compression, the Cool-chic family of models has shown competitive performance against scene-agnostic models, with orders of magnitude lower decoding complexity at the cost of a longer overfitting process. However, these overfitted image codecs are not fully optimized toward the rate-distortion objective: their network weights remain in full precision during training, and the associated quantization parameters are selected in a separate post-training stage. Furthermore, their synthesis operates at a single scale, which overlooks cross-scale redundancy. In this paper, we propose MIRC, an overfitted image codec in which every coded component, including the latents, the synthesis network, and the entropy models, is quantized and entropy coded under a single rate-distortion objective, adopting the end-to-end compression pipeline of the neural video representation codec NVRC. We further introduce a multi-scale representation with cross-stage parameter sharing, which improves coding efficiency at a small transmitted overhead. On the CLIC2020 professional validation set, MIRC achieves a 10.5% BD-rate saving against VVC (VTM 22.0). Moreover, MIRC offers a family of configurations spanning 1.2 to 2.9 kMAC per pixel, so the decoding budget can be selected to match the deployment target.

Scalable video coding (SVC) encodes a video into a layered bitstream consisting of a base layer and one or multiple enhancement layers, enabling decoding at different bitrate/quality/resolution operating points to accommodate diverse device capabilities and network conditions. Due to its practical flexibility, SVC has been incorporated into major video coding standards and has recently attracted growing interest for both scene-agnostic and scene-adaptive neural video codecs. Among the latter, Implicit neural representation (INR) based codecs achieve compression by overfitting a compact neural network to an individual video, offering fast decoding and competitive coding efficiency compared to scene-agnostic neural codecs. However, research on scalable INR-based compression remains in its infancy: these methods support scalable coding by introducing additional network layers, which couple the bitrate with the decoding complexity and also cannot achieve comparable performance with strong scalable/non-scalable codecs. In this context, this paper proposes S-NVRC, a scalable INR-based video codec that jointly supports fine-grained bitrate and decoding complexity scalability from a single embedded bitstream. It adopts a coarse-to-fine prefix for feature grids and a nested prefix for network layers, which scale bitrate and decoding complexity, respectively. The proposed S-NVRC spans a wide range of bitrate and decoding-complexity using a single encoding (training) and outperforms SHM 12.4 and the multi-layer VTM-20.0, by 43.7% and 5.6% in BD-rate on the UVG dataset, while also providing flexible complexity scalability. Implemented code will be provided.

Spell correction for Japanese search queries presents unique challenges due to the co-existence of four writing scripts (Latin/romaji, hiragana, katakana, and kanji) and the distinct error patterns each script induces. We present a compact BART-based sequence-to-sequence model (3 encoder + 3 decoder layers) designed for low-latency spell correction of Japanese music search queries. The core contribution lies in a script-aware synthetic misspelling generation pipeline that produces realistic training data by combining keyboard-layout models (QWERTY and flick input), phonetic confusion priors mined from real query logs, voiced/unvoiced consonant alternations, and kana case errors. A key design decision is normalizing mixed-script catalog titles to a single canonical script before misspelling synthesis, which we show is critical for reducing model hallucinations. We train a custom byte-level BPE tokenizer on the target music catalog to handle all four scripts in a unified vocabulary. Experiments on a curated evaluation set show that our model achieves an exact-match accuracy of 41.09% and a character error rate (CER) of 11.62%, outperforming edit-distance baselines and achieving the lowest character error rate among all evaluated systems while maintaining sub-4ms inference latency on a single GPU. We further analyze performance across individual scripts and mixed-script queries, demonstrating the effectiveness of script-aware data augmentation through systematic ablation studies.

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems are widely deployed in safety-critical settings but remain vulnerable to data-poisoning backdoor attacks. Existing ASR backdoors typically use phrase-level triggers paired with a fixed target sentence, creating strong artifacts (e.g., repeated transcripts or triggers placed in non-speech regions) that simple preprocessing can mitigate. We propose GhostWord, a word-level, time-localized ASR backdoor that uses codebooks mapping short ($\approx$400\,ms) acoustic triggers to target words. During poisoning, we inject a trigger into the forced-aligned time span of a chosen source word in the audio and replace only that word in the transcript, enabling precise semantic flips and composable sentence manipulation while avoiding many-to-one label artifacts. Across Common Voice (v23 English, v24 Lithuanian) and multiple backbones (Whisper-Small/Medium, MMS, SpeechT5), GhostWord achieves an average attack success rate of 89.3% and transfers across languages and models. Adapting optimization-based defenses (ABL, ANP, SAU, I-BAU) reveals a sharp robustness–accuracy trade-off: attack success drops from 89.3% to 29.1% while clean WER rises from 21.5% to 45.0%, consistent with our theoretical analysis showing that, in high-vocabulary models, backdoor suppression structurally tends to degrade clean performance. The source code is publicly available at https://github.com/rohban-lab/GhostWord

The development of communication systems critically depends on realistic channel models, yet there are no widely accepted standards in the underwater acoustic communications community. The situation is in stark contrast to terrestrial radio communications, where channel models have been standardized and are widely available. To address this gap, we present an open-access library of underwater acoustic channels derived from field experiments conducted across geographically distinct locations and varying propagation conditions, including shallow and deep water, short and long range, and fixed and mobile platforms. Each channel is described by a time-varying impulse response extracted from at-sea recordings using an adaptive algorithm that separately identifies the multipath structure and the Doppler-induced phase and delay drift. Each channel is also accompanied by a site-specific ambient noise model, which captures the statistics of colored Gaussian noise and impulsive noise. Spatial diversity reception across an array of hydrophones is supported for most channels, while time diversity is included for single-hydrophone scenarios. The library is accompanied by a simple replay interface through which a user supplies an arbitrary transmit signal, passes it through a chosen channel, adds noise at a desired signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and obtains the received signal. The models are validated by comparing the output SNR of a baseline receiver operating on replayed signals with its performance on the original at-sea recordings, demonstrating close agreement across all channels. The library, including all channel impulse responses, noise model parameters, and replay software, is freely available for download as an open-source package.

Plan accuracy alone cannot show whether a speech-delivery decision follows its source: a fixed prior may match the original label yet fail to respond appropriately when a cue changes. VoxReason provides a 100-case verifier benchmark that holds each utterance fixed, edits one designated source-label cue, and scores cited evidence, eight plan fields, and the permitted response. On a source-key-disjoint test of 24 cases, a source-emotion prior reaches plan-slot accuracy 0.958, but none of the 24 edited neutral targets appears in its training labels; its required-change accuracy is 0.000. This diagnoses the support boundary of this prior, not its performance on supported edits. In a complementary 32-case emotion-disjoint test, the prior has seen all edited neutral targets but neither original test emotion; its plan-slot accuracy is 0.219 and required-change accuracy is 1.000. The partitions reuse and overlap the same 100 cases, so these deterministic diagnostics are not independent cohorts or learned-planner results. The benchmark evaluates derived labels and structured plans, not audio input, generated speech, or listener judgments.

This paper investigates over-the-air (OTA) computation enabled online federated learning (FL) in low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks. Specifically, we consider a dual-layer OTA aggregation architecture, where ground devices upload analog model updates to serving satellites via uplink OTA aggregation, and satellites forward the aggregated signals to a data processing center through the second round OTA aggregation. Then, we formulate a long-term data-utilization maximization problem in which devices continuously collect new data and untrained samples gradually lose freshness. The problem is subject to the satellite beam budget, transmit-power limit, and global mean squared error (MSE) constraint that governs end-to-end aggregation distortion. This yields a coupled mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, involving tightly coupled discrete beam-hopping decisions and continuous power control. Due to the combinatorial action space and nonconvex constraints, the problem is NP-hard and computationally intractable. Furthermore, the time-varying satellite topology and dynamic data generation render it a sequential decision-making problem, necessitating adaptive online scheduling. To address these issues, we cast the problem as a Markov decision process and develop a proximal policy optimization (PPO)-based deep reinforcement learning framework that jointly optimizes adaptive beam hopping and power control, using an MSE-aware reward to balance data utilization and aggregation accuracy. Numerical simulation results verify that the proposed algorithm consistently outperforms other benchmark schemes, achieving superior long-term data utilization and faster FL convergence while satisfying the MSE requirement.

Multi-segment soft robotic arms can continuously reconfigure their body shapes for safe interaction, but tip control alone is insufficient for constrained-space tasks. Therefore, shape control is a more important task for multi-segment soft arms than tip control, but remains challenging due to the high dimensionality and nonlinear dynamics of continuum deformation. In existing work, shape control accuracy is defined by the error in the global frame (global shape error). For multi-segment soft arms, using only global shape error as the control objective is insufficient, as segment coupling, gravity-induced loading, and inertial effects become more significant. This difficulty increases with the number of segments. In this paper, we present a Koopman-based model predictive control framework that combines global and local observables, enabling real-time shape control on multi-segment soft robotic arms. The framework is evaluated through numerical and physical experiments. Numerical experiments demonstrate the scalability of the proposed controller by achieving shape control on robots with up to 10 independently actuated segments. The physical experiments demonstrate that the controller is capable of (1) real-time shape control of 3- and 5-segment robotic arms with tip speeds up to 0.6 m/s, (2) robust tracking without retraining, including distal payloads up to 400~g and recovery from a 7~N lateral disturbance, and (3) the potential for future inspection applications through a confined-space demonstration. These results demonstrate that the proposed framework enables dynamic, scalable, and accurate real-time shape control on multi-segment soft robotic arms.

This work presents a programmable FPGA-based architecture for spiking convolutional neural network (SCNN) inference, with real-time hypoxia classification serving as a biomedical edge application. The architecture implements a hybrid spiking convolutional-fully connected (CNN-FC) topology on a programmable, quantized, layer-based neuromorphic hardware core. Early layers perform spiking convolution using receptive-field connectivity with support for multi-channel kernels and stride, while deeper layers use fully connected spiking layers for classification. A PyTorch-based hardware-software co-design flow enables deployment of trained parameters with quantization and configurability support. The design is first validated on MNIST and Fashion-MNIST, achieving hardware accuracies of up to 98% and 86%, respectively, at 16-bit precision. It is then applied to hypoxia classification using red and infrared photoplethysmography (PPG) signals acquired from a shoulder-mounted sensor, with skin tone included as an additional input channel. The resulting classifier achieves an average hardware accuracy of 88.26% across five folds at 16-bit precision while consuming 1.455 W of dynamic power, demonstrating the feasibility of low-power neuromorphic biomedical classification at the edge.

A need to identify modulation of spectral power arises frequently in the analysis of physiological signals. Estimation of power in the relevant bands through filtering and envelope extraction has several limitations: the choice of filter may bias any resulting estimate, while additive Gaussian noise becomes non-Gaussian due to the nonlinearity of envelope computation. The present work considers how spectral decompositions of higher-order cumulants (higher-order spectra, HOS) avoid these limitations, with an emphasis on the use of the trispectrum to identify modulated oscillations. Specifically, it is shown: 1) The trispectrum may be interpreted as a measure of linear dependencies of power across frequencies by viewing it as the cross spectrum of the Wigner-Ville distribution. 2) A particular two-dimensional subdomain of the trispectrum is useful for identifying modulated carriers, recovering essential spectral properties of both the modulating and carrier signals while avoiding the cubic complexity of full trispectrum estimation. A representation of this subdomain, the modulogram, is demonstrated as a tool for identifying and distinguishing different forms of modulation. 3) As a cumulant-derived measure, the modulogram is not biased by additive Gaussian noise. 4) Modulogram phase retains information by which temporal patterns of modulation may be identified. 5) A recently described additive decomposition of HOS (HOSD) further aids identification when applied to the trispectrum. These developments are illustrated with the blind detection of beta bursts in rodent and human local field potential recordings. Finally, the relationship between the present approach and prior techniques of blind identification (BI) through moment maximization, including blind deconvolution and independent component analysis, is considered.

Learning-based schedulers have been proposed to provide real-time user, target, and access point (AP) association in distributed cell-free integrated sensing and communication systems. In a typical approach, a graph neural network (GNN), trained on labels from a mixed-integer linear program, maps lightweight per-AP statistics to decisions on AP clustering, user and target scheduling, and mode selection in one forward pass. Such solutions assume that hard constraints, enforced only as soft training penalties, hold at inference, and that the self-reported statistics are truthful. Using our ASSENT algorithm as an example, we find that despite high $F_1$ scores, many solutions violate at least one hard constraint, demonstrating that high prediction accuracy does not ensure joint feasibility. Projecting the GNN output onto a feasible solution restores constraint satisfaction with low utility loss, even with a simple greedy repair procedure. We further show that feasibility alone does not guarantee robustness to false data injection attacks. A single malicious AP that reports false information cannot substantially increase its user associations, but can greatly increase the rate of infeasible solutions. The effect of such attacks depends on the type of information being falsified. Misreporting information that affects the objective can largely be mitigated through feasibility projection, whereas falsifying information that affects the constraints cannot. The latter can, however, be detected using a low-complexity cross-AP consistency check. These results show that learned ISAC schedulers should be evaluated using constraint-aware feasibility metrics in addition to conventional accuracy measures.

Computation of adaptive beamforming weights in Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR) processing is a latency-critical operation that poses significant challenges for real-time hardware implementation. This paper presents an FPGA implementation of a systolic Givens-rotation QR decomposition pipeline for MVDR beamforming on a simulated 32-element ultrasound transducer array, using single-precision floating-point arithmetic. The design is deployed on a Zynq UltraScale+ FPGA at 100 MHz with three parallel kernel instances operating concurrently, achieving a measured throughput of 31,123 weight vectors/s at 90.9% parallel efficiency relative to the measured single-instance rate. At an estimated 2.451 W of programmable-logic power, and 5.286 W including the processing system, this corresponds to 12,698 and 5,888 weight vectors/s/W, respectively. Under a matched three-way dispatch, a 24-core Intel Xeon Gold 5220R at 2.20 GHz achieves 465,699 weight vectors/s at a measured 83.08 W package power, corresponding to 5,606 weight vectors/s/W. The FPGA therefore attains 2.3x the power-normalised throughput of the processor on a programmable-logic basis and 1.05x on a total on-chip basis. In contrast, the processor retains a raw throughput advantage of approximately 15x at this operating point. Numerical precision is validated against MATLAB float32 reference outputs from a Field II cyst phantom simulation, achieving a 100% pass rate with a root mean square error of 5.10x10^-7, confirming near-theoretical finite-precision behaviour without systematic bias.

Modern feedback design for distributed parameter systems presupposes that the closed-loop dynamics define a well-posed evolution problem. This presupposition becomes nontrivial for temporally degenerate parabolic systems, where temporal degeneracy affects not only the analytical properties of the evolution equation but also the mathematical formulation of the feedback interconnection itself. It is shown that admissible feedback interconnections for temporally degenerate parabolic systems are completely characterized by an operator compatibility condition linking the singular reaction operator with the actuator and observation operators. This characterization removes the singular component of the closed-loop dynamics and reduces the degenerate evolution equation to a regular evolution equation. Building upon this regularized formulation, a critical–residual decomposition yields a uniform exponential stability certificate, which is subsequently extended to the original infinite-dimensional evolution through a finite-to-infinite lifting theorem. A constructive static output feedback synthesis is finally obtained as a consequence of these results. Numerical experiments illustrate the regularization mechanism, validate the stability certificate, and confirm the finite-to-infinite lifting.

Classical asymptotic stability guarantees convergence but does not quantify the rate at which convergence occurs. This paper introduces a gradation of asymptotic stability where degree zero corresponds to exponential stability and degree $m>0$ corresponds to algebraic decay of order $t^{-1/m}$. We provide direct and converse Lyapunov characterizations for admissible degrees and conditions for certifying the exact stability degree. Hopf, Bautin, fractional-degree, and time-varying examples demonstrate how the degree identifies the leading stabilizing mechanism.

In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient and reliable communication system for non-terrestrial networks deployed in dynamic GPS-denied wireless environments, enabled by a Vision–Inertial Tracking-Assisted UAV Communication (VIT-UAVCom) system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to exploit onboard UAV cameras and IMU sensors for UAV-assisted communications. We consider a complete VIT-UAVCom system that incorporates the key design parameters while explicitly accounting for system noise and residual tracking inaccuracies. Building on this framework, we formulate an optimization problem for jointly designing the UAV trajectory and communication performance to improve propulsion energy efficiency, reduce outage probability, and enhance physical-layer security. We then develop a dedicated solution framework to efficiently compute near-optimal trajectory and communication control actions in dynamic scenarios. Furthermore, to enable real-time implementation, we propose and evaluate three optimizers, namely linear search (LS), binary search (BS), and genetic search. Our numerical results demonstrate that our proposed VIT-UAVCom framework significantly outperforms the K-means benchmark in terms of energy consumption while maintaining robust secrecy performance and reliable user coverage. Specifically, our proposed framework improves the energy efficiency by 144% compared to the benchmark. Interestingly, our results also show that, compared with the LS, the BS reduces the computational time by approximately 50%.

Smartphone skin photographs are indispensable to teledermatology, yet assessing the diagnostic suitability of submitted cases (gradability) remains a critical bottleneck in mobile care workflows. Dermatologists routinely review multiple photographic views (regional, angled, and close-up) to identify consistent textural detail rather than relying on a single image. We present the Semantic Tri-view Pipeline, an interpretable architecture for automated teledermatology gradability screening that formalizes epidermal micro-relief as a computable biomarker of image quality. Using an expert-annotated subset of the public SCIN dataset, we train a lightweight DeepLabV3+ model to segment micro-relief fidelity. These spatial masks are then aggregated across up to three case views with a logistic regression classifier, leveraging viewpoint redundancy to support robustness under uncontrolled smartphone acquisition. This approach learns context-aware, clinically intelligible heuristics, such as penalizing high-fidelity texture in regional distance views. Evaluated at a predefined 90% sensitivity operating point, the system's apparent errors largely reflect subjective clinical variance on borderline cases where clinicians rely on non-visual metadata. On SCIN, performance improves from an AUC of 0.81 (80.6% PPV) on variance-heavy majority-consensus cases to 0.96 (97.7% PPV) on optically unambiguous unanimous cases. Overall, this work delivers an interpretable, privacy-by-design, edge-ready system that can provide real-time feedback during case submission to filter ungradable photo sets before review.

Discretization fundamentally limits structure identification in stochastic systems. When system stochasticity exceeds the discretization resolution, entropy-based methods lose their ability to distinguish which input drives the output. We study this in Fuzzy Inductive Reasoning (FIR), a nonparametric framework for learning dynamical systems from discretized measurements, where the choice of input variables determines both predictive accuracy and the interpretability of the learned input–output relationships. Entropy-based selection targets explainability, i.e., identifying which variables causally drive the output, while mean-squared-error-based selection targets prediction. We introduce a resolution-stochasticity ratio that governs when entropy-based selection is reliable. Three results follow. First, entropy-based selection is consistent below this threshold but loses discriminative power above it, regardless of sample size. Second, using the entropy-selected variables for prediction instead of the MSE-selected ones incurs a closed-form excess prediction risk that grows with input complexity and shrinks with sample size. Third, reliable identification of the causally relevant inputs requires data that scales with the number of input combinations and inversely with the strength of the entropy signal. The theory is validated on a two-state Markov model and demonstrated on a distribution grid reliability dataset analyzing the impact of infrastructure investment, where the goal is to explain which investments drive reliability improvements rather than merely predict outcomes.

World models are an emerging paradigm in representation learning in which an agent jointly learns state-action dynamics and observation models from offline trajectory data, enabling multi-step planning and trajectory prediction with uncertainty estimates. They have shown strong results in robotics and game environments, but, to the best of our knowledge, have not previously been applied to the space domain. This paper introduces a world model-based approach to cooperative and non-cooperative spacecraft rendezvous and proximity operations. First, we introduce an open-source, JAX-based International Space Station (ISS) docking environment supporting parallel GPU simulation of spacecraft orbit and attitude dynamics, generating the thousands of state-action transitions that world model training requires. Second, we introduce Out-of-this-World-Model, a transformer-based world model that encodes relative kinematic states and body-fixed camera imagery into a latent state and predicts its evolution under commanded thrusts and torques using one-step flow matching. It produces a distribution over future observations, capturing stochastic dynamics and per-timestep uncertainty, and outperforms DreamerV3-style posterior-correction baselines with fewer trainable parameters and hyperparameters. Third, we apply the approach to a capsule autonomously docking with the ISS under keep-out-zone constraints, demonstrating improved sample efficiency and task performance over reinforcement learning baselines (53% versus 29% docking success across ports), better out-of-distribution generalization (on held-out ports the world model more than doubles baseline success, 40% versus 17%), and detection of anomalous objects encountered during approach with 98% classification accuracy. We open-source the simulation environment and model architecture to enable further study of this paradigm.