Papers

We consider steady-state optimization of nonlinear dynamical systems under time-varying stochastic operating conditions, where the objective is an expected-value function over the current operating-condition distribution, so that changes in the distribution induce a moving stochastic optimum. To address this problem, we propose stochastic sequential feedback optimization (S2FO), which combines projected feedback-gradient updates with sequential sensitivity estimates obtained by linearizing the plant at realized stochastic operating conditions. We analyze the closed-loop performance of S2FO through expected dynamic regret, instantaneous tracking in expectation, and almost-sure convergence under diminishing step sizes. We then apply the method to wind farm power maximization under time-varying stochastic inflow. Simulations on a benchmark layout and on a realistic offshore wind farm show that S2FO improves average power generation when persistent wake interactions are present, and that its advantage decreases as wind-direction variability increases.

Continuous-discrete filtering is a classical problem in signal processing and control theory, whereby the state driving a stochastic differential equation (SDE) must be inferred from noisy, partial discrete-time observations. Corresponding filtering algorithms are often formed as discrete-time methods and applied to a discretization of the SDE, an approach limited by the incurred discretization error, or model a type of Gaussian moment ordinary differential equation (ODE) flow, which is approximate for nonlinear dynamics. We introduce a new method, the Wiener-space cubature Kalman filter (WSC-KF), for Gaussian filtering in this continuous-discrete setting. The WSC-KF combines spatial sigma-point representations with Wiener space cubature integration, effectively approximating iterated integral terms of the driving Brownian motion to higher-order than standard discretization (e.g., Ito-Taylor expansions), or approximate moment-ODE flows (e.g., as in the unscented Kalman filter). Theoretically, we characterize the path-law approximation degree of WSC-KF through a tunable model order parameter. We prove that, depending on the model order chosen, WSC-KF provides weak order bounds comparable to or dominating that of a cubature Kalman filter using a first-order Ito predict step. Numerically, we confirm that rate on a globally Lipschitz Levy-area diffusion. Degree-5 Wiener cubature matches mixed iterated integrals that existing continuous-discrete Kalman predictors omit, while remaining efficiently computable; this is the mechanism enabling higher-order weak path-law approximation.

Hybrid radio frequency (RF) and visible light communication (VLC) networks have emerged as a promising solution for high-capacity indoor wireless connectivity in sixth-generation (6G) systems. However, the limited optical coverage and vulnerability of VLC links to line-of-sight (LoS) blockage under user mobility remain fundamental challenges. In this work, a mirror-based intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is deployed to assist a dynamic indoor hybrid RF/VLC network, where each mobile user is exclusively assigned to either the IRS-enhanced VLC subnetwork or the RF subnetwork through a binary selection decision. A joint optimization problem is then formulated to maximize proportional fairness by jointly optimizing the RF/VLC technology selection, power allocation, and IRS mirror roll and yaw orientation angles. To enable real-time adaptability, the problem is reformulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) and solved using a cooperative multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm based on centralized training with decentralized execution. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the optimized hybrid network compared with optimized standalone VLC and RF networks. The results further validate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed DRL framework compared to widely adopted DRL algorithms as well as conventional model-based optimization approaches.

Although scattering is inherently non-separable, holographic multiple-input multiple-output channels are commonly modeled using separable scattering across the source and receiver. In this paper, we investigate non-separable scattering in a non-line-of-sight holographic line model based on wavenumber-division multiplexing. We model its power spectral factor (PSF) using a bivariate von Mises-Fisher (vMF) distribution and introduce a non-separability parameter. We prove that the marginal densities flatten and their Kullback–Leibler divergence from the uniform distribution decreases monotonically with non-separability. Using majorization theory, we further establish that an upper bound and an approximation at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the ergodic spectral efficiency increase monotonically. Numerical results validate the analysis and demonstrate the performance gains of non-separable scattering over its separable counterpart.

This paper addresses autonomous landing of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) rotorcrafts on a heaving ship deck using a recurrent policy trained via asymmetric actor-critic reinforcement learning: the critic sees 6 s of future deck height during training, while the actor sees only what the onboard sensors provide in flight, a 17-dimensional state made of the vehicle's position, velocity and attitude relative to the deck and outputs world-frame velocity and yaw-rate commands. Training is performed across 4096 parallel simulated environments, followed by fine-tuning in 16 environments with an onboard vision pipeline in the loop. A control-barrier-function (CBF) stopping margin on the deck-relative vertical state is incorporated at two stages: as a reward term during training, where it halves the median simulated contact speed relative to a policy trained without it, and as a runtime safety filter at deployment, evaluated at every control step to abort and retry the descent when the margin is violated. Because the autopilot's disarm logic cannot detect the vehicle resting on a moving deck, proximity-based thrust cutoff at touchdown is commanded directly in the landing pipeline. The proposed approach is validated using a parallel-manipulator-platform-based deck emulator that reproduces the heaving motion of the ship deck (scaled to 0.70 m peak-to-peak, 7.5 s mean period) and a quadcopter UAV with an onboard camera. Across 31 motion-capture and 20 vision-based trials, the UAV landed every time, with median times to contact of 6.5 and 7.3 s; 77% and 50% landed on the first attempt, with mean deck-relative speeds of 0.29 and 0.27 m/s, respectively, at the instant of thrust cutoff, which is the last speed under the policy's control. Supplementary video: https://youtu.be/S5hDkrSZJt4

Motility-induced phase separation enables swarm aggregation to be regulated without prescribing a target spatial distribution. This paper develops a partial differential equation-constrained model predictive control framework for a vibration-driven robotic swarm. Three continuum models retaining progressively less orientation information are considered to study the trade-offs among model fidelity, information requirements, and computational cost. The framework is evaluated under centralized and decentralized settings, with focus on how limited sensing and local-to-global phase-separation estimation affect the performance of predictive control.

Upper mid-band spectrum is promising for 5G and 6G cellular networks, yet concrete and low-emissivity glass impose over 20 dB of building penetration loss above 2 GHz, degrading outdoor-to-indoor (O2I) coverage. A reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) on a neighboring building bypasses this blockage by focusing energy onto indoor users. This paper introduces PRIMO (Parallel RIS Min-Rate Optimization), a training-free joint optimizer of base-station precoding, RIS phase shifts, and RIS placement, validated by calibrated ray tracing in a MetroTech Commons digital twin (Brooklyn, NY) at 6.75 and 16.95 GHz. At equal physical aperture, half-wavelength spacing packs 6.25 times as many elements per array at FR3 as at FR1(C), so FR1(C) leads at low indoor-user counts while FR3 dominates at higher counts, where the additional spatial degrees of freedom suppress inter-user interference. Above a 1 bps/Hz service floor, PRIMO supports 92% more indoor users at FR3 than at FR1(C), and raises the minimum user rate by up to 90% over a fully converged alternating-optimization baseline while running about 100 times faster.

Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) will allow 6G networks to provide both sensing and communication services through shared infrastructure and spectrum resources. However, network slicing that views these services as distinct slices with distinct objectives and performance requirements will inevitably miss the emergent value of integrating them. By considering Sensing-Assisted Communication (SAC) and Communication-Assisted Sensing (CAS), which create interdependencies between services, we can observe trade-offs in resources dimensioned to support each slice and, ultimately, the ISAC slicing performance. As such, this paper proposes a performance analysis of an ISAC slicing framework that accounts for resource allocation and sensor density, as well as SAC and CAS, dimensioned to achieve slice-specific Service-Level Agreement (SLA) satisfaction. Numerical simulations, across different bandwidth allocations, sensor deployments, and demand scenarios, show that ISAC slicing performance is fundamentally constrained by sensing resolution, shaped by demand, and scaled by sensor deployment. These findings provide insights for the design of future ISAC slicing mechanisms.

Magnetometers have numerous applications, one of the most important being heading determination. In practice, magnetometer measurements are affected by sensor manufacturing errors and by hard-iron and soft-iron effects, and therefore calibration is required for reliable heading estimation. Many conventional three-dimensional calibration methods require sufficiently rich multi-axis rotational excitation, which is not feasible in some applications, particularly for in-situ or online calibration. This paper proposes a two-dimensional magnetometer calibration method aided by inertial sensors. The proposed method is simple, closed-form, and non-iterative, and uses a single-axis rotational motion together with measured roll and pitch angles. After calibration, the corrected magnetic measurements are used for heading determination. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method under limited-rotation conditions.

Pinching-antenna systems attach dielectric pinches to a waveguide, creating line-of-sight radiation points within a few meters of any user. The pinches on one waveguide, however, radiate the same signal, unlike a conventional array, where each element transmits a dedicated signal. Separating the signals of multiple users therefore becomes challenging and requires a new perspective on multiple access. Most existing studies rest on an idealized model, and no survey examines the access schemes under realistic impairments. This article surveys multiple access in pinching-antenna systems and organizes fifty-six works into a unified taxonomy by spatial degrees of freedom. The users of one waveguide can be separated only in time, frequency, power, or guided mode, while multiple waveguides add the space domain. The article then identifies the impairments critical to this separation, which perturb the effective channel, leak interference across orthogonal resources, or couple the pinches on the uplink, and summarizes them in an impairment-versus-method map. A unified evaluation of time-, frequency-, power-, and space-domain access under identical channel and impairment models reveals that the degradation is method specific. The analytical and numerical results give insight into multiple access in these systems and provide a basis for its impairment-aware design, a necessary step toward their adoption in practical networks.

Continual learning treats degradation on previously seen data as evidence of failure, a convention inherited from settings with a stationary prediction target, where a correct label remains correct indefinitely. World models do not satisfy this condition. Their prediction target is the environment, which changes, so knowledge that was accurate when acquired may later become false, and discarding it is required behavior rather than a defect. Non-stationary ground truth is well studied in the concept drift literature and in the temporal factuality of language models, but has not been formulated for world models, which are distinctive in that they also encode knowledge that must never be revised. We argue that continual world models require retention stratified by invariance timescale, separating invariants such as physics and object permanence, which must never be revised, from instance-level facts that should be revised as soon as the environment changes. Standard forgetting metrics cannot distinguish a world model that has correctly revised outdated knowledge from one that has suffered catastrophic forgetting, and consequently rank a frozen model highest, while existing physical-reasoning benchmarks evaluate only frozen checkpoints. We propose differential retention, which reports invariant regression testing across the adaptation stream jointly with revision latency, without aggregation.

This paper develops a risk-aware guidance law for an attacker to intercept a stationary target in the presence of multiple moving defenders while respecting the control input limits. We represent defender threats via engagement zones (EZs) (regions of state-space from which attacker interception is feasible) and employ the dynamic maneuvering cue (DMC) (minimum heading correction to exit EZs) as a deterministic measure of geometric risk. Safety is enforced through a prescribed bound on the DMC to enable controlled EZ penetration subject to a specified risk tolerance. For multiple defenders, the corresponding safety constraints are combined through a smooth-minimum aggregation. The proposed guidance strategy drives the attacker toward the target when the engagement remains safe and transitions to an avoidance maneuver as the prescribed safety boundary is approached. The resulting online optimization-free guidance law directly bounds the applied lateral acceleration and initiates a bounded preemptive maneuver before corrective action is required. Closed-loop analysis establishes preservation of the prescribed risk constraints under pointwise bounded-input feasibility and finite-time target interception under a sustained target-accessibility condition. Numerical studies validate the proposed strategy and illustrate the tradeoff between allowable geometric risk and interception performance.

Contactless radar sensing offers a promising approach to continuous vital-sign monitoring. However, indoor multipath can distort direction estimates and generate ghost responses. This paper presents a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted monopulse radar whose RIS phase configuration is controlled by a soft actor-critic agent to improve angular localization. The proposed framework combines simultaneous sum and difference beams with a programmable reflected path, enabling a single radar node to adapt the propagation environment without relying on multiple synchronized sensors. A compact multipath model formulates RIS control as a continuous-action reinforcement-learning problem whose reward penalizes bearing errors and misleading multipath reinforcement. Numerical results compare the proposed method with conventional monopulse processing without an RIS, a frequency-modulated continuous-wave range-angle fast Fourier transform baseline, random RIS phase configurations, and deterministic RIS controllers. The evaluation considers different target separations, signal-to-noise ratio levels, and multipath conditions.

We present a generalized implementation of Look-Back and Look-Ahead Adaptive Model Predictive Control (LLA-MPC), a learning-free framework for real-time, rapid adaptive system identification and control. The original formulation was demonstrated only in simulation, for autonomous racing with a fixed model structure. Our implementation has modular dynamics and integrators, and we validate it on the F1TENTH platform under constrained computation and noisy state estimation. The system identifies tire parameters online by evaluating thousands of candidate models in real time on an embedded computer. Experiments with low-friction tires across changing surfaces show that LLA-MPC completes high-speed tracking tasks where a fixed nominal model fails. Code, videos, and our related work are available at: https://lla-control.github.io.

Spatial semantic segmentation of sound scenes (S5) involves the detection and extraction of target sound events in audio files. However, in typical detection-extraction pipelines, errors in the detection module propagate to the extraction module, degrading overall performance. In this work, we develop a multichannel detection-extraction model and evaluate inference-time algorithms to improve the class detection and target sound extraction in a multi-stage setup. We evaluate two fitness functions: binary cross entropy and mixture consistency; two relabeling strategies: naive and conditional confusion matrix relabeling; and three source estimate evaluation models: a multi-label classifier, a fine-tuned single-source classifier, and an off-the-shelf audio judge. We thoroughly evaluate the impact of these design choices on the DCASE 2025 Task 4 dataset, and validate entropy-based gating of inference-time updates on the held-out evaluation set, laying the groundwork for inference-time updates of S5 systems in real-world scenarios.

This paper proposes a learning-based beam adaptation framework for active/passive-aware monopulse integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) with spatial leakage suppression. A single gNB uses a shared array and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing dual-functional radar-communication signaling to jointly support downlink transmission and monopulse sensing. Radar detections and uplink spatial evidence are fused to distinguish cooperative active directions from passive directions, while a protected angular zone limits unintended illumination. Soft Actor-Critic deep reinforcement learning adapts the transmit beam using communication, sensing, leakage, and previous-action feedback. Numerical results show accurate active/passive spatial classification and robust leakage control as the number of passive targets increases from one to twelve. The proposed SAC controller maintains aggregate passive leakage below the prescribed budget across the full sweep and, from two passive targets onward, achieves the highest leakage-compliant sum rate among the considered baselines.

LiDAR-based quadrotor navigation in cluttered environments remains challenging under external disturbances, particularly when obstacle-aware motion generation and disturbance-rejection control are handled in separate layers. This article presents disturbance-resilient integrated planning and control (DR-IPC), which combines lightweight path guidance with nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) to directly generate angular velocity and thrust. An interconnected extended Kalman filter and nonlinear disturbance observer jointly provide filtered state estimates and reconstructed disturbances for NMPC prediction. The resulting formulation unifies nonlinear quadrotor dynamics, actuator constraints, local motion generation, and penalised safe-flight-corridor residuals without requiring a separate trajectory-optimization stage. Gazebo and MARSIM simulations, together with indoor and outdoor experiments, validate DR-IPC under wind, suspended payloads, narrow passages, ball impacts and reactive avoidance of a dynamic obstacle. In multi-goal navigation with disturbances, DR-IPC increases the number of completed missions from 1/10 to 9/10 in Gazebo and reduces the altitude RMSE from 0.34 to 0.01 m in experiments. The complete system operates onboard at 100 Hz. Supplementary videos are available on the project page https://drpp316.github.io/DR-IPC-Page/, and the source code will be released.

Wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks can leverage locally observed channel state information (CSI) at base-stations (BSs) to perform region classification, i.e., infer the region of origin of a transmitter (TX), thereby enabling channel-based authentication. However, centralizing these measurements incurs substantial communication overhead and requires sharing location-dependent radio fingerprints. To address these difficulties, we propose an edge-native federated learning (FL) framework where BSs collaboratively train a shared classifier via a parameter server (PS) without exposing raw data, thereby supporting physical-layer security tasks like spoofing detection. To overcome the statistical heterogeneity arising from diverse BS locations and propagation conditions, we introduce FedSwitch, a personalized FL algorithm that automatically transitions edge nodes from collaborative training to local fine-tuning upon loss stagnation. We provide theoretical convergence guarantees for the proposed collaborative training phase and derive analytical bounds linking classification errors to statistical discrepancies. Extensive evaluations on synthetic channel measurements demonstrate that FedSwitch significantly improves region-classification accuracy over standard FL baselines.

Multi-timescale systems present a fundamental challenge, where fast operational decisions must coexist with long-horizon sustainability targets. In this work, we propose a new hierarchical control framework via Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) to separate decision-making on two distinct timescales. The high-level MPC optimizes long-horizon setpoints at the slow dynamic and on a fast timescale, a low-level pretrained RL agent tracks these setpoints in real time to maximize short-term objectives. RL is introduced to learn nonlinear control policies, without relying on model linearizations or requiring the heavy online computation from solving repeated optimal control problems. The framework is applied to a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) operating in frequency regulation markets to balance fast profit opportunities (seconds) and slow battery degradation (weeks to months). The design employs a degradation-aware RL agent trained offline to generate safe long-horizon setpoints, and a degradation-unaware agent fine-tuned from it for fast runtime setpoint tracking. Compared to MPC baselines, the proposed approach successfully extends battery lifetime by 84% and increases operational profit by 34%.

Accurate transient B-H modeling under pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) excitation is challenging since the magnetic-field response depends on both the instantaneous flux density and the preceding magnetisation trajectory. Although sequence-to-sequence models enable waveform prediction, existing studies have not jointly addressed how much magnetic history is required, how saturation region should be handled, and how trained models can be adapted to unseen materials. To address these gaps, this paper presents MagLearn 2, a condition-aware, short-window LSTM-based sequence-to-sequence framework for reconstructing the future H(t) response from the historical B(t) and H(t) trajectories. A saturation-aware auxiliary module selectively replaces saturation-dominated predictions within the complete waveform forecast. In a representative saturated 3C90 case, the auxiliary module reduces the sequence-level relative RMSE from 67.84% to 9.19%. To understand how much the history samples contributes to the predictions, an occlusion-based sensitivity analysis is conducted to quantifies the contribution of magnetic history and reveals that that the information most relevant to prediction is concentrated near the forecast boundary. In the independent evaluation for MagNet Challenge II, the proposed framework's best-performing model achieved the lowest reported average RMSE to date on the sequence-prediction task at 2.2%.

Inverse game theory seeks to learn agents' unknown objectives from observed equilibrium behavior. Existing residual-based approaches can lead to non-convex problems and need not ensure strong monotonicity of the learned game, limiting reliable equilibrium prediction. We develop a tractable convex framework for learning static and dynamic non-cooperative games using first-order and Nikaido-Isoda (NI) loss. Specialized operator parameterizations, including a Helmholtz–Hodge decomposition in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), enforce strong monotonicity for quadratic, nonparametric, non-quadratic, and linear-quadratic dynamic games. We establish finite-sample out-of-sample prediction guarantees, using Rademacher complexity to match existing bounds for the non-quadratic setting. For noisy sequential data, we develop a robust receding-horizon learning scheme whose adaptive regularization admits a maximum a posteriori (MAP) interpretation and is computed using randomized trace estimation. Numerical experiments, including a stylized autonomous-vehicle collision-avoidance application, demonstrate predictive accuracy and robustness to measurement noise.

Many reinforcement-learning (RL) problems are non-stationary yet structured and can be decomposed into phases, each with its own transition probabilities and reward functions. When the phase sequence is known, the common solution augments the state with information to satisfy the Markovian property and applies standard RL techniques. However, prior work finds that the multi-policy approach for different phases can outperform a single state-augmented policy shared among the phases, for reasons that remain unclear. In this work, we first show that the shared policy can theoretically achieve performance of any multi-policy solution. However, whether a multi-policy solution can perform better than the corresponding single shared policy in practice depends on function approximation, learning and optimization processes, as well as, for multi-policy solutions, the sample efficiency and loss of continuity from one policy to another. We propose a regime-based phase decomposition method to identify which policy can provide better performance. The method is based on consideration of the duration of transient system dynamics relative to the duration of the quasi-stationary period. Numerical experiments are conducted with different non-stationary RL problems to validate our four major hypotheses: (a) longer phase durations favor multi-policies, (b) the heterogeneity between phases increases the burden on single policy, (c) multi-policies need sufficient data for each phase, and (d) environment-specific transition dynamics between phases can affect which policy is preferable.

We investigate noise disparity in multi-class speech classification tasks and develop a strategy to prevent classifiers from exploiting class-dependent noise characteristics. Building on our previous work for binary classification, we introduce a multi-class cross-augmentation scheme that exposes each class to the noise characteristics of the other classes, thereby removing the association between individual noise conditions and class labels. We compare this training-based approach with speech enhancement (SE) as a preprocessing strategy, which aims to suppress noise-related cues directly from the input. Experiments on multi-class emotion recognition show that cross-augmentation effectively mitigates the effect of noise disparity across a range of signal-to-noise-ratios, while SE has a detrimental effect on model performance.

Pinching-antenna systems (PASS) offer flexible radiation points for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), but existing designs largely assume continuous antenna placement, which may be impractical with pre-installed hardware. We investigate a discrete-activation multi-waveguide PASS-ISAC system that selects sparse transmit and receive pinching antennas (TPAs/RPAs) from predefined locations. We formulate a communication-rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing beamforming and TPA/RPA activation under transmit-power, activation, and sensing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) constraints. To solve this nonconvex problem, we develop a low-complexity joint discrete pinching-antenna activation and beamforming optimization (JDPABO) algorithm based on alternating optimization, successive convex approximation, and reweighted $\ell_1$ minimization. Simulations show that JDPABO approaches continuous-placement performance at low sensing SNR requirements and outperforms fixed activation schemes with sparse PA activation.

Automatic dysarthric speech detection approaches can support traditional clinical diagnosis, which relies on costly and time-consuming evaluation by a speech and language pathologist. Existing automatic approaches predominantly rely on deep learning (DL). More recently, Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) have emerged as a promising alternative given their strong performance across various tasks, but their application to dysarthric speech detection has not yet been established. We propose a framework that fine-tunes LALMs for dysarthric speech detection on speech recordings combined with textual information comprising low-level acoustic features and speaker demographics. Across two LALMs, our framework outperforms DL-based baselines, with Qwen2-Audio-Instruct achieving state-of-the-art performance. An ablation study shows that incorporating acoustic features and speaker demographics during fine-tuning improves LALM performance, while LALMs alone exhibit only chance-level zero-shot performance. These findings establish an effective approach for adapting LALMs to dysarthric speech detection.

Lung ultrasound (LUS) is attractive for tuberculosis (TB) screening at primary-care level, but labelled cohorts are small. Echocardiography carries no such constraint, while sharing the same underlying ultrasound imaging physics, signal processing and B-mode appearance as LUS. We ask whether an encoder pretrained on that high-resource ultrasound domain carries representations that remain usable in the low-resource one. Only the encoder varies, across seventeen encoders spanning three architecture families. Among them, a latent-predictive video encoder pretrained on generic video (V-JEPA2-L) and its echocardiography counterpart (EchoJEPA-L) differ in pretraining corpus alone. The choice among these encoders does not resolve the classification, the whole family spanning 2.50 percentage points against a measurement resolution of 2.71. What moves the task instead is feature conditioning. Standardising the features between the encoder and the classifier improves all seventeen encoders by a mean of +1.23 percentage points at $p=1.5\times10^{-5}$. On the held-out test set every encoder selected on the development folds stands above the baseline system by up to +2.57 percentage points of area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), and specificity at 90% sensitivity reaches 79.3% against 60.3%. The contrast specified in advance, EchoJEPA-L against V-JEPA2-L, measures -0.16 percentage points at $p=0.926$. We therefore find no evidence that shared ultrasonic physics alone makes echocardiography a more productive pretraining corpus than generic video, and any advantage, if present, is smaller than this cohort can resolve. The video encoders receive replicated still images, however, so whether this absence of an effect reflects the pretraining domain or a video encoder applied to static frames cannot be separated. The limiting factor is the labelled cohort rather than the encoder.

Power grids are beginning to host AI data centers whose demand can change abruptly and in a correlated way, and operators and planners must decide whether existing controllers can absorb the resulting transients and where new flexibility is worth installing. We cast this as a question in stochastic control: how far from optimal is an implementable controller? For controlled diffusions with affine, state-independent actuation, additive and possibly degenerate noise and quadratic control cost, any Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) subsolution bounds the optimal cost from below and simulation bounds the deployed cost from above, so their gap certifies the permissible suboptimality. We construct subsolutions from path-integral control by completing the control geometry: enlarging the control Gramian until it matches the physical noise makes the problem linearly solvable, and its Feynman-Kac value is an automatic lower bound whose HJB residual is exactly the energy of the fictitious control. A dual noise-deflation construction can be tighter but requires a curvature condition. The geometry yields planning rules: price control authority in proportion to local noise variance, and use shadow values to guide sparse reinforcement. For nonlinear stochastic swing dynamics of the IEEE 118-bus system after a severe load loss, a simple generator controller is certified within 2.8% of optimal under homogeneous forcing; under heterogeneous forcing the gap is 39% with uniform prices and 1.2% once the same total authority is repriced, before any hardware is added.

Contraction analysis of dynamical systems turns a global convergence problem into a local one. If the variational system is stable in a uniform sense, then all trajectories of the original system converge toward each other. This paper develops a stochastic analogue for continuous-time stochastic systems, where convergence is measured by Wasserstein distance between probability laws. The key step is to employ mean-square differentiation to construct stochastic variational dynamics. Its uniform $L_2$ stability can then be integrated along curves of initial conditions, yielding Wasserstein contraction of the associated probability laws. This yields criteria formulated in terms of differential Lyapunov functions, and on manifolds, it leads to intrinsic Riemannian formulations. A distinctive feature of the stochastic setting is that the coupling of the noises becomes a design freedom. To exploit this freedom, we introduce an orthogonal differential coupling that extends the framework beyond synchronous coupling. The resulting criterion explicitly exposes how the curvature of the state space enters the contraction mechanism and, in the orthonormal-frame case, recovers the classical Ricci-curvature structure. Finally, we apply the framework to stochastic control on a compact manifold. By introducing stochastic control input, we overcome a deterministic obstruction to global stabilization. That is, a system that cannot be globally stabilized through smooth time-invariant deterministic feedback is rendered globally contracting in $W_2$, and its steady state distribution can be made arbitrarily concentrated around a prescribed target equilibrium.

Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology is considered to be a viable method for spectral efficiency and data rate enhancement in wireless communications. This article presents a two-element capsule antenna with orthogonal current distributions for polarization multiplexing in a wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) application at 915 MHz. The proposed antenna was evaluated in a MIMO link where it served as the transmitter and an existing on-body antenna was the receiver. The performance was assessed in two distinct environments: an anatomically accurate human body model using full-wave (FW) simulations, and a homogeneous liquid tissue phantom, using both FW simulations and measurements. The former was used to evaluate the performance in a realistic environment and to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed capsule antenna against existing two-element antennas in the literature, while the latter aimed at verifying the antenna design by comparison of simulated and measured MIMO links. We studied channel capacity and eigenvalues for the comparisons. The MIMO link with the proposed antenna provided nearly doubled median channel capacity relative to a baseline single-input-single-output link, consistently in the simulations and measurements. Our results prove the suitability of the proposed antenna for polarization multiplexing and, in terms of channel capacity, establish it as the best conformal two-element capsule antenna design at 915 MHz.

Quantum computing is a promising paradigm for problems that are challenging for classical machines, but realizing that promise requires far more qubits than a single processor can offer. Distributed quantum computing (DQC) scales out by connecting multiple quantum processing units (QPUs), at the cost of making entanglement the scarce resource: every remote gate consumes a Bell pair, and inter-QPU links generate Bell pairs at finite rates orders of magnitude slower than local gates. Since quantum programs are executed repeatedly, this rate bounds how fast shots complete and thus how fast results are obtained. Existing DQC compilers emit a single implementation per circuit, so throughput is capped by its busiest link while other links stay idle. We observe that alternative compilations of the same circuit are logically equivalent yet stress different links; executing them concurrently and pooling their samples converts idle Bell pairs into additional shots. We formulate the joint selection of compilations and allocation of shots under per-link Bell-pair capacities as Candidate-Constrained Max-Shot Allocation (CMA), prove it NP-hard, and solve it with a dynamic program and its approximate variant AppDP, a compact MILP, and a greedy heuristic Effi. In simulation on six-QPU networks, multi-compilation raises throughput by 2-4.5* over the single compilation and correspondingly improves output fidelity under equal Bell-pair budgets. On hardware, it increases measured fidelity by up to 93% and reaches the single-compilation fidelity in up to 10* less time. Scaling to 36 QPUs and 144-qubit circuits, MILP improves throughput over the single compilation by 76.8% on average across 48 configurations while Effi allocates in milliseconds.