The proliferation of capable and efficient machine learning (ML) models marks one of the strongest methodological shifts in signal processing (SP) in its nearly 100-year history. ML models support the development of SP systems that represent complex, nonlinear relationships with high predictive accuracy. Adapting these models often requires sequential inference, which differs both theoretically and methodologically from the usual paradigm of ML, where data are often assumed independent and identically distributed. Gaussian processes (GPs) are a flexible yet principled framework for modeling random functions, and they have become increasingly relevant to SP as statistical and ML methods assume a more prominent role. We provide a self-contained, tutorial-style overview of GPs, with a particular focus on recent methodological advances in sequential, incremental, or streaming inference. We introduce these techniques from a signal-processing perspective while bridging them to recent advances in ML. Many of the developments we survey have direct applications to state-space modeling, sequential regression and forecasting, anomaly detection in time series, sequential Bayesian optimization, adaptive and active sensing, and sequential detection and decision-making. By organizing these advances from a signal-processing perspective, we intend to equip practitioners with practical tools and a coherent roadmap for deploying sequential GP models in real-world systems.

This work presents ThermoMesh, a passive thin-film thermoelectric mesh sensor designed to detect and characterize spatio-temporally sparse heat sources through conduction-based thermal imaging. The device integrates thermoelectric junctions with linear or nonlinear interlayer resistive elements to perform simultaneous sensing and in-sensor compression. We focus on the single-event (1-sparse) operation and define four performance metrics: range, efficiency, sensitivity, and accuracy. Numerical modeling shows that a linear resistive interlayer flattens the sensitivity distribution and improves minimum sensitivity by approximately tenfold for a $16\times16$ mesh. Nonlinear temperature-dependent interlayers further enhance minimum sensitivity at scale: a ceramic negative-temperature-coefficient (NTC) layer over 973--1273~K yields a $\sim14{,}500\times$ higher minimum sensitivity than the linear design at a $200\times200$ mesh, while a VO$_2$ interlayer modeled across its metal--insulator transition (MIT) over 298--373~K yields a $\sim24\times$ improvement. Using synthetic 1-sparse datasets with white boundary-channel noise at a signal-to-noise ratio of 40~dB, the VO$_2$ case achieved $98\%$ localization accuracy, a mean absolute temperature error of $0.23$~K, and a noise-equivalent temperature (NET) of $0.07$~K. For the ceramic-NTC case no localization errors were observed under the tested conditions, with a mean absolute temperature error of $1.83$~K and a NET of $1.49$~K. These results indicate that ThermoMesh could enable energy-efficient embedded thermal sensing in scenarios where conventional infrared imaging is limited, such as molten-droplet detection or hot-spot monitoring in harsh environments.

This paper introduces a general approximate alternating simulation relation (\emph{$\varepsilon$-gAAS relation}) for continuous-time systems, which relaxes existing simulation relations to tolerate larger mismatches between abstract and concrete models. The definition of gAAS for continuous-time systems is first proposed, and its properties are investigated. Then, a control refinement method is developed to enable hierarchical control for the gAAS relation. Finally, case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, highlighting its advantages over existing methods.

The rapid electrification and intelligence of modern transportation systems place stringent demands on the electromagnetic compatibility, reliability, and adaptability of automotive power electronics. In electric and autonomous vehicles, electromagnetic interference (EMI) generated by high-frequency switching power converters can compromise safety-critical functions, in-vehicle communications, and system efficiency under dynamic operating conditions. Conventional passive EMI filters, while robust, are often oversized and lack adaptability, leading to increased weight, volume, and energy losses. This paper proposes an intelligent self-tuning active EMI filtering approach for electrified automotive power systems based on reinforcement learning (RL). The EMI mitigation problem is formulated as a Markov decision process, enabling an RL agent to continuously adapt filter parameters in response to time-varying interference characteristics. To improve robustness and generalisation under complex and non-stationary conditions, a variational autoencoder is employed for compact state representation, while a noise-based exploration mechanism enhances learning efficiency and prevents suboptimal convergence. The proposed method is evaluated using experimentally measured EMI spectra from an automotive electric drive unit within a MATLAB/Simulink co-simulation framework. Results demonstrate consistent EMI attenuation improvements of 25-30 dB across a wide frequency range compared with conventional control strategies and passive filtering solutions. By reducing reliance on oversized passive components and enabling adaptive EMI suppression, the proposed framework supports lightweight, energy-efficient, and reliable power-electronic systems for intelligent and green transportation applications.

Range anxiety and long recharging times remain critical barriers to electric vehicle adoption. Dynamic Inductive Charging (DIC) offers a compelling solution by enabling wireless power transfer while driving, potentially reducing battery size requirements and thus vehicle costs. However, DIC infrastructures are expensive and power-constrained, requiring intelligent resource allocation to maximize user satisfaction and economic viability. We propose a Model Predictive Control framework for optimal power allocation in DIC systems, using edge computing and vehicular communications to prioritize vehicles with critical battery states. The framework is implemented and evaluated through SUMO-based simulations on a realistic 10 km urban scenario in Istanbul, Turkey, under varying traffic intensities. Results demonstrate two critical limitations of uncoordinated allocation. First, resource utilization remains suboptimal despite available power when demand saturates system capacity. Second, when demand exceeds capacity, uniform distribution of power leaves a heavy tail of critically unsatisfied vehicles that may require emergency stops. Our MPC-based strategy addresses both regimes -- maximizing power utilization during saturation through dynamic stripe rebalancing, and improving satisfaction fairness under scarcity by aggressively prioritizing depleted batteries at the expense of well-charged vehicles. The framework and simulation tools are released as open-source to support further research in this emerging domain.

Individualized Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression prediction requires models that use irregular visits, account for censoring, avoid diagnostic leakage, and provide calibrated horizon risks. We propose PROgression-aware MultI-horizon Survival Estimation for Alzheimer's Disease (PROMISE-AD), a leakage-safe survival framework for predicting conversion from cognitively normal (CN) to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and from MCI to AD dementia using ADNI/TADPOLE tabular histories. PROMISE-AD converts pre-index visits into tokens with standardized measurements, missingness masks, longitudinal changes, time-normalized slopes, visit timing, and non-diagnostic categorical attributes. A temporal Transformer fuses global, attention-pooled, and latest-visit representations to estimate a progression score and latent discrete-time mixture hazards. Training combines survival likelihood, horizon-specific focal risk loss, progression ranking, hazard smoothness, and mixture-balance regularization, followed by validation-set isotonic calibration for 1-, 2-, 3-, and 5-year risks. In held-out testing across three seeds, PROMISE-AD achieved an integrated Brier score (IBS) of 0.085 $\pm$ 0.012, C-index of 0.808 $\pm$ 0.015, and mean time-dependent AUC of 0.840 $\pm$ 0.081 for CN-to-MCI conversion, yielding the lowest IBS among compared methods. For MCI-to-AD conversion, PROMISE-AD achieved the highest C-index (0.894 $\pm$ 0.018) and near-ceiling 5-year discrimination (AUROC 0.997 $\pm$ 0.003; AUPRC 0.999 $\pm$ 0.001), although some baselines had lower IBS. Ablations and interpretability supported longitudinal change features, fused temporal representations, mixture hazards, cognitive and functional measures, APOE4 status, and recent conversion-proximal visits. These findings suggest that progression-aware survival modeling can provide interpretable multi-horizon AD conversion risk estimates.

This paper presents a real-world experimental analysis of a modular reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) prototype designed to operate in the 5G N78 band. Unlike most RIS studies in the literature that focus on simulations or controlled setups, the proposed system is validated through three phases consisting of indoor measurements, outdoor long-range tests, and deployment in a live commercial 5G standalone network. The RIS is exploited to enhance coverage in a non-line-of-sight (NLoS) zone, identified through baseline drive tests. Results show promising gains in RSRP and SINR, while also restoring 5G service at user locations where access was previously not available. The results highlight the practical potential of RIS for coverage enhancement in operational 5G networks.

Vehicular sensing-based intelligence has made substantial progress in transportation systems, leading to higher levels of safety and sustainability for smart cities and autonomous systems. This paper proposes a new approach to learn an interactive generalized dynamic Bayesian network (I-GDBN) model aiming to predict future LiDAR sensor blockages from time-sequence-based 3D point cloud perception. During learning, separate GDBN models are trained for various vehicles in normal and blockage situations. To perform the interaction between multiple vehicles, a high-level vocabulary is formed. Initially, during testing, the best generative model for either normal or blockage situations is selected. An interactive Markov jump particle filter (I-MJPF) is then proposed to leverage the probabilistic information provided by the I-GDBN to infer the blockages and detect the abnormalities at the high abstraction level. The proposed interactive model allows better self-aware and explainable capabilities that can adapt to blockage scenarios, which is also helpful when sensors fail to provide observations.

Joint image compression and wireless transmission remain relatively underexplored compared to generic image restoration, despite its importance in practical communication systems. We formulate this problem under an equivalent linear model, and propose Diffusion-OAMP, a training-free reconstruction framework that embeds a pre-trained diffusion model into the OAMP algorithm. In Diffusion-OAMP, the OAMP linear estimator produces pseudo-AWGN observations, while the diffusion model serves as a nonlinear estimator under an SNR-matching rule. This framework offers a way to incorporate multiple generative priors into OAMP. Experiments with varying compression ratios and noise levels show that Diffusion-OAMP performs favorably against classic methods in the evaluated settings.

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication depends on highly directional beamforming, while fast mobility, blockage, and rapid geometry changes in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) scenarios make beam tracking challenging. In cooperative multi-base-station (BS) systems, conventional hierarchical methods usually separate BS selection and beam selection, which may cause error propagation when beam states change abruptly. To address this issue, this paper proposes Cooperative Radio Sensing with Large Language Models (CRS-LLM), a cooperative beam prediction framework for next-step joint BS-beam prediction. CRS-LLM formulates beam tracking as a single classification problem over the joint BS-beam space, avoiding cascaded decision errors. To adapt channel state information (CSI) to large language models, a dual-view CSI tokenizer extracts frequency-domain and delay-domain channel features through a lightweight CNN front-end and temporal tokenization module. A truncated GPT-style backbone is then used for temporal modeling with parameter-efficient adaptation. In addition, a transition-aware switch-gated predictor combines a stable branch, a residual flip branch, and a low-rank transition prior to capture both smooth evolution and abrupt changes. Simulation results show that CRS-LLM outperforms CSI-Transformer, Hierarchical BS-Beam, and representative CNN- and recurrent-neural-network baselines in Top-1 accuracy and normalized beam gain under different SNR conditions, while also showing strong few-shot performance and promising zero-shot transferability.

Animals hear and vocalize across frequency ranges that differ substantially from humans, often extending into the ultrasonic domain. Yet most computational bioacoustics systems rely on audio models pre-trained at 16 kHz, restricting their usable bandwidth to the 0-8 kHz baseband and discarding higher-frequency information present in many bioacoustic recordings. We investigate a multi-band encoding framework that decomposes the full spectrum of animal calls into band features and fuses them into a unified representation. Similarity analyses on models show that certain encoders produce decorrelated band embeddings that improve class separation after fusion. Classification experiments on three bioacoustic datasets using eight pre-trained models and five fusion strategies show that fused representations consistently outperform the baseband and time-expansion baselines on two datasets, showing the potential of multi-band methods for full-spectrum encoding of animal calls.

This paper presents an expert-guided active-inference-inspired framework for adaptive UAV swarm trajectory planning. The proposed method converts multi-UAV trajectory design from a repeated combinatorial optimization problem into a hierarchical probabilistic inference problem. In the offline phase, a genetic-algorithm planner with repulsive-force collision avoidance (GA--RF) generates expert demonstrations, which are abstracted into Mission, Route, and Motion dictionaries. These dictionaries are used to learn a probabilistic world model that captures how expert mission allocations induce route orders and how route orders induce motion-level behaviors. During online operation, the UAV swarm evaluates candidate actions by forming posterior beliefs over symbolic states and minimizing KL-divergence-based abnormality indicators with respect to expert-derived reference distributions. This enables mission allocation, route insertion, motion adaptation, and collision-aware replanning without rerunning the offline optimizer. Bayesian state estimators, including EKF and PF modules, are integrated at the motion level to improve trajectory correction under uncertainty. Simulation results show that the proposed framework preserves expert-like planning structure while producing smoother and more stable behavior than modified Q-learning. Additional validation using real-flight UAV trajectory data demonstrates that the learned world model can correct symbolic predictions under noisy and non-smooth observations, supporting its applicability to adaptive UAV swarm autonomy.

This paper studies data-driven approaches to the continuous-time linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problem based on two existing parameterizations, namely a closed-loop (CL) parameterization from behavioral system theory and an integral reinforcement learning (IRL) parameterization. The CL parameterization characterizes the closed-loop system via a matrix that satisfies equality constraints. While this parameterization has been extensively studied for discrete-time systems, we adapt key results to the continuous-time setting and develop a policy iteration (PI) scheme, derive a data-driven continuous-time algebraic Riccati equation (CARE), and introduce an alternative convex problem formulation. The IRL parameterization utilizes off-policy data to perform policy evaluation, which is then used for PI or value iteration. Within the IRL framework, we derive a policy gradient flow and propose convex reformulations of the LQR problem. Finally, we provide a unified treatment of these parameterizations that enables a systematic understanding of existing approaches and clarifies their structural relationships.

We introduce LRS-VoxMM, an in-the-wild benchmark for audio-visual speech recognition (AVSR). The benchmark is derived from VoxMM, a dataset of diverse real-world spoken conversations with human-annotated transcriptions. We select AVSR-suitable samples and preprocess them in an LRS-style format for direct use in existing AVSR pipelines. Compared with commonly used benchmarks, LRS-VoxMM covers a more diverse range of scenarios and acoustic conditions. We also release distorted evaluation sets with additive noise, reverberation, and bandwidth limitation to support evaluation under severe acoustic degradation. Experimental results show that LRS-VoxMM is considerably harder than LRS3 and that the contribution of visual information becomes more evident as the audio signal degrades. LRS-VoxMM supports more realistic AVSR benchmarking and encourages further research on the role of visual information in challenging real-world conditions.

We present a unifying Nearly Asymptotically Invariant Manifold (NAIM) framework for understanding Nesterovs Accelerated Gradient (NAG) method. By lifting the first-order gradient flow into a second-order phase space we construct a NAIM a slow, attracting graph and show that acceleration emerges from a curvature aware perturbation of this graph. The evolving slope of the perturbed manifold is governed by a Differential Riccati Equation (DRE), which enforces strict tangency of the vector field to the manifold surface. In the quadratic case the DRE reduces to an Algebraic Riccati Equation (ARE), and the requirement of spectral resonance equal contraction rates across all curvature modes uniquely determines the damping coefficient, directly yielding the continuous time Nesterov ODE. Fenichels theorem then extends this picture rigorously to general smooth, strongly convex landscapes: normal hyperbolicity guarantees persistence of the accelerated manifold despite varying Hessian curvature. The method is further extended to unified geometric derivation of NAG methods for smooth convex and strongly convex optimization in the discrete case. We exploit the underlying geometric structure and derive both cases from the same principle of preserving the projective structure under discretization process. A Lie Trotter splitting separates the linear dissipative dynamics from the nonlinear gradient flow. The dissipative subsystem is integrated by the Cayley (bilinear) transform, which preserves the underlying projective (Mobius) structure unconditionally and produces the classical Nesterov momentum coefficient as the unique Pade multiplier. For the convex case, projective flatness (vanishing Schwarzian derivative) uniquely selects the time-varying damping recovering the canonical Nesterov ODE for convex functions.

We study the design of functional incentive mechanisms for dynamical systems, in which a leader designs a fixed incentive function to motivate a self-interested follower to actuate the system beneficially over an extended horizon, without real-time revision of the incentive. This stands in contrast to the adaptive paradigm, in which the incentive is itself a continuously updated control variable. We formalize the problem as a discrete-time bi-level optimal control problem and derive analytical results for the linear-quadratic case with bilinear incentives and a myopic follower. Specifically, we establish a necessary and sufficient stability condition for the induced closed-loop system, derive a closed-form expression for the gradient of the expected leader cost with respect to the incentive parameter matrix, and obtain a fully closed-form cost expression in the scalar setting. Based on the latter, explicit characterizations of the optimal incentive parameter are provided in two asymptotic regimes: the infinite-horizon limit and the limit of high follower cost. For long horizons, the optimal incentive is shown to become independent of the follower's private cost parameter, with direct implications for robust mechanism design under private information.

In this paper, we extend our method [1] for FMCW radar mutual interference mitigation (IM) based on the discrete fractional Fourier transform (DFrFT). Firstly, we propose a radar signal processing chain including our DFrFT-based IM for real-valued receivers, which we compare to reference algorithms on a synthetic data set. We then reduce computational complexity by reformulating DFrFT-based IM in terms of sparse update signals, which enables mitigation of multiple interferences simultaneously. Finally, we conduct a case study on measurement data and show that our method is compatible with real-world environments.

We propose EdgeSpike, a co-designed spiking neural network (SNN) framework for autonomous low-power sensing in edge Internet of Things (IoT) architectures. EdgeSpike unifies (i) a hybrid surrogate-gradient and direct-encoding training pipeline, (ii) a hardware-aware neural architecture search (NAS) bounded by per-inference energy and memory budgets, (iii) an event-driven runtime targeting Intel Loihi 2, SpiNNaker 2, and commodity ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers with custom spike-sparse SIMD kernels, and (iv) a lightweight local plasticity rule enabling continual on-device adaptation without backpropagation. The framework is evaluated across five sensing tasks (keyword spotting, vibration-based machine fault detection, surface electromyography gesture recognition, 77 GHz radar human-activity classification, and structural-health acoustic-emission monitoring) on three hardware targets. EdgeSpike achieves a mean classification accuracy of 91.4%, within 1.2 percentage points (pp) of strong INT8 convolutional neural network (CNN) baselines (mean 92.6%), while reducing energy per inference by 18x to 47x on neuromorphic hardware (mean 31x) and by 4.6x to 7.9x on Cortex-M (mean 6.1x). End-to-end latency remains at or below 9.4 ms across all 15 task-hardware configurations. A seven-month, 64-node wireless field deployment confirms a 6.3x extension in projected battery lifetime (from 312 to 1978 days at 2 Wh per node) and bounded accuracy degradation under seasonal drift (0.7 pp with on-device adaptation versus 2.1 pp without). Hardware-aware NAS evaluates 8400 candidates and yields a 12-point Pareto front. EdgeSpike will be released as open source with reproducible training pipelines, hardware-portable runtimes, and benchmark suites.

We study the problem of distributed control of large-scale robotic swarms which can be modeled as continuum densities evolving under the continuity equation. We propose a formalization of distributed controllers as (generally nonlinear) differential operators, in which control inputs depend only on local information about the state and environment. This perspective yields a fully local, PDE-based framework for analysis and design. We apply this framework to the problem of stabilizing a swarm density around an arbitrary target density, and investigate fundamental limitations of low-order distributed controllers in achieving this goal. In particular, we show that controllers which act in a purely pointwise manner are incompatible with natural system symmetries and strong forms of stability, and must rely on mixing-type behavior to achieve stabilization. In contrast, we present a simple first-order control law which achieves stabilization and enjoys substantially stronger properties.

Nonlinear Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy (NRUS) experiments that rely on repeated sampling of resonance curves are inherently sensitive to measurement protocol due to evolution of material parameters caused by fast and slow dynamic effects. We introduce a model-assisted discrete-time resonance tracking method that maintains a system at its instantaneous resonance condition without the need to acquire full frequency sweeps. Resonance is defined through a prescribed phase relation between excitation and response, and the excitation frequency is iteratively updated using a linearized frequency--phase model. The procedure allows controlled suppression of transient wave buildup using optional feedforward correction with respect to an external control parameter. The method is demonstrated on NRUS and on conditioning--relaxation protocol conducted on a sandstone bar, providing estimates of resonance frequency and damping. Comparison with conventional approaches shows that measurement speed and mode stability significantly influence the inferred nonlinear indicators. The proposed framework is not limited to nonlinear acoustics and can be applied to arbitrary resonant systems with slowly evolving parameters.

Upper-limb exoskeletons (ULEs) have the potential to restore functional independence in individuals with severe motor impairments; however, the clinical relevance of wrist degrees of freedom (DoF), particularly abduction-adduction (Ab-Ad), remains insufficiently evaluated. This study investigates the functional and user-perceived impact of wrist Ab-Ad assistance during two activities of daily living (ADLs). Wrist Ab-Ad assistance in a tongue-controlled 6-DoF ULE, EXOTIC2, was evaluated in a within-subject study involving one individual with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and five individuals with spinal cord injury. Participants performed drinking and scratch stick leveling tasks with EXOTIC2 under two conditions: with and without wrist Ab-Ad assistance. Outcome measure included task success, task completion time, kinematic measures, and a usability questionnaire capturing comfort, functional perception, and acceptance. Enabling wrist Ab-Ad improved task success rates across both ADLs, with consistent reductions in spillage (from 77.8% spillages to 22.2%) and failed placements (from 66.7% to 16.7%). Participants utilized task-specific subsets of the available wrist range of motion, indicating that effective control within functional ranges was more critical than maximal joint excursion. Questionnaire responses indicated no increase in discomfort with the additional DoF and reflected perceived improvements in task performance. In conclusion, wrist Ab-Ad assistance enhances functional task performance in assistive exoskeleton use without compromising user comfort. However, its effectiveness depends on task context, control usability, and individual user strategies. This study provides clinically relevant, user-centered evidence supporting the inclusion of wrist Ab-Ad in ULEs, emphasizing the importance of balancing functional capability with usability in assistive device design.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a key enabler for next-generation wireless communication systems, offering powerful tools to cope with the increasing complexity, dynamics, and heterogeneity of modern wireless environments. To illustrate the role and impact of AI in wireless communications, this paper takes collaborative spectrum sensing (CSS) in cognitive and intelligent wireless networks as a representative application and surveys recent advances from an AI perspective. We first introduce the fundamentals of CSS, including the general framework, classical detector design, fusion strategies and evaluation metrics. Then, we present an overview of the state-of-the-art research on AI-driven CSS, classified into three categories according to learning paradigms: discriminative deep learning (DL), generative DL models, and deep reinforcement learning (DRL). Building on this, we explore AI-empowered semantic communication (SemCom) as a paradigm-shifting solution for CSS. By extracting and transmitting task-relevant features, SemCom upgrades CSS from a computation-centric approach to a highly efficient joint communication and computation framework. Both single-user and multi-user SemCom scenarios are elaborated in detail. Finally, we discuss limitations, open challenges, and future research directions at the intersection of AI and wireless communication.

In this work, we focus on front-end design for speech deepfake detectors, the component that determines the discriminative acoustic cues provided to the classifier. Existing approaches are primarily categorized into two types. Hand-crafted filterbank features are transparent but limited in capturing higher-level information. SSL features, in turn, lack interpretability and may overlook fine-grained spectral anomalies. We propose the WST-X series, a novel family of feature extractors that combines the best of both worlds via the wavelet scattering transform (WST), which cascades wavelet convolutions with modulus nonlinearities to produce deformation-stable, multi-scale features. Experiments on the recent Deepfake-Eval-2024 benchmark, together with cross-dataset evaluations on the SpoofCeleb and In-the-Wild, show that WST-X outperforms existing front-ends by a wide margin. Our analysis reveals that a small averaging scale ($J$), combined with high-frequency and directional resolutions ($Q$, $L$), is critical for capturing subtle artifacts. This underscores the value of stable and translation-invariant features for speech deepfake detection. The code is available at https://github.com/xxuan-acoustics/WST-X-Series.

Integrating Sensing and Communications (ISAC) has emerged as a promising paradigm for Sixth Generation (6G) and Wi-Fi 7 networks, with the communication-centric approach being particularly attractive due to its compatibility with current standards. Typical communication signals comprise both deterministic known pilot signals and random unknown data payloads. Most existing approaches either rely solely on pilots for positioning, thereby ignoring the radar information present in the received data symbols that constitute the majority of each frame, or rely on data decisions, which bounds positioning performance to that of the communication system. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel method that extracts positioning information from data payloads without decoding them. We consider an opportunistic scenario in which communication signals from a user are captured by a passive radar equipped with a uniform linear array of antennas. We show that, in this setting, the estimation can be efficiently implemented using Fast Fourier Transforms. Finally, we demonstrate superior localization performance compared to existing methods in the literature through numerical simulations.

Hierarchical LiDAR geometry compression encodes voxel occupancies from low to high bit-depths, yet prior methods treat each depth independently and re-estimate local context from coordinates at every level, limiting compression efficiency. We present ELiC, a real-time framework that combines cross-bit-depth feature propagation, a Bag-of-Encoders (BoE) selection scheme, and a Morton-order-preserving hierarchy. Cross-bit-depth propagation reuses features extracted at denser, lower depths to support prediction at sparser, higher depths. BoE selects, per depth, the most suitable coding network from a small pool, adapting capacity to observed occupancy statistics without training a separate model for each level. The Morton hierarchy maintains global Z-order across depth transitions, eliminating per-level sorting and reducing latency. Together these components improve entropy modeling and computation efficiency, yielding state-of-the-art compression at real-time throughput on Ford and SemanticKITTI. Code and pretrained models are available at https://github.com/moolgom/ELiCv1.

To enhance the performance of aerial-ground networks, this paper proposes an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) framework for multi-UAV systems. In our model, ground base stations (BSs) cooperatively serve multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), employing a dynamic time-division strategy where beam scanning for sensing precedes data communication in each time slot. To maximize the sum communication rate while satisfying a mission-level cumulative radar mutual information (MI) requirement, we jointly optimize the UAV trajectories, communication and sensing power allocation, and the time-division ratio. The resulting highly coupled non-convex optimization problem is efficiently solved using an alternating optimization (AO) and successive convex approximation (SCA) framework, which yields a non-decreasing objective sequence and convergence to a finite objective value under the adopted surrogate-based iterative procedure. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that our proposed joint design significantly outperforms benchmark schemes with static trajectories, partially optimized resources, or non-cooperative single-BS transmission. Furthermore, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis reveals the distinct mechanisms by which sensing thresholds and the number of UAVs influence resource allocation and spatial organization, highlighting the critical importance of dynamic, multi-dimensional resource management for effectively navigating the sensing-communication trade-off in low-altitude economies.

Machine learning approaches for speech enhancement are becoming increasingly expressive, enabling ever more powerful modifications of input signals. In this paper, we demonstrate that this expressiveness introduces a vulnerability: advanced speech enhancement models can be susceptible to adversarial attacks. Specifically, we show that adversarial noise, carefully crafted and psychoacoustically masked by the original input, can be injected such that the enhanced speech output conveys an entirely different semantic meaning. We experimentally verify that contemporary predictive speech enhancement models can indeed be manipulated in this way. Furthermore, we highlight that diffusion models with stochastic samplers exhibit inherent robustness to such adversarial attacks by design.

Image quality assessment (IQA) is crucial in the evaluation stage of novel algorithms operating on images, including traditional and machine learning based methods. Due to the lack of available quality-rated medical images, most commonly used full-reference IQA measures have been developed and tested for natural images. Reported pitfalls and inconsistencies arising when applying such measures for medical images are not surprising, as they rely on different properties than natural images. In photoacoustic imaging (PAI), especially, standard benchmarking approaches for assessing the quality of image reconstructions are lacking. PAI is a multi-physics imaging modality, in which two inverse problems have to be solved, which makes the application of IQA measures uniquely challenging due to both, acoustic and optical, artifacts. To support the development and testing of IQA measures we assembled PhotIQA, a data set consisting of 1134 photoacoustic images. The images were rated by five experts across five quality properties in a full-reference setting, where the detailed rating enables usage beyond PAI. The data set with the images and corresponding ratings is publicly available on Zenodo.

Sustainability-targeting attacks (STA) are a growing threat to cyber-physical system (CPS)-based infrastructure, as sustainability goals become an integral part of CPS objectives. STA can be especially disruptive if it impacts the long-term sustainability cost of CPS, while its performance goals remain within acceptable parameters. Thus, in this work, we propose a general mathematical framework for modeling such stealthy STA and derive the feasibility conditions for generating a minimum-effort maximum-impact STA on a linear CPS using a max-min formulation. A gradient ascent descent algorithm is used to construct this attack policy with an added constraint on stealthiness. An illustrative example has been simulated to demonstrate the impact of the generated attack on the sustainability cost of the CPS.

The efficient multiangle centered discrete fractional Fourier transform (MA-CDFRFT) [1] has proven to be a useful tool for time-frequency analysis; in this paper, we generalize the MA-CDFRFT to general M -periodic transforms, which, among others, include the standard discrete Fourier, discrete sine, discrete cosine, Hadamard and discrete Hartley transform. Furthermore, we exploit the symmetries inherent to the MA-CDFRFT and our novel multiangle standard discrete fractional Fourier transform (MA-DFRFT) to halve the number of FFTs needed to compute these transforms, which paves the way for applications in resource-constrained environments.