Björn Ottersten

Marcele O. K. Mendonca, Flor G. Ortiz-Gomez, Jorge Querol et al.

Satellite communications, essential for modern connectivity, extend access to maritime, aeronautical, and remote areas where terrestrial networks are unfeasible. Current GEO systems distribute power and bandwidth uniformly across beams using multi-beam footprints with fractional frequency reuse. However, recent research reveals the limitations of this approach in heterogeneous traffic scenarios, leading to inefficiencies. To address this, this paper presents a machine learning (ML)-based approach to Radio Resource Management (RRM). We treat the RRM task as a regression ML problem, integrating RRM objectives and constraints into the loss function that the ML algorithm aims at minimizing. Moreover, we introduce a context-aware ML metric that evaluates the ML model's performance but also considers the impact of its resource allocation decisions on the overall performance of the communication system.

Ke He, Thang X. Vu, Le He et al.

The rise of ultra-dense LEO constellations creates a complex and asynchronous network environment, driven by their massive scale, dynamic topologies, and significant delays. This unique complexity demands an adaptive packet routing algorithm that is asynchronous, risk-aware, and capable of balancing diverse and often conflicting QoS objectives in a decentralized manner. However, existing methods fail to address this need, as they typically rely on impractical synchronous decision-making and/or risk-oblivious approaches. To tackle this gap, we introduce PRIMAL, an event-driven multi-agent routing framework designed specifically to allow each satellite to act independently on its own event-driven timeline, while managing the risk of worst-case performance degradation via a principled primal-dual approach. This is achieved by enabling agents to learn the full cost distribution of the targeted QoS objectives and constrain tail-end risks. Extensive simulations on a LEO constellation with 1584 satellites validate its superiority in effectively optimizing latency and balancing load. Compared to a recent risk-oblivious baseline, it reduces queuing delay by over 70%, and achieves a nearly 12 ms end-to-end delay reduction in loaded scenarios. This is accomplished by resolving the core conflict between naive shortest-path finding and congestion avoidance, highlighting such autonomous risk-awareness as a key to robust routing.

Jinshuo Zhang, Yafei Wang, Xinping Yi et al.

Although symbol-level precoding (SLP) based on constructive interference (CI) exploitation offers performance gains, its high complexity remains a bottleneck. This paper addresses this challenge with an end-to-end deep learning (DL) framework with low inference complexity that leverages the structure of the optimal SLP solution in the closed-form and its inherent tensor equivariance (TE), where TE denotes that a permutation of the input induces the corresponding permutation of the output. Building upon the computationally efficient model-based formulations, as well as their known closed-form solutions, we analyze their relationship with linear precoding (LP) and investigate the corresponding optimality condition. We then construct a mapping from the problem formulation to the solution and prove its TE, based on which the designed networks reveal a specific parameter-sharing pattern that delivers low computational complexity and strong generalization. Leveraging these, we propose the backbone of the framework with an attention-based TE module, achieving linear computational complexity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that such a framework is also applicable to imperfect CSI scenarios, where we design a TE-based network to map the CSI, statistics, and symbols to auxiliary variables. Simulation results show that the proposed framework captures substantial performance gains of optimal SLP, while achieving an approximately 80-times speedup over conventional methods and maintaining strong generalization across user numbers and symbol block lengths.

Arsham Mostaani, Thang X. Vu, Hamed Habibi et al.

With countless promising applications in various domains such as IoT and industry 4.0, task-oriented communication design (TOCD) is getting accelerated attention from the research community. This paper presents a novel approach for designing scalable task-oriented quantization and communications in cooperative multi-agent systems (MAS). The proposed approach utilizes the TOCD framework and the value of information (VoI) concept to enable efficient communication of quantized observations among agents while maximizing the average return performance of the MAS, a parameter that quantifies the MAS's task effectiveness. The computational complexity of learning the VoI, however, grows exponentially with the number of agents. Thus, we propose a three-step framework: i) learning the VoI (using reinforcement learning (RL)) for a two-agent system, ii) designing the quantization policy for an $N$-agent MAS using the learned VoI for a range of bit-budgets and, (iii) learning the agents' control policies using RL while following the designed quantization policies in the earlier step. We observe that one can reduce the computational cost of obtaining the value of information by exploiting insights gained from studying a similar two-agent system - instead of the original $N$-agent system. We then quantize agents' observations such that their more valuable observations are communicated more precisely. Our analytical results show the applicability of the proposed framework under a wide range of problems. Numerical results show striking improvements in reducing the computational complexity of obtaining VoI needed for the TOCD in a MAS problem without compromising the average return performance of the MAS.

Van-Dinh Nguyen, Symeon Chatzinotas, Bjorn Ottersten et al.

Federated learning (FL) is capable of performing large distributed machine learning tasks across multiple edge users by periodically aggregating trained local parameters. To address key challenges of enabling FL over a wireless fog-cloud system (e.g., non-i.i.d. data, users' heterogeneity), we first propose an efficient FL algorithm based on Federated Averaging (called FedFog) to perform the local aggregation of gradient parameters at fog servers and global training update at the cloud. Next, we employ FedFog in wireless fog-cloud systems by investigating a novel network-aware FL optimization problem that strikes the balance between the global loss and completion time. An iterative algorithm is then developed to obtain a precise measurement of the system performance, which helps design an efficient stopping criteria to output an appropriate number of global rounds. To mitigate the straggler effect, we propose a flexible user aggregation strategy that trains fast users first to obtain a certain level of accuracy before allowing slow users to join the global training updates. Extensive numerical results using several real-world FL tasks are provided to verify the theoretical convergence of FedFog. We also show that the proposed co-design of FL and communication is essential to substantially improve resource utilization while achieving comparable accuracy of the learning model.

Alexandre Saint, Anis Kacem, Kseniya Cherenkova et al.

The SHApe Recovery from Partial textured 3D scans challenge, SHARP 2020, is the first edition of a challenge fostering and benchmarking methods for recovering complete textured 3D scans from raw incomplete data. SHARP 2020 is organised as a workshop in conjunction with ECCV 2020. There are two complementary challenges, the first one on 3D human scans, and the second one on generic objects. Challenge 1 is further split into two tracks, focusing, first, on large body and clothing regions, and, second, on fine body details. A novel evaluation metric is proposed to quantify jointly the shape reconstruction, the texture reconstruction and the amount of completed data. Additionally, two unique datasets of 3D scans are proposed, to provide raw ground-truth data for the benchmarks. The datasets are released to the scientific community. Moreover, an accompanying custom library of software routines is also released to the scientific community. It allows for processing 3D scans, generating partial data and performing the evaluation. Results of the competition, analysed in comparison to baselines, show the validity of the proposed evaluation metrics, and highlight the challenging aspects of the task and of the datasets. Details on the SHARP 2020 challenge can be found at https://cvi2.uni.lu/sharp2020/.

Saeid Sedighi, Kumar Vijay Mishra, M. R. Bhavani Shankar et al.

Several Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications provide location-based services, wherein it is critical to obtain accurate position estimates by aggregating information from individual sensors. In the recently proposed narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) standard, which trades off bandwidth to gain wide coverage, the location estimation is compounded by the low sampling rate receivers and limited-capacity links. We address both of these NB-IoT drawbacks in the framework of passive sensing devices that receive signals from the target-of-interest. We consider the limiting case where each node receiver employs one-bit analog-to-digital-converters and propose a novel low-complexity nodal delay estimation method using constrained-weighted least squares minimization. To support the low-capacity links to the fusion center (FC), the range estimates obtained at individual sensors are then converted to one-bit data. At the FC, we propose target localization with the aggregated one-bit range vector using both optimal and sub-optimal techniques. The computationally expensive former approach is based on Lasserre's method for multivariate polynomial optimization while the latter employs our less complex iterative joint r\textit{an}ge-\textit{tar}get location \textit{es}timation (ANTARES) algorithm. Our overall one-bit framework not only complements the low NB-IoT bandwidth but also supports the design goal of inexpensive NB-IoT location sensing. Numerical experiments demonstrate feasibility of the proposed one-bit approach with a $0.6$\% increase in the normalized localization error for the small set of $20$-$60$ nodes over the full-precision case. When the number of nodes is sufficiently large ($>80$), the one-bit methods yield the same performance as the full precision.

Yaxiong Yuan, Lei Lei, Thang Xuan Vu et al.

In unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications, the UAV's limited energy supply and storage have triggered the development of intelligent energy-conserving scheduling solutions. In this paper, we investigate energy minimization for UAV-aided communication networks by jointly optimizing data-transmission scheduling and UAV hovering time. The formulated problem is combinatorial and non-convex with bilinear constraints. To tackle the problem, firstly, we provide an optimal relax-and-approximate solution and develop a near-optimal algorithm. Both the proposed solutions are served as offline performance benchmarks but might not be suitable for online operation. To this end, we develop a solution from a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) aspect. The conventional RL/DRL, e.g., deep Q-learning, however, is limited in dealing with two main issues in constrained combinatorial optimization, i.e., exponentially increasing action space and infeasible actions. The novelty of solution development lies in handling these two issues. To address the former, we propose an actor-critic-based deep stochastic online scheduling (AC-DSOS) algorithm and develop a set of approaches to confine the action space. For the latter, we design a tailored reward function to guarantee the solution feasibility. Numerical results show that, by consuming equal magnitude of time, AC-DSOS is able to provide feasible solutions and saves 29.94% energy compared with a conventional deep actor-critic method. Compared to the developed near-optimal algorithm, AC-DSOS consumes around 10% higher energy but reduces the computational time from minute-level to millisecond-level.

Arsham Mostaani, Thang X. Vu, Symeon Chatzinotas et al.

Various applications for inter-machine communications are on the rise. Whether it is for autonomous driving vehicles or the internet of everything, machines are more connected than ever to improve their performance in fulfilling a given task. While in traditional communications the goal has often been to reconstruct the underlying message, under the emerging task-oriented paradigm, the goal of communication is to enable the receiving end to make more informed decisions or more precise estimates/computations. Motivated by these recent developments, in this paper, we perform an indirect design of the communications in a multi-agent system (MAS) in which agents cooperate to maximize the averaged sum of discounted one-stage rewards of a collaborative task. Due to the bit-budgeted communications between the agents, each agent should efficiently represent its local observation and communicate an abstracted version of the observations to improve the collaborative task performance. We first show that this problem can be approximated as a form of data-quantization problem which we call task-oriented data compression (TODC). We then introduce the state-aggregation for information compression algorithm (SAIC) to solve the formulated TODC problem. It is shown that SAIC is able to achieve near-optimal performance in terms of the achieved sum of discounted rewards. The proposed algorithm is applied to a geometric consensus problem and its performance is compared with several benchmarks. Numerical experiments confirm the promise of this indirect design approach for task-oriented multi-agent communications.

Ahmet M. Elbir, Kumar Vijay Mishra, M. R. Bhavani Shankar et al.

Hybrid analog and digital beamforming transceivers are instrumental in addressing the challenge of expensive hardware and high training overheads in the next generation millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) systems. However, lack of fully digital beamforming in hybrid architectures and short coherence times at mm-Wave impose additional constraints on the channel estimation. Prior works on addressing these challenges have focused largely on narrowband channels wherein optimization-based or greedy algorithms were employed to derive hybrid beamformers. In this paper, we introduce a deep learning (DL) approach for channel estimation and hybrid beamforming for frequency-selective, wideband mm-Wave systems. In particular, we consider a massive MIMO Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) system and propose three different DL frameworks comprising convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which accept the raw data of received signal as input and yield channel estimates and the hybrid beamformers at the output. We also introduce both offline and online prediction schemes. Numerical experiments demonstrate that, compared to the current state-of-the-art optimization and DL methods, our approach provides higher spectral efficiency, lesser computational cost and fewer number of pilot signals, and higher tolerance against the deviations in the received pilot data, corrupted channel matrix, and propagation environment.

Konstantinos Papadopoulos, Enjie Ghorbel, Djamila Aouada et al.

This paper extends the Spatial-Temporal Graph Convolutional Network (ST-GCN) for skeleton-based action recognition by introducing two novel modules, namely, the Graph Vertex Feature Encoder (GVFE) and the Dilated Hierarchical Temporal Convolutional Network (DH-TCN). On the one hand, the GVFE module learns appropriate vertex features for action recognition by encoding raw skeleton data into a new feature space. On the other hand, the DH-TCN module is capable of capturing both short-term and long-term temporal dependencies using a hierarchical dilated convolutional network. Experiments have been conducted on the challenging NTU RGB-D-60 and NTU RGB-D 120 datasets. The obtained results show that our method competes with state-of-the-art approaches while using a smaller number of layers and parameters; thus reducing the required training time and memory.

Hassan Afzal, Djamila Aouada, Michel Antunes et al.

Complete and textured 3D reconstruction of dynamic scenes has been facilitated by mapped RGB and depth information acquired by RGB-D cameras based multi-view systems. One of the most critical steps in such multi-view systems is to determine the relative poses of all cameras via a process known as extrinsic calibration. In this work, we propose a sensor fusion framework based on a weighted bi-objective optimization for refinement of extrinsic calibration tailored for RGB-D multi-view systems. The weighted bi-objective cost function, which makes use of 2D information from RGB images and 3D information from depth images, is analytically derived via the Maximum Likelihood (ML) method. The weighting factor appears as a function of noise in 2D and 3D measurements and takes into account the affect of residual errors on the optimization. We propose an iterative scheme to estimate noise variances in 2D and 3D measurements, for simultaneously computing the weighting factor together with the camera poses. An extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the proposed approach shows improved calibration performance as compared to refinement schemes which use only 2D or 3D measurement information.

Yang Yang, Marius Pesavento, Zhi-Quan Luo et al.

In this paper, we propose an inexact block coordinate descent algorithm for large-scale nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems. At each iteration, a particular block variable is selected and updated by inexactly solving the original optimization problem with respect to that block variable. More precisely, a local approximation of the original optimization problem is solved. The proposed algorithm has several attractive features, namely, i) high flexibility, as the approximation function only needs to be strictly convex and it does not have to be a global upper bound of the original function; ii) fast convergence, as the approximation function can be designed to exploit the problem structure at hand and the stepsize is calculated by the line search; iii) low complexity, as the approximation subproblems are much easier to solve and the line search scheme is carried out over a properly constructed differentiable function; iv) guaranteed convergence of a subsequence to a stationary point, even when the objective function does not have a Lipschitz continuous gradient. Interestingly, when the approximation subproblem is solved by a descent algorithm, convergence of a subsequence to a stationary point is still guaranteed even if the approximation subproblem is solved inexactly by terminating the descent algorithm after a finite number of iterations. These features make the proposed algorithm suitable for large-scale problems where the dimension exceeds the memory and/or the processing capability of the existing hardware. These features are also illustrated by several applications in signal processing and machine learning, for instance, network anomaly detection and phase retrieval.

Konstantinos Papadopoulos, Girum Demisse, Enjie Ghorbel et al.

The Dense Trajectories concept is one of the most successful approaches in action recognition, suitable for scenarios involving a significant amount of motion. However, due to noise and background motion, many generated trajectories are irrelevant to the actual human activity and can potentially lead to performance degradation. In this paper, we propose Localized Trajectories as an improved version of Dense Trajectories where motion trajectories are clustered around human body joints provided by RGB-D cameras and then encoded by local Bag-of-Words. As a result, the Localized Trajectories concept provides a more discriminative representation of actions as compared to Dense Trajectories. Moreover, we generalize Localized Trajectories to 3D by using the modalities offered by RGB-D cameras. One of the main advantages of using RGB-D data to generate trajectories is that they include radial displacements that are perpendicular to the image plane. Extensive experiments and analysis are carried out on five different datasets.

Thang X. Vu, Symeon Chatzinotas, Bjorn Ottersten

Blockchain is a merging technology for decentralized management and data security, which was first introduced as the core technology of cryptocurrency, e.g., Bitcoin. Since the first success in financial sector, blockchain has shown great potentials in various domains, e.g., internet of things and mobile networks. In this paper, we propose a novel blockchain-based architecture for content delivery networks (B-CDN), which exploits the advances of the blockchain technology to provide a decentralized and secure platform to connect content providers (CPs) with users. On one hand, the proposed B-CDN will leverage the registration and subscription of the users to different CPs, while guaranteeing the user privacy thanks to virtual identity provided by the blockchain network. On the other hand, the B-CDN creates a public immutable database of the requested contents (from all CPs), based on which each CP can better evaluate the user preference on its contents. The benefits of B-CDN are demonstrated via an edge-caching application, in which a feature-based caching algorithm is proposed for all CPs. The proposed caching algorithm is verified with the realistic Movielens dataset. A win-win relation between the CPs and users is observed, where the B-CDN improves user quality of experience and reduces cost of delivering content for the CPs.

Yang Yang, Marius Pesavento, Symeon Chatzinotas et al.

In this paper, we propose a successive convex approximation framework for sparse optimization where the nonsmooth regularization function in the objective function is nonconvex and it can be written as the difference of two convex functions. The proposed framework is based on a nontrivial combination of the majorization-minimization framework and the successive convex approximation framework proposed in literature for a convex regularization function. The proposed framework has several attractive features, namely, i) flexibility, as different choices of the approximate function lead to different type of algorithms; ii) fast convergence, as the problem structure can be better exploited by a proper choice of the approximate function and the stepsize is calculated by the line search; iii) low complexity, as the approximate function is convex and the line search scheme is carried out over a differentiable function; iv) guaranteed convergence to a stationary point. We demonstrate these features by two example applications in subspace learning, namely, the network anomaly detection problem and the sparse subspace clustering problem. Customizing the proposed framework by adopting the best-response type approximation, we obtain soft-thresholding with exact line search algorithms for which all elements of the unknown parameter are updated in parallel according to closed-form expressions. The attractive features of the proposed algorithms are illustrated numerically.

Anestis Tsakmalis, Symeon Chatzinotas, Björn Ottersten

In this paper, a sequential probing method for interference constraint learning is proposed to allow a centralized Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) accessing the frequency band of a Primary User (PU) in an underlay cognitive scenario with a designed PU protection specification. The main idea is that the CRN probes the PU and subsequently eavesdrops the reverse PU link to acquire the binary ACK/NACK packet. This feedback indicates whether the probing-induced interference is harmful or not and can be used to learn the PU interference constraint. The cognitive part of this sequential probing process is the selection of the power levels of the Secondary Users (SUs) which aims to learn the PU interference constraint with a minimum number of probing attempts while setting a limit on the number of harmful probing-induced interference events or equivalently of NACK packet observations over a time window. This constrained design problem is studied within the Active Learning (AL) framework and an optimal solution is derived and implemented with a sophisticated, accurate and fast Bayesian Learning method, the Expectation Propagation (EP). The performance of this solution is also demonstrated through numerical simulations and compared with modified versions of AL techniques we developed in earlier work.

Alejandro Correa Bahnsen, Djamila Aouada, Bjorn Ottersten

Several real-world classification problems are example-dependent cost-sensitive in nature, where the costs due to misclassification vary between examples and not only within classes. However, standard classification methods do not take these costs into account, and assume a constant cost of misclassification errors. In previous works, some methods that take into account the financial costs into the training of different algorithms have been proposed, with the example-dependent cost-sensitive decision tree algorithm being the one that gives the highest savings. In this paper we propose a new framework of ensembles of example-dependent cost-sensitive decision-trees. The framework consists in creating different example-dependent cost-sensitive decision trees on random subsamples of the training set, and then combining them using three different combination approaches. Moreover, we propose two new cost-sensitive combination approaches; cost-sensitive weighted voting and cost-sensitive stacking, the latter being based on the cost-sensitive logistic regression method. Finally, using five different databases, from four real-world applications: credit card fraud detection, churn modeling, credit scoring and direct marketing, we evaluate the proposed method against state-of-the-art example-dependent cost-sensitive techniques, namely, cost-proportionate sampling, Bayes minimum risk and cost-sensitive decision trees. The results show that the proposed algorithms have better results for all databases, in the sense of higher savings.