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Chenyuan Feng

Publications and source records attributed to Chenyuan Feng.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Single-Model Adaptive Wireless Image Transmission via Feature Sparsity Regularization

Learned joint source-channel coding (JSCC) enables robust wireless image transmission by jointly optimizing the transmitter and receiver over differentiable channel models. For bandwidth-limited and time-varying visual links, a single model should support user-adjustable transmission rate and adapt to changing wireless channel conditions, while also dynamically allocating resources according to spatial content. Existing content-adaptive or dynamic allocation schemes often rely on entropy coding, context/probability prediction, explicit rate maps or masks, or auxiliary allocation networks, complicating the encoder-decoder pipeline and increasing side-information overhead. We propose TS-JSCC, a single-model adaptive JSCC framework with tail-structured sparsification. First, an L1-based tail-structured sparsification objective encourages each token to retain an active feature-channel prefix while suppressing trailing ones. This enables content-adaptive feature-channel allocation with compact side information through active-prefix transmission. Second, lightweight stage-wise neural regulating modules use a normalized sparsity-control coefficient and the channel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to rescale intermediate features for single-model transmission rate and SNR adaptation. Experiments on CIFAR-10, Kodak, and CLIC2021 under additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading show that TS-JSCC achieves strong rate-distortion performance against the latest learned-JSCC baselines and remains competitive with the considered idealized separation baselines, while retaining a simple one-shot encoder-decoder without extra structures or computations.

eess.IV

Bridging the Cognitive Gap: A Unified Memory Paradigm for 6G Agentic AI-RAN

As 6G evolves, the radio access network must transcend traditional automation to embrace agentic AI capable of perception, reasoning, and evolution. A fundamental cognitive gap persists in current disaggregated architectures, where interfaces force the physical layer to compress high-dimensional states into low-dimensional metrics, trapping reasoning agents behind a semantic bottleneck. This article envisions a shift from interface-bound to memory-centric architectures. We propose a unified memory paradigm that dissolves the boundaries between sensing and reasoning by mapping biological memory hierarchies onto heterogeneous computing fabrics. Enabled by emerging coherent interconnects, this approach creates a cognitive continuum where microsecond-level reflexes, millisecond-level reasoning, and long-term evolution share state across time scales. By replacing message passing with zero-copy observability, we empower AI agents to bridge the gap between real-time responsiveness and long-horizon context for truly autonomous 6G networks.

cs.NI

Intellicise Wireless Networks Meet Agentic AI: A Security and Privacy Perspective

Intellicise (Intelligent and Concise) wireless network is the main direction of the evolution of future mobile communication systems, a perspective now widely acknowledged across academia and industry. As a key technology within it, Agentic AI has garnered growing attention due to its advanced cognitive capabilities, enabled through continuous perception-memory-reasoning-action cycles. This paper first analyses the unique advantages that Agentic AI introduces to intellicise wireless networks. We then propose a structured taxonomy for Agentic AI-enhanced secure intellicise wireless networks. Building on this framework, we identify emerging security and privacy challenges introduced by Agentic AI and summarize targeted strategies to address these vulnerabilities. A case study further demonstrates Agentic AI's efficacy in defending against intelligent eavesdropping attacks. Finally, we outline key open research directions to guide future exploration in this field.

cs.CR

CoCo-Fed: A Unified Framework for Memory- and Communication-Efficient Federated Learning at the Wireless Edge

The deployment of large-scale neural networks within the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture is pivotal for enabling native edge intelligence. However, this paradigm faces two critical bottlenecks: the prohibitive memory footprint required for local training on resource-constrained gNBs, and the saturation of bandwidth-limited backhaul links during the global aggregation of high-dimensional model updates. To address these challenges, we propose CoCo-Fed, a novel Compression and Combination-based Federated learning framework that unifies local memory efficiency and global communication reduction. Locally, CoCo-Fed breaks the memory wall by performing a double-dimension down-projection of gradients, adapting the optimizer to operate on low-rank structures without introducing additional inference parameters/latency. Globally, we introduce a transmission protocol based on orthogonal subspace superposition, where layer-wise updates are projected and superimposed into a single consolidated matrix per gNB, drastically reducing the backhaul traffic. Beyond empirical designs, we establish a rigorous theoretical foundation, proving the convergence of CoCo-Fed even under unsupervised learning conditions suitable for wireless sensing tasks. Extensive simulations on an angle-of-arrival estimation task demonstrate that CoCo-Fed significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in both memory and communication efficiency while maintaining robust convergence under non-IID settings.

cs.IT

Empower Low-Altitude Economy: A Reliability-Aware Dynamic Weighting Allocation for Multi-modal UAV Beam Prediction

The low-altitude economy (LAE) is rapidly expanding driven by urban air mobility, logistics drones, and aerial sensing, while fast and accurate beam prediction in uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) communications is crucial for achieving reliable connectivity. Current research is shifting from single-signal to multi-modal collaborative approaches. However, existing multi-modal methods mostly employ fixed or empirical weights, assuming equal reliability across modalities at any given moment. Indeed, the importance of different modalities fluctuates dramatically with UAV motion scenarios, and static weighting amplifies the negative impact of degraded modalities. Furthermore, modal mismatch and weak alignment further undermine cross-scenario generalization. To this end, we propose a reliability-aware dynamic weighting scheme applied to a semantic-aware multi-modal beam prediction framework, named SaM2B. Specifically, SaM2B leverages lightweight cues such as environmental visual, flight posture, and geospatial data to adaptively allocate contributions across modalities at different time points through reliability-aware dynamic weight updates. Moreover, by utilizing cross-modal contrastive learning, we align the "multi-source representation beam semantics" associated with specific beam information to a shared semantic space, thereby enhancing discriminative power and robustness under modal noise and distribution shifts. Experiments on real-world low-altitude UAV datasets show that SaM2B achieves more satisfactory results than baseline methods.

cs.LG

OptiVote: Non-Coherent FSO Over-the-Air Majority Vote for Communication-Efficient Distributed Federated Learning in Space Data Centers

The rapid deployment of mega-constellations is driving the long-term vision of space data centers (SDCs), where interconnected satellites form in-orbit distributed computing and learning infrastructures. Enabling distributed federated learning in such systems is challenging because iterative training requires frequent aggregation over inter-satellite links that are bandwidth- and energy-constrained, and the link conditions can be highly dynamic. In this work, we exploit over-the-air computation (AirComp) as an in-network aggregation primitive. However, conventional coherent AirComp relies on stringent phase alignment, which is difficult to maintain in space environments due to satellite jitter and Doppler effects. To overcome this limitation, we propose OptiVote, a robust and communication-efficient non-coherent free-space optical (FSO) AirComp framework for federated learning toward Space Data Centers. OptiVote integrates sign stochastic gradient descent (signSGD) with a majority-vote (MV) aggregation principle and pulse-position modulation (PPM), where each satellite conveys local gradient signs by activating orthogonal PPM time slots. The aggregation node performs MV detection via non-coherent energy accumulation, transforming phase-sensitive field superposition into phase-agnostic optical intensity combining, thereby eliminating the need for precise phase synchronization and improving resilience under dynamic impairments. To mitigate aggregation bias induced by heterogeneous FSO channels, we further develop an importance-aware, channel state information (CSI)-free dynamic power control scheme that balances received energies without additional signaling. We provide theoretical analysis by characterizing the aggregate error probability under statistical FSO channels and establishing convergence guarantees for non-convex objectives.

eess.SP

Semantic Radio Access Networks: Architecture, State-of-the-Art, and Future Directions

Radio Access Network (RAN) is a bridge between user devices and the core network in mobile communication systems, responsible for the transmission and reception of wireless signals and air interface management. In recent years, Semantic Communication (SemCom) has represented a transformative communication paradigm that prioritizes meaning-level transmission over conventional bit-level delivery, thus providing improved spectrum efficiency, anti-interference ability in complex environments, flexible resource allocation, and enhanced user experience for RAN. However, there is still a lack of comprehensive reviews on the integration of SemCom into RAN. Motivated by this, we systematically explore recent advancements in Semantic RAN (SemRAN). We begin by introducing the fundamentals of RAN and SemCom, identifying the limitations of conventional RAN, and outlining the overall architecture of SemRAN. Subsequently, we review representative techniques of SemRAN across physical layer, data link layer, network layer, and security plane. Furthermore, we envision future services and applications enabled by SemRAN, alongside its current standardization progress. Finally, we conclude by identifying critical research challenges and outlining forward-looking directions to guide subsequent investigations in this burgeoning field.

eess.SP

Towards 6G Native-AI Edge Networks: A Semantic-Aware and Agentic Intelligence Paradigm

The evolution toward sixth-generation wireless systems positions intelligence as a native network capability, fundamentally transforming the design of radio access networks (RANs). Within this vision, Semantic-native communication and agentic intelligence are expected to play central roles. SemCom departs from bit-level fidelity and instead emphasizes task-oriented meaning exchange, enabling compact SC and introducing new performance measures such as semantic fidelity and task success rate. Agentic intelligence endows distributed RAN entities with goal-driven autonomy, reasoning, planning, and multi-agent collaboration, increasingly supported by foundation models and knowledge graphs. In this work, we first introduce the conceptual foundations of SemCom and agentic networking, and discuss why existing AI-driven O-RAN solutions remain largely bit-centric and task-siloed. We then present a unified taxonomy that organizes recent research along three axes: i) semantic abstraction level (symbol/feature/intent/knowledge), ii) agent autonomy and coordination granularity (single-, multi-, and hierarchical-agent), and iii) RAN control placement across PHY/MAC, near-real-time RIC, and non-real-time RIC. Based on this taxonomy, we systematically introduce enabling technologies including task-oriented semantic encoders/decoders, multi-agent reinforcement learning, foundation-model-assisted RAN agents, and knowledge-graph-based reasoning for cross-layer awareness. Representative 6G use cases, such as immersive XR, vehicular V2X, and industrial digital twins, are analyzed to illustrate the semantic-agentic convergence in practice. Finally, we identify open challenges in semantic representation standardization, scalable trustworthy agent coordination, O-RAN interoperability, and energy-efficient AI deployment, and outline research directions toward operational semantic-agentic AI-RAN.

eess.SP

SemSteDiff: Generative Diffusion Model-based Coverless Semantic Steganography Communication

Semantic communication (SemCom), as a novel paradigm for future communication systems, has recently attracted much attention due to its superiority in communication efficiency. However, similar to traditional communication, it also suffers from eavesdropping threats. Intelligent eavesdroppers could launch advanced semantic analysis techniques to infer secret semantic information. Therefore, some researchers have designed Semantic Steganography Communication (SemSteCom) schemes to confuse semantic eavesdroppers. However, the state-of-the-art SemSteCom schemes for image transmission rely on the pre-selected cover image, which limits the generalization. To address this issue, we propose a Generative Diffusion Model-based Coverless Semantic Steganography Communication (SemSteDiff) scheme to hide secret images into generated stego images. The semantic related private and public keys enable legitimate receiver to decode secret images correctly while the eavesdropper without the completely correct key-pairs fail to obtain them. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the plug-and-play design in different Joint Source-Channel Coding (JSCC) frameworks. Results under different eavesdropping settings show that, when Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) = 0 dB, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the legitimate receiver is 4.14 dB higher than that of the eavesdropper.

eess.SP

Spectral Efficiency-Aware Codebook Design for Task-Oriented Semantic Communications

Digital task-oriented semantic communication (ToSC) aims to transmit only task-relevant information, significantly reducing communication overhead. Existing ToSC methods typically rely on learned codebooks to encode semantic features and map them to constellation symbols. However, these codebooks are often sparsely activated, resulting in low spectral efficiency and underutilization of channel capacity. This highlights a key challenge: how to design a codebook that not only supports task-specific inference but also approaches the theoretical limits of channel capacity. To address this challenge, we construct a spectral efficiency-aware codebook design framework that explicitly incorporates the codebook activation probability into the optimization process. Beyond maximizing task performance, we introduce the Wasserstein (WS) distance as a regularization metric to minimize the gap between the learned activation distribution and the optimal channel input distribution. Furthermore, we reinterpret WS theory from a generative perspective to align with the semantic nature of ToSC. Combining the above two aspects, we propose a WS-based adaptive hybrid distribution scheme, termed WS-DC, which learns compact, task-driven and channel-aware latent representations. Experimental results demonstrate that WS-DC not only outperforms existing approaches in inference accuracy but also significantly improves codebook efficiency, offering a promising direction toward capacity-approaching semantic communication systems.

eess.SP

Less Signals, More Understanding: Channel-Capacity Codebook Design for Digital Task-Oriented Semantic Communication

Discrete representation has emerged as a powerful tool in task-oriented semantic communication (ToSC), offering compact, interpretable, and efficient representations well-suited for low-power edge intelligence scenarios. Its inherent digital nature aligns seamlessly with hardware-friendly deployment and robust storage/transmission protocols. However, despite its strengths, current ToSC frameworks often decouple semantic-aware discrete mapping from the underlying channel characteristics and task demands. This mismatch leads to suboptimal communication performance, degraded task utility, and limited generalization under variable wireless conditions. Moreover, conventional designs frequently overlook channel-awareness in codebook construction, restricting the effectiveness of semantic symbol selection under constrained resources. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a channel-aware discrete semantic coding framework tailored for low-power edge networks. Leveraging a Wasserstein-regularized objective, our approach aligns discrete code activations with optimal input distributions, thereby improving semantic fidelity, robustness, and task accuracy. Extensive experiments on the inference tasks across diverse signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes show that our method achieves notable gains in accuracy and communication efficiency. This work provides new insights into integrating discrete semantics and channel optimization, paving the way for the widespread adoption of semantic communication in future digital infrastructures.

eess.SP

Generative Diffusion Models for Wireless Networks: Fundamental, Architecture, and State-of-the-Art

With the rapid development of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) technology, Generative Diffusion Models (GDMs) have shown significant empowerment potential in the field of wireless networks due to advantages, such as noise resistance, training stability, controllability, and multimodal generation. Although there have been multiple studies focusing on GDMs for wireless networks, there is still a lack of comprehensive reviews on their technological evolution. Motivated by this, we systematically explore the application of GDMs in wireless networks. Firstly, we identify the core challenges of wireless networks and argue why GDMs are uniquely suited to address them. We then introduce the mathematical principles of GDMs and representative models. Furthermore, we organize our comprehensive review through a structured taxonomy that categorizes GDM-based schemes into the sensing, transmission, and Applications, complemented by a security plane. For each representative scheme, we analyze its innovative points, the role of GDMs, strengths, and weaknesses. Ultimately, we extract key challenges and provide potential solutions, with the aim of providing directional guidance for future research in this field.

eess.SP

Task-oriented Age of Information for Remote Inference with Hybrid Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized the field of artificial intelligence (AI) through their advanced reasoning capabilities, but their extensive parameter sets introduce significant inference latency, posing a challenge to ensure the timeliness of inference results. While Small Language Models (SLMs) offer faster inference speeds with fewer parameters, they often compromise accuracy on complex tasks. This study proposes a novel remote inference system comprising a user, a sensor, and an edge server that integrates both model types alongside a decision maker. The system dynamically determines the resolution of images transmitted by the sensor and routes inference tasks to either an SLM or LLM to optimize performance. The key objective is to minimize the Task-oriented Age of Information (TAoI) by jointly considering the accuracy and timeliness of the inference task. Due to the non-uniform transmission time and inference time, we formulate this problem as a Semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP). By converting the SMDP to an equivalent Markov decision process, we prove that the optimal control policy follows a threshold-based structure. We further develop a relative policy iteration algorithm leveraging this threshold property. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed optimal policy significantly outperforms baseline approaches in managing the accuracy-timeliness trade-off.

cs.IT

Take What You Need: Flexible Multi-Task Semantic Communications with Channel Adaptation

The growing demand for efficient semantic communication systems capable of managing diverse tasks and adapting to fluctuating channel conditions has driven the development of robust, resource-efficient frameworks. This article introduces a novel channel-adaptive and multi-task-aware semantic communication framework based on a masked auto-encoder architecture. Our framework optimizes the transmission of meaningful information by incorporating a multi-task-aware scoring mechanism that identifies and prioritizes semantically significant data across multiple concurrent tasks. A channel-aware extractor is employed to dynamically select relevant information in response to real-time channel conditions. By jointly optimizing semantic relevance and transmission efficiency, the framework ensures minimal performance degradation under resource constraints. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our framework compared to conventional methods in tasks such as image reconstruction and object detection. These results underscore the framework's adaptability to heterogeneous channel environments and its scalability for multi-task applications, positioning it as a promising solution for next-generation semantic communication networks.

cs.CV

Meta-Reinforcement Learning With Mixture of Experts for Generalizable Multi Access in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

This paper focuses on spectrum sharing in heterogeneous wireless networks, where nodes with different Media Access Control (MAC) protocols to transmit data packets to a common access point over a shared wireless channel. While previous studies have proposed Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-based multiple access protocols tailored to specific scenarios, these approaches are limited by their inability to generalize across diverse environments, often requiring time-consuming retraining. To address this issue, we introduce Generalizable Multiple Access (GMA), a novel Meta-Reinforcement Learning (meta-RL)-based MAC protocol designed for rapid adaptation across heterogeneous network environments. GMA leverages a context-based meta-RL approach with Mixture of Experts (MoE) to improve representation learning, enhancing latent information extraction. By learning a meta-policy during training, GMA enables fast adaptation to different and previously unknown environments, without prior knowledge of the specific MAC protocols in use. Simulation results demonstrate that, although the GMA protocol experiences a slight performance drop compared to baseline methods in training environments, it achieves faster convergence and higher performance in new, unseen environments.

cs.IT

Decentralized Semantic Communication and Cooperative Tracking Control for a UAV Swarm over Wireless MIMO Fading Channels

This paper investigates the semantic communication and cooperative tracking control for an UAV swarm comprising a leader UAV and a group of follower UAVs, all interconnected via unreliable wireless multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) channels. Initially, we develop a dynamic model for the UAV swarm that accounts for both the internal interactions among the cooperative follower UAVs and the imperfections inherent in the MIMO channels that interlink the leader and follower UAVs. Building on this model, we incorporate the power costs of the UAVs and formulate the communication and cooperative tracking control challenge as a drift-plus-penalty optimization problem. We then derive a closed-form optimal solution that maintains a decentralized semantic architecture, dynamically adjusting to the tracking error costs and local channel conditions within the swarm. Employing Lyapunov drift analysis, we establish closed-form sufficient conditions for the stabilization of the UAV swarm's tracking performance. Numerical results demonstrate the significant enhancements in our proposed scheme over various state-of-the-art methods.

eess.SP

Task-Oriented Communication for Graph Data: A Graph Information Bottleneck Approach

Graph data, essential in fields like knowledge representation and social networks, often involves large networks with many nodes and edges. Transmitting these graphs can be highly inefficient due to their size and redundancy for specific tasks. This paper introduces a method to extract a smaller, task-focused subgraph that maintains key information while reducing communication overhead. Our approach utilizes graph neural networks (GNNs) and the graph information bottleneck (GIB) principle to create a compact, informative, and robust graph representation suitable for transmission. The challenge lies in the irregular structure of graph data, making GIB optimization complex. We address this by deriving a tractable variational upper bound for the objective function. Additionally, we propose the VQ-GIB mechanism, integrating vector quantization (VQ) to convert subgraph representations into a discrete codebook sequence, compatible with existing digital communication systems. Our experiments show that this GIB-based method significantly lowers communication costs while preserving essential task-related information. The approach demonstrates robust performance across various communication channels, suitable for both continuous and discrete systems.

cs.LG

Semantic-Enabled 6G Communication: A Task-oriented and Privacy-preserving Perspective

Task-oriented semantic communication (ToSC) emerges as an innovative approach in the 6G landscape, characterized by the transmission of only vital information that is directly pertinent to a specific task. While ToSC offers an efficient mode of communication, it concurrently raises concerns regarding privacy, as sophisticated adversaries might possess the capability to reconstruct the original data from the transmitted features. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of privacy-preserving strategies specifically designed for ToSC relying on deep neural network-based joint source and channel coding (DeepJSCC). Our study encompasses a detailed comparative assessment of trustworthy feature perturbation methods such as differential privacy (DP) and encryption, alongside intrinsic security incorporation approaches like adversarial learning to train the JSCC and learning-based vector quantization (LBVQ). Our comparative analysis underscores the integration of advanced explainable learning algorithms into communication systems, positing a new benchmark for privacy standards in the forthcoming 6G era.

eess.SP