arXiv subjects

Farhad Shirani

Publications and source records attributed to Farhad Shirani.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Towards Structurally Explainable Machine-Generated Text Detection: A Graph-Perspective Framework

Despite the success of machine-generated text detectors, the black-box nature remains a critical limitation. Traditional explainability methods rely on token-level saliency, insufficient to reveal the high-order structural dependencies that distinguish LLM outputs. In this paper, we propose \textsc{LM$^2$otifs}, a principled framework that shifts detection from linear sequences to graph-structured manifolds. We first provide a theoretical grounding based on probabilistic graphical models, demonstrating that detection performance is more distinguishable in the graph-topological space. Driven by this theory, \textsc{LM$^2$otifs} transforms text into lexical co-occurrence graphs to preserve latent structural fingerprints. The framework employs Graph Neural Networks for robust detection and utilizes graph-specific explainers to extract interpretable motifs. Crucially, our experiments reveal that these structural motifs achieve higher faithfulness compared to traditional methods. This empirical evidence confirms the existence of high-order structural explanations that linear methods fail to capture. Experimental results show that \textsc{LM$^2$otifs} achieves state-of-the-art performance while providing multi-level \textit{distinct linguistic fingerprints} that are more faithful to the model's decision.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

Explanation-Preserving Augmentation for Semi-Supervised Graph Representation Learning

Self-supervised graph representation learning (GRL) typically generates paired graph augmentations from each graph to infer similar representations for augmentations of the same graph, but distinguishable representations for different graphs. While effective augmentation requires both semantics-preservation and data-perturbation, most existing GRL methods focus solely on data-perturbation, leading to suboptimal solutions. To fill the gap, in this paper, we propose a novel method, Explanation-Preserving Augmentation (EPA), which leverages graph explanation for semantics-preservation. EPA first uses a small number of labels to train a graph explainer, which infers the subgraphs that explain the graph's label. Then these explanations are used for generating semantics-preserving augmentations for boosting self-supervised GRL. Thus, the entire process, namely EPA-GRL, is semi-supervised. We demonstrate theoretically, using an analytical example, and through extensive experiments on a variety of benchmark datasets, that EPA-GRL outperforms the state-of-the-art (SOTA) GRL methods that use semantics-agnostic augmentations. The code is available at https://github.com/realMoana/EPA-GRL.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Deep Reinforcement Learning for MIMO Communication with Low-Resolution ADCs

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems conventionally use high-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) at the receiver side to faithfully digitize received signals prior to digital signal processing. However, the power consumption of ADCs increases significantly as the bandwidth is increased, particularly in millimeter wave communications systems. A combination of two mitigating approaches has been considered in the literature: i) to use hybrid beamforming to reduce the number of ADCs, and ii) to use low-resolution ADCs to reduce per ADC power consumption. Lowering the number and resolution of the ADCs naturally reduces the communication rate of the system, leading to a tradeoff between ADC power consumption and communication rate. Prior works have shown that optimizing over the hybrid beamforming matrix and ADC thresholds may reduce the aforementioned rate-loss significantly. A key challenge is the complexity of optimization over all choices of beamforming matrices and threshold vectors. This work proposes a reinforcement learning (RL) architecture to perform the optimization. The proposed approach integrates deep neural network-based mutual information estimators for reward calculation with policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning. The approach is robust to dynamic channel statistics and noisy CSI estimates. It is shown theoretically that greedy RL methods converge to the globally optimal policy. Extensive empirical evaluations are provided demonstrating that the performance of the RL-based approach closely matches exhaustive search optimization across the solution space.

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arXiv2025

F-Fidelity: A Robust Framework for Faithfulness Evaluation of Explainable AI

Recent research has developed a number of eXplainable AI (XAI) techniques, such as gradient-based approaches, input perturbation-base methods, and black-box explanation methods. While these XAI techniques can extract meaningful insights from deep learning models, how to properly evaluate them remains an open problem. The most widely used approach is to perturb or even remove what the XAI method considers to be the most important features in an input and observe the changes in the output prediction. This approach, although straightforward, suffers the Out-of-Distribution (OOD) problem as the perturbed samples may no longer follow the original data distribution. A recent method RemOve And Retrain (ROAR) solves the OOD issue by retraining the model with perturbed samples guided by explanations. However, using the model retrained based on XAI methods to evaluate these explainers may cause information leakage and thus lead to unfair comparisons. We propose Fine-tuned Fidelity (F-Fidelity), a robust evaluation framework for XAI, which utilizes i) an explanation-agnostic fine-tuning strategy, thus mitigating the information leakage issue, and ii) a random masking operation that ensures that the removal step does not generate an OOD input. We also design controlled experiments with state-of-the-art (SOTA) explainers and their degraded version to verify the correctness of our framework. We conduct experiments on multiple data modalities, such as images, time series, and natural language. The results demonstrate that F-Fidelity significantly improves upon prior evaluation metrics in recovering the ground-truth ranking of the explainers. Furthermore, we show both theoretically and empirically that, given a faithful explainer, F-Fidelity metric can be used to compute the sparsity of influential input components, i.e., to extract the true explanation size.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Non-Linear Analog Processing in MIMO Systems with Coarse Quantization

Analog to digital converters (ADCs) are a major contributor to the power consumption of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) receivers in large bandwidth millimeter-wave systems. Prior works have considered two mitigating solutions to reduce the ADC power consumption: i) decreasing the number of ADCs via analog and hybrid beamforming, and ii) decreasing the ADC resolution, i.e., utilizing one-bit and few-bit ADCs. These mitigating solutions lead to performance loss in terms of achievable rates due to increased quantization error. In this work, the use of nonlinear analog operators such as envelope detectors and polynomial operators, prior to sampling and quantization is considered, as a way to reduce the aforementioned rate-loss. The receiver architecture consists of linear combiners, nonlinear analog operators, and few-bit ADCs. The fundamental performance limits of the resulting communication system, in terms of achievable rates, are investigated under various assumptions on the set of implementable analog operators. Extensive numerical evaluations are provided to evaluate the set of achievable rates and the power consumption of the proposed receiver architectures. Circuit simulations and measurement results, based on both 22 nm FDSOI CMOS technology and 65 nm Bulk CMOS transistor technologies, are provided to justify the power efficiency of the proposed receiver architectures.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

The Query/Hit Model for Sequential Hypothesis Testing

This work introduces the Query/Hit (Q/H) learning model. The setup consists of two agents. One agent, Alice, has access to a streaming source, while the other, Bob, does not have direct access to the source. Communication occurs through sequential Q/H pairs: Bob sends a sequence of source symbols (queries), and Alice responds with the waiting time until each query appears in the source stream (hits). This model is motivated by scenarios with communication, computation, and privacy constraints that limit real-time access to the source. The error exponent for sequential hypothesis testing under the Q/H model is characterized, and a querying strategy, the Dynamic Scout-Sentinel Algorithm (DSSA), is proposed. The strategy employs a mutual information neural estimator to compute the error exponent associated with each query and to select the query with the highest efficiency. Extensive empirical evaluations on both synthetic and real-world datasets -- including mouse movement trajectories, typesetting patterns, and touch-based user interactions -- are provided to evaluate the performance of the proposed strategy in comparison with baselines, in terms of probability of error, query choice, and time-to-detection.

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arXiv2024

CorBin-FL: A Differentially Private Federated Learning Mechanism using Common Randomness

Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a promising framework for distributed machine learning. It enables collaborative learning among multiple clients, utilizing distributed data and computing resources. However, FL faces challenges in balancing privacy guarantees, communication efficiency, and overall model accuracy. In this work, we introduce CorBin-FL, a privacy mechanism that uses correlated binary stochastic quantization to achieve differential privacy while maintaining overall model accuracy. The approach uses secure multi-party computation techniques to enable clients to perform correlated quantization of their local model updates without compromising individual privacy. We provide theoretical analysis showing that CorBin-FL achieves parameter-level local differential privacy (PLDP), and that it asymptotically optimizes the privacy-utility trade-off between the mean square error utility measure and the PLDP privacy measure. We further propose AugCorBin-FL, an extension that, in addition to PLDP, achieves user-level and sample-level central differential privacy guarantees. For both mechanisms, we derive bounds on privacy parameters and mean squared error performance measures. Extensive experiments on MNIST and CIFAR10 datasets demonstrate that our mechanisms outperform existing differentially private FL mechanisms, including Gaussian and Laplacian mechanisms, in terms of model accuracy under equal PLDP privacy budgets.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

TimeX++: Learning Time-Series Explanations with Information Bottleneck

Explaining deep learning models operating on time series data is crucial in various applications of interest which require interpretable and transparent insights from time series signals. In this work, we investigate this problem from an information theoretic perspective and show that most existing measures of explainability may suffer from trivial solutions and distributional shift issues. To address these issues, we introduce a simple yet practical objective function for time series explainable learning. The design of the objective function builds upon the principle of information bottleneck (IB), and modifies the IB objective function to avoid trivial solutions and distributional shift issues. We further present TimeX++, a novel explanation framework that leverages a parametric network to produce explanation-embedded instances that are both in-distributed and label-preserving. We evaluate TimeX++ on both synthetic and real-world datasets comparing its performance against leading baselines, and validate its practical efficacy through case studies in a real-world environmental application. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations show that TimeX++ outperforms baselines across all datasets, demonstrating a substantial improvement in explanation quality for time series data. The source code is available at \url{https://github.com/zichuan-liu/TimeXplusplus}.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Quantum Advantage in Non-Interactive Source Simulation

This work considers the non-interactive source simulation problem (NISS). In the standard NISS scenario, a pair of distributed agents, Alice and Bob, observe a distributed binary memoryless source $(X^d,Y^d)$ generated based on joint distribution $P_{X,Y}$. The agents wish to produce a pair of discrete random variables $(U_d,V_d)$ with joint distribution $P_{U_d,V_d}$, such that $P_{U_d,V_d}$ converges in total variation distance to a target distribution $Q_{U,V}$. Two variations of the standard NISS scenario are considered. In the first variation, in addition to $(X^d,Y^d)$ the agents have access to a shared Bell state. The agents each measure their respective state, using a measurement of their choice, and use its classical output along with $(X^d,Y^d)$ to simulate the target distribution. This scenario is called the entanglement-assisted NISS (EA-NISS). In the second variation, the agents have access to a classical common random bit $Z$, in addition to $(X^d,Y^d)$. This scenario is called the classical common randomness NISS (CR-NISS). It is shown that for binary-output NISS scenarios, the set of feasible distributions for EA-NISS and CR-NISS are equal with each other. Hence, there is not quantum advantage in these EA-NISS scenarios. For non-binary output NISS scenarios, it is shown through an example that there are distributions that are feasible in EA-NISS but not in CR-NISS. This shows that there is a quantum advantage in non-binary output EA-NISS.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Towards Robust Fidelity for Evaluating Explainability of Graph Neural Networks

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are neural models that leverage the dependency structure in graphical data via message passing among the graph nodes. GNNs have emerged as pivotal architectures in analyzing graph-structured data, and their expansive application in sensitive domains requires a comprehensive understanding of their decision-making processes -- necessitating a framework for GNN explainability. An explanation function for GNNs takes a pre-trained GNN along with a graph as input, to produce a `sufficient statistic' subgraph with respect to the graph label. A main challenge in studying GNN explainability is to provide fidelity measures that evaluate the performance of these explanation functions. This paper studies this foundational challenge, spotlighting the inherent limitations of prevailing fidelity metrics, including $Fid_+$, $Fid_-$, and $Fid_Δ$. Specifically, a formal, information-theoretic definition of explainability is introduced and it is shown that existing metrics often fail to align with this definition across various statistical scenarios. The reason is due to potential distribution shifts when subgraphs are removed in computing these fidelity measures. Subsequently, a robust class of fidelity measures are introduced, and it is shown analytically that they are resilient to distribution shift issues and are applicable in a wide range of scenarios. Extensive empirical analysis on both synthetic and real datasets are provided to illustrate that the proposed metrics are more coherent with gold standard metrics. The source code is available at https://trustai4s-lab.github.io/fidelity.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

On Non-Interactive Simulation of Distributed Sources with Finite Alphabets

This work presents a Fourier analysis framework for the non-interactive source simulation (NISS) problem. Two distributed agents observe a pair of sequences $X^d$ and $Y^d$ drawn according to a joint distribution $P_{X^dY^d}$. The agents aim to generate outputs $U=f_d(X^d)$ and $V=g_d(Y^d)$ with a joint distribution sufficiently close in total variation to a target distribution $Q_{UV}$. Existing works have shown that the NISS problem with finite-alphabet outputs is decidable. For the binary-output NISS, an upper-bound to the input complexity was derived which is $O(\exp\operatorname{poly}(\frac{1}ε))$. In this work, the input complexity and algorithm design are addressed in several classes of NISS scenarios. For binary-output NISS scenarios with doubly-symmetric binary inputs, it is shown that the input complexity is $Θ(\log{\frac{1}ε})$, thus providing a super-exponential improvement in input complexity. An explicit characterization of the simulating pair of functions is provided. For general finite-input scenarios, a constructive algorithm is introduced that explicitly finds the simulating functions $(f_d(X^d),g_d(Y^d))$. The approach relies on a novel Fourier analysis framework. Various numerical simulations of NISS scenarios with IID inputs are provided. Furthermore, to illustrate the general applicability of the Fourier framework, several examples with non-IID inputs, including entanglement-assisted NISS and NISS with Markovian inputs are provided.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Factorized Explainer for Graph Neural Networks

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have received increasing attention due to their ability to learn from graph-structured data. To open the black-box of these deep learning models, post-hoc instance-level explanation methods have been proposed to understand GNN predictions. These methods seek to discover substructures that explain the prediction behavior of a trained GNN. In this paper, we show analytically that for a large class of explanation tasks, conventional approaches, which are based on the principle of graph information bottleneck (GIB), admit trivial solutions that do not align with the notion of explainability. Instead, we argue that a modified GIB principle may be used to avoid the aforementioned trivial solutions. We further introduce a novel factorized explanation model with theoretical performance guarantees. The modified GIB is used to analyze the structural properties of the proposed factorized explainer. We conduct extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets to validate the effectiveness of our proposed factorized explainer.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

PAC Learnability under Explanation-Preserving Graph Perturbations

Graphical models capture relations between entities in a wide range of applications including social networks, biology, and natural language processing, among others. Graph neural networks (GNN) are neural models that operate over graphs, enabling the model to leverage the complex relationships and dependencies in graph-structured data. A graph explanation is a subgraph which is an `almost sufficient' statistic of the input graph with respect to its classification label. Consequently, the classification label is invariant, with high probability, to perturbations of graph edges not belonging to its explanation subgraph. This work considers two methods for leveraging such perturbation invariances in the design and training of GNNs. First, explanation-assisted learning rules are considered. It is shown that the sample complexity of explanation-assisted learning can be arbitrarily smaller than explanation-agnostic learning. Next, explanation-assisted data augmentation is considered, where the training set is enlarged by artificially producing new training samples via perturbation of the non-explanation edges in the original training set. It is shown that such data augmentation methods may improve performance if the augmented data is in-distribution, however, it may also lead to worse sample complexity compared to explanation-agnostic learning rules if the augmented data is out-of-distribution. Extensive empirical evaluations are provided to verify the theoretical analysis.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Non-Linear Analog Processing Gains in Task-Based Quantization

In task-based quantization, a multivariate analog signal is transformed into a digital signal using a limited number of low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). This process aims to minimize a fidelity criterion, which is assessed against an unobserved task variable that is correlated with the analog signal. The scenario models various applications of interest such as channel estimation, medical imaging applications, and object localization. This work explores the integration of analog processing components -- such as analog delay elements, polynomial operators, and envelope detectors -- prior to ADC quantization. Specifically, four scenarios, involving different collections of analog processing operators are considered: (i) arbitrary polynomial operators with analog delay elements, (ii) limited-degree polynomial operators, excluding delay elements, (iii) sequences of envelope detectors, and (iv) a combination of analog delay elements and linear combiners. For each scenario, the minimum achievable distortion is quantified through derivation of computable expressions in various statistical settings. It is shown that analog processing can significantly reduce the distortion in task reconstruction. Numerical simulations in a Gaussian example are provided to give further insights into the aforementioned analog processing gains.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2023

The Privacy-Utility Tradeoff in Rank-Preserving Dataset Obfuscation

Dataset obfuscation refers to techniques in which random noise is added to the entries of a given dataset, prior to its public release, to protect against leakage of private information. In this work, dataset obfuscation under two objectives is considered: i) rank-preservation: to preserve the row ordering in the obfuscated dataset induced by a given rank function, and ii) anonymity: to protect user anonymity under fingerprinting attacks. The first objective, rank-preservation, is of interest in applications such as the design of search engines and recommendation systems, feature matching, and social network analysis. Fingerprinting attacks, considered in evaluating the anonymity objective, are privacy attacks where an attacker constructs a fingerprint of a victim based on its observed activities, such as online web activities, and compares this fingerprint with information extracted from a publicly released obfuscated dataset to identify the victim. By evaluating the performance limits of a class of obfuscation mechanisms over asymptotically large datasets, a fundamental trade-off is quantified between rank-preservation and user anonymity. Single-letter obfuscation mechanisms are considered, where each entry in the dataset is perturbed by independent noise, and their fundamental performance limits are characterized by leveraging large deviation techniques. The optimal obfuscating test-channel, optimizing the privacy-utility tradeoff, is characterized in the form of a convex optimization problem which can be solved efficiently. Numerical simulations of various scenarios are provided to verify the theoretical derivations.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Optimal Fault-Tolerant Data Fusion in Sensor Networks: Fundamental Limits and Efficient Algorithms

Distributed estimation in the context of sensor networks is considered, where distributed agents are given a set of sensor measurements, and are tasked with estimating a target variable. A subset of sensors are assumed to be faulty. The objective is to minimize i) the mean square estimation error at each node (accuracy objective), and ii) the mean square distance between the estimates at each pair of nodes (consensus objective). It is shown that there is an inherent tradeoff between the former and latter objectives. Assuming a general stochastic model, the sensor fusion algorithm optimizing this tradeoff is characterized through a computable optimization problem, and a Cramer-Rao type lower bound for the achievable accuracy-consensus loss is obtained. Finding the optimal sensor fusion algorithm is computationally complex. To address this, a general class of low-complexity Brooks-Iyengar Algorithms are introduced, and their performance, in terms of accuracy and consensus objectives, is compared to that of optimal linear estimators through case study simulations of various scenarios.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2022

On Non-Interactive Source Simulation via Fourier Transform

The non-interactive source simulation (NISS) scenario is considered. In this scenario, a pair of distributed agents, Alice and Bob, observe a distributed binary memoryless source $(X^d,Y^d)$ generated based on joint distribution $P_{X,Y}$. The agents wish to produce a pair of discrete random variables $(U_d,V_d)$ with joint distribution $P_{U_d,V_d}$, such that $P_{U_d,V_d}$ converges in total variation distance to a target distribution $Q_{U,V}$ as the input blocklength $d$ is taken to be asymptotically large. Inner and outer bounds are obtained on the set of distributions $Q_{U,V}$ which can be produced given an input distribution $P_{X,Y}$. To this end, a bijective mapping from the set of distributions $Q_{U,V}$ to a union of star-convex sets is provided. By leveraging proof techniques from discrete Fourier analysis along with a novel randomized rounding technique, inner and outer bounds are derived for each of these star-convex sets, and by inverting the aforementioned bijective mapping, necessary and sufficient conditions on $Q_{U,V}$ and $P_{X,Y}$ are provided under which $Q_{U,V}$ can be produced from $P_{X,Y}$. The bounds are applicable in NISS scenarios where the output alphabets $\mathcal{U}$ and $\mathcal{V}$ have arbitrary finite size. In case of binary output alphabets, the outer-bound recovers the previously best-known outer-bound.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Quantifying the Capacity Gains in Coarsely Quantized SISO Systems with Nonlinear Analog Operators

The power consumption of high-speed, high-resolution analog to digital converters (ADCs) is a limiting factor in implementing large-bandwidth mm-wave communication systems. A mitigating solution, which has drawn considerable recent interest, is to use a few low-resolution ADCs at the receiver. While reducing the number and resolution of the ADCs decreases power consumption, it also leads to a reduction in channel capacity due to the information loss induced by coarse quantization. This implies a rate-energy tradeoff governed by the number and resolution of ADCs. Recently, it was shown that given a fixed number of low-resolution ADCs, the application of practically implementable nonlinear analog operators, prior to sampling and quantization, may significantly reduce the aforementioned rate-loss. Building upon these observations, this work focuses on single-input single-output (SISO) communication scenarios, and i) characterizes capacity expressions under various assumptions on the set of implementable nonlinear analog functions, ii) provides computational methods to calculate the channel capacity numerically, and iii) quantifies the gains due to the use of nonlinear operators in SISO receiver terminals. Furthermore, circuit-level simulations, using a 65 nm Bulk CMOS technology, are provided to show the implementability of the desired nonlinear operators in the analog domain. The power requirements of the proposed circuits are quantified for various analog operators.

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