arXiv subjects

Hassan Aboushady

Publications and source records attributed to Hassan Aboushady.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Heterogeneous Neural Network Accelerator for End-to-End Multitask RF Signal Recognition

This paper presents a heterogeneous neural network accelerator for multi-task RF signal recognition, supporting automatic modulation recognition (AMR), hardware-Trojan covert channel (HT-CC) detection, and GNSS jamming classification. We introduce a compact attention-enhanced convolutional neural network (CNN) combined with LSDec, a learnable streaming decimator that enables adaptive temporal downsampling and flexible input lengths. The hardware architecture integrates a novel dual-pipeline, fused convolution-pooling engine with DMA-based streaming to minimize memory traffic and latency. Co-execution scheduling on the accelerator and SIMD-optimized CPU kernels reduces hardware resource usage while preserving high performance and task-level flexibility. Across three datasets, the proposed system achieves $\geq$ 99% average accuracy above 4 dB Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNRs) on the RadioML2018 dataset for AMR, 90% on the HT-CC dataset, and 99.5% on the GNSS-Jamming dataset. The accelerator sustains an end-to-end inference latency of 98 $μ$s per frame, demonstrating its effectiveness for low-power, latency-critical multi-task spectrum-intelligence applications on embedded and edge devices.

cs.AR↗

arXiv2026

Edge-Efficient Transformer for End-to-End RF Spectrum Monitoring

We present E-SpecFormer (Edge Spectrum monitoring Transformer) for end-to-end automatic modulation and covert channel (CC) recognition. We introduce LiTAN (Linear Tanh Attention Network), a Softmax- and LayerNorm-free attention mechanism that reduces complexity while increasing accuracy in RF tasks. E-SpecFormer is parameterized in four scalable variants (Nano, Small, Medium, Large) to accommodate diverse hardware constraints. Using the RadioML2018 dataset for modulation recognition, the Nano variant achieves 86.5% average accuracy for Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNRs)>0 dB, and on the hardware Trojan (HT)-based CC dataset it reaches 94.2% accuracy, both with fewer than 10k parameters and up to speed of 92 μs per frame on FPGA/CPU co-execution, surpassing state-of-the-art edge models at a fraction of their cost. These results establish E-SpecFormer as an edge-efficient solution for real-time spectrum intelligence on Internet of Things (IoT) devices. GitHub link to the repository: https://github.com/zsniko/E-SpecFormer.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

AI-Enabled Covert Channel Detection in RF Receiver Architectures

Covert channels (CCs) in wireless chips pose a serious security threat, as they enable the exfiltration of sensitive information from the chip to an external attacker. In this work, we propose an AI-based defense mechanism deployed at the RF receiver, where the model directly monitors raw I/Q samples to detect, in real time, the presence of a CC embedded within an otherwise nominal signal. We first compact a state-of-the-art convolutional neural network (CNN), achieving an 80% reduction in parameters, which is an essential requirement for efficient edge deployment. When evaluated on the open-source hardware Trojan (HT)-based CC dataset, the compacted CNN attains an average accuracy of 90.28% for CC detection and 86.50% for identifying the underlying HT, with results averaged across SNR values above 1 dB. For practical communication scenarios where SNR > 20 dB, the model achieves over 97% accuracy for both tasks. These results correspond to a minimal performance degradation of less than 2% compared to the baseline model. The compacted CNN is further benchmarked against alternative classifiers, demonstrating an excellent accuracy-model size trade-off. Finally, we design a lightweight CNN hardware accelerator and demonstrate it on an FPGA, achieving very low resource utilization and an efficiency of 107 GOPs/W. Being the first AI hardware accelerator proposed specifically for CC detection, we compare it against state-of-the-art AI accelerators for RF signal classification tasks such as modulation recognition, showing superior performance.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Stealing AI Model Weights Through Covert Communication Channels

AI models are often regarded as valuable intellectual property due to the high cost of their development, the competitive advantage they provide, and the proprietary techniques involved in their creation. As a result, AI model stealing attacks pose a serious concern for AI model providers. In this work, we present a novel attack targeting wireless devices equipped with AI hardware accelerators. The attack unfolds in two phases. In the first phase, the victim's device is compromised with a hardware Trojan (HT) designed to covertly leak model weights through a hidden communication channel, without the victim realizing it. In the second phase, the adversary uses a nearby wireless device to intercept the victim's transmission frames during normal operation and incrementally reconstruct the complete weight matrix. The proposed attack is agnostic to both the AI model architecture and the hardware accelerator used. We validate our approach through a hardware-based demonstration involving four diverse AI models of varying types and sizes. We detail the design of the HT and the covert channel, highlighting their stealthy nature. Additionally, we analyze the impact of bit error rates on the reception and propose an error mitigation technique. The effectiveness of the attack is evaluated based on the accuracy of the reconstructed models with stolen weights and the time required to extract them. Finally, we explore potential defense mechanisms.

cs.CR↗