arXiv subjects

Nan Cheng

Publications and source records attributed to Nan Cheng.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

V2X-Assisted Distributed Computing and Control Framework for Connected and Automated Vehicles under Ramp Merging Scenario

This paper investigates distributed computing and cooperative control of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) in ramp merging scenario under transportation cyber-physical system. Firstly, a centralized cooperative trajectory planning problem is formulated subject to the safely constraints and traffic performance in ramp merging scenario, where the trajectories of all vehicles are jointly optimized. To get rid of the reliance on a central controller and reduce computation time, a distributed solution to this problem implemented among CAVs through Vehicles-to-Everything (V2X) communication is proposed. Unlike existing method, our method can distribute the computational task among CAVs and carry out parallel solving through V2X communication. Then, a multi-vehicles model predictive control (MPC) problem aimed at maximizing system stability and minimizing control input is formulated based on the solution of the first problem subject to strict safety constants and input limits. Due to these complex constraints, this problem becomes high-dimensional, centralized, and non-convex. To solve it in a short time, a decomposition and convex reformulation method, namely distributed cooperative iterative model predictive control (DCIMPC), is proposed. This method leverages the communication capability of CAVs to decompose the problem, making full use of the computational resources on vehicles to achieve fast solutions and distributed control. The two above problems with their corresponding solving methods form the systemic framework of the V2X assisted distributed computing and control. Simulations have been conducted to evaluate the framework's convergence, safety, and solving speed. Additionally, extra experiments are conducted to validate the performance of DCIMPC. The results show that our method can greatly improve computation speed without sacrificing system performance.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2024

Symmetry Breaking in Neural Network Optimization: Insights from Input Dimension Expansion

Understanding the mechanisms behind neural network optimization is crucial for improving network design and performance. While various optimization techniques have been developed, a comprehensive understanding of the underlying principles that govern these techniques remains elusive. Specifically, the role of symmetry breaking, a fundamental concept in physics, has not been fully explored in neural network optimization. This gap in knowledge limits our ability to design networks that are both efficient and effective. Here, we propose the symmetry breaking hypothesis to elucidate the significance of symmetry breaking in enhancing neural network optimization. We demonstrate that a simple input expansion can significantly improve network performance across various tasks, and we show that this improvement can be attributed to the underlying symmetry breaking mechanism. We further develop a metric to quantify the degree of symmetry breaking in neural networks, providing a practical approach to evaluate and guide network design. Our findings confirm that symmetry breaking is a fundamental principle that underpins various optimization techniques, including dropout, batch normalization, and equivariance. By quantifying the degree of symmetry breaking, our work offers a practical technique for performance enhancement and a metric to guide network design without the need for complete datasets and extensive training processes.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

User-centric Service Provision for Edge-assisted Mobile AR: A Digital Twin-based Approach

Future 6G networks are envisioned to support mobile augmented reality (MAR) applications and provide customized immersive experiences for users via advanced service provision. In this paper, we investigate user-centric service provision for edge-assisted MAR to support the timely camera frame uploading of an MAR device by optimizing the spectrum resource reservation. To address the challenge of non-stationary data traffic due to uncertain user movement and the complex camera frame uploading mechanism, we develop a digital twin (DT)-based data-driven approach to user-centric service provision. Specifically, we first establish a hierarchical data model with well-defined data attributes to characterize the impact of the camera frame uploading mechanism on the user-specific data traffic. We then design an easy-to-use algorithm to adapt the data attributes used in traffic modeling to the non-stationary data traffic. We also derive a closed-form service provision solution tailored to data-driven traffic modeling with the consideration of potential modeling inaccuracies. Trace-driven simulation results demonstrate that our DT-based approach for user-centric service provision outperforms conventional approaches in terms of adaptivity and robustness.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2024

GNN-Empowered Effective Partial Observation MARL Method for AoI Management in Multi-UAV Network

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), due to their low cost and high flexibility, have been widely used in various scenarios to enhance network performance. However, the optimization of UAV trajectories in unknown areas or areas without sufficient prior information, still faces challenges related to poor planning performance and low distributed execution. These challenges arise when UAVs rely solely on their own observation information and the information from other UAVs within their communicable range, without access to global information. To address these challenges, this paper proposes the Qedgix framework, which combines graph neural networks (GNNs) and the QMIX algorithm to achieve distributed optimization of the Age of Information (AoI) for users in unknown scenarios. The framework utilizes GNNs to extract information from UAVs, users within the observable range, and other UAVs within the communicable range, thereby enabling effective UAV trajectory planning. Due to the discretization and temporal features of AoI indicators, the Qedgix framework employs QMIX to optimize distributed partially observable Markov decision processes (Dec-POMDP) based on centralized training and distributed execution (CTDE) with respect to mean AoI values of users. By modeling the UAV network optimization problem in terms of AoI and applying the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem, the Qedgix framework achieves efficient neural network training through parameter sharing based on permutation invariance. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly improves convergence speed while reducing the mean AoI values of users. The code is available at https://github.com/UNIC-Lab/Qedgix.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Channel Characterization of IRS-assisted Resonant Beam Communication Systems

To meet the growing demand for data traffic, spectrum-rich optical wireless communication (OWC) has emerged as a key technological driver for the development of 6G. The resonant beam communication (RBC) system, which employs spatially separated laser cavities as the transmitter and receiver, is a high-speed OWC technology capable of self-alignment without tracking. However, its transmission through the air is susceptible to losses caused by obstructions. In this paper, we propose an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted RBC system with the optical frequency doubling method, where the resonant beam in frequency-fundamental and frequency-doubled is transmitted through both direct line-of-sight (LoS) and IRS-assisted channels to maintain steady-state oscillation and enable communication without echo-interference, respectively. Then, we establish the channel model based on Fresnel diffraction theory under the near-field optical propagation to analyze the transmission loss and frequency-doubled power analytically. Furthermore, communication power can be maximized by dynamically controlling the beam-splitting ratio between the two channels according to the loss levels encountered over air. Numerical results validate that the IRS-assisted channel can compensate for the losses in the obstructed LoS channel and misaligned receivers, ensuring that communication performance reaches an optimal value with dynamic ratio adjustments.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2024

Movable Antenna Empowered Downlink NOMA Systems: Power Allocation and Antenna Position Optimization

This paper investigates a novel communication paradigm employing movable antennas (MAs) within a multiple-input single-output (MISO) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) downlink framework, where users are equipped with MAs. Initially, leveraging the far-field response, we delineate the channel characteristics concerning both the power allocation coefficient and positions of MAs. Subsequently, we endeavor to maximize the channel capacity by jointly optimizing power allocation and antenna positions. To tackle the resultant non-convex problem, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) scheme underpinned by successive convex approximation (SCA) to converge towards a stationary point. Through numerical simulations, our findings substantiate the superiority of the MA-assisted NOMA system over both orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and conventional NOMA configurations in terms of average sum rate and outage probability.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Cramer-Rao Bound Minimization for Movable Antenna-Assisted Multiuser Integrated Sensing and Communications

This paper investigates a movable antenna (MA)-assisted multiuser integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system, where the base station (BS) and communication users are all equipped with MA for improving both the sensing and communication performance. We employ the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) as the performance metric of sensing, thus a joint beamforming design and MAs' position optimizing problem is formulated to minimize the CRB. However the resulting optimization problem is NP-hard and the variables are highly coupled. To tackle this problem, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) framework by adopting semidefinite relaxation (SDR) and successive convex approximation (SCA) technique. Numerical results reveal that the proposed MA-assisted ISAC system achieves lower estimation CRB compared to the fixed-position antenna (FPA) counterpart.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2024

Reliable Projection Based Unsupervised Learning for Semi-Definite QCQP with Application of Beamforming Optimization

In this paper, we investigate a special class of quadratic-constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) with semi-definite constraints. Traditionally, since such a problem is non-convex and N-hard, the neural network (NN) is regarded as a promising method to obtain a high-performing solution. However, due to the inherent prediction error, it is challenging to ensure all solution output by the NN is feasible. Although some existing methods propose some naive methods, they only focus on reducing the constraint violation probability, where not all solutions are feasibly guaranteed. To deal with the above challenge, in this paper a computing efficient and reliable projection is proposed, where all solution output by the NN are ensured to be feasible. Moreover, unsupervised learning is used, so the NN can be trained effectively and efficiently without labels. Theoretically, the solution of the NN after projection is proven to be feasible, and we also prove the projection method can enhance the convergence performance and speed of the NN. To evaluate our proposed method, the quality of service (QoS)-contained beamforming scenario is studied, where the simulation results show the proposed method can achieve high-performance which is competitive with the lower bound.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Optimizing Age of Information in Vehicular Edge Computing with Federated Graph Neural Network Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

With the rapid development of intelligent vehicles and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), the sensors such as cameras and LiDAR installed on intelligent vehicles provides higher capacity of executing computation-intensive and delay-sensitive tasks, thereby raising deployment costs. To address this issue, Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) has been proposed to process data through Road Side Units (RSUs) to support real-time applications. This paper focuses on the Age of Information (AoI) as a key metric for data freshness and explores task offloading issues for vehicles under RSU communication resource constraints. We adopt a Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MADRL) approach, allowing vehicles to autonomously make optimal data offloading decisions. However, MADRL poses risks of vehicle information leakage during communication learning and centralized training. To mitigate this, we employ a Federated Learning (FL) framework that shares model parameters instead of raw data to protect the privacy of vehicle users. Building on this, we propose an innovative distributed federated learning framework combining Graph Neural Networks (GNN), named Federated Graph Neural Network Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (FGNN-MADRL), to optimize AoI across the system. For the first time, road scenarios are constructed as graph data structures, and a GNN-based federated learning framework is proposed, effectively combining distributed and centralized federated aggregation. Furthermore, we propose a new MADRL algorithm that simplifies decision making and enhances offloading efficiency, further reducing the decision complexity. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed approach to other methods through simulations.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Constructing and Evaluating Digital Twins: An Intelligent Framework for DT Development

The development of Digital Twins (DTs) represents a transformative advance for simulating and optimizing complex systems in a controlled digital space. Despite their potential, the challenge of constructing DTs that accurately replicate and predict the dynamics of real-world systems remains substantial. This paper introduces an intelligent framework for the construction and evaluation of DTs, specifically designed to enhance the accuracy and utility of DTs in testing algorithmic performance. We propose a novel construction methodology that integrates deep learning-based policy gradient techniques to dynamically tune the DT parameters, ensuring high fidelity in the digital replication of physical systems. Moreover, the Mean STate Error (MSTE) is proposed as a robust metric for evaluating the performance of algorithms within these digital space. The efficacy of our framework is demonstrated through extensive simulations that show our DT not only accurately mirrors the physical reality but also provides a reliable platform for algorithm evaluation. This work lays a foundation for future research into DT technologies, highlighting pathways for both theoretical enhancements and practical implementations in various industries.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2024

Trapezoidal Gradient Descent for Effective Reinforcement Learning in Spiking Networks

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, the field of reinforcement learning has continuously achieved breakthroughs in both theory and practice. However, traditional reinforcement learning algorithms often entail high energy consumption during interactions with the environment. Spiking Neural Network (SNN), with their low energy consumption characteristics and performance comparable to deep neural networks, have garnered widespread attention. To reduce the energy consumption of practical applications of reinforcement learning, researchers have successively proposed the Pop-SAN and MDC-SAN algorithms. Nonetheless, these algorithms use rectangular functions to approximate the spike network during the training process, resulting in low sensitivity, thus indicating room for improvement in the training effectiveness of SNN. Based on this, we propose a trapezoidal approximation gradient method to replace the spike network, which not only preserves the original stable learning state but also enhances the model's adaptability and response sensitivity under various signal dynamics. Simulation results show that the improved algorithm, using the trapezoidal approximation gradient to replace the spike network, achieves better convergence speed and performance compared to the original algorithm and demonstrates good training stability.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2024

Multiple Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces Collaborative Wireless Localization System

This paper studies a multiple intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) collaborative localization system where multiple semi-passive IRSs are deployed in the network to locate one or more targets based on time-of-arrival. It is assumed that each semi-passive IRS is equipped with reflective elements and sensors, which are used to establish the line-of-sight links from the base station (BS) to multiple targets and process echo signals, respectively. Based on the above model, we derive the Fisher information matrix of the echo signal with respect to the time delay. By employing the chain rule and exploiting the geometric relationship between time delay and position, the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) for estimating the target's Cartesian coordinate position is derived. Then, we propose a two-stage algorithmic framework to minimize CRB in single- and multi-target localization systems by joint optimizing active beamforming at BS, passive beamforming at multiple IRSs and IRS selection. For the single-target case, we derive the optimal closed-form solution for multiple IRSs coefficients design and propose a lowcomplexity algorithm based on alternating direction method of multipliers to obtain the optimal solution for active beaming design. For the multi-target case, alternating optimization is used to transform the original problem into two subproblems where semi-definite relaxation and successive convex approximation are applied to tackle the quadraticity and indefiniteness in the CRB expression, respectively. Finally, numerical simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for multiple IRSs collaborative localization system compared to other benchmark schemes as well as the significant performance gains.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Toward Enhanced Reinforcement Learning-Based Resource Management via Digital Twin: Opportunities, Applications, and Challenges

This article presents a digital twin (DT)-enhanced reinforcement learning (RL) framework aimed at optimizing performance and reliability in network resource management, since the traditional RL methods face several unified challenges when applied to physical networks, including limited exploration efficiency, slow convergence, poor long-term performance, and safety concerns during the exploration phase. To deal with the above challenges, a comprehensive DT-based framework is proposed to enhance the convergence speed and performance for unified RL-based resource management. The proposed framework provides safe action exploration, more accurate estimates of long-term returns, faster training convergence, higher convergence performance, and real-time adaptation to varying network conditions. Then, two case studies on ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) services and multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) network are presented, demonstrating improvements of the proposed framework in performance, convergence speed, and training cost reduction both on traditional RL and neural network based Deep RL (DRL). Finally, the article identifies and explores some of the research challenges and open issues in this rapidly evolving field.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2024

Erasing Radio Frequency Fingerprints via Active Adversarial Perturbation

Radio Frequency (RF) fingerprinting is to identify a wireless device from its uniqueness of the analog circuitry or hardware imperfections. However, unlike the MAC address which can be modified, such hardware feature is inevitable for the signal emitted to air, which can possibly reveal device whereabouts, e.g., a sniffer can use a pre-trained model to identify a nearby device when receiving its signal. Such fingerprint may expose critical private information, e.g., the associated upper-layer applications or the end-user. In this paper, we propose to erase such RF feature for wireless devices, which can prevent fingerprinting by actively perturbation from the signal perspective. Specifically, we consider a common RF fingerprinting scenario, where machine learning models are trained from pilot signal data for identification. A novel adversarial attack solution is designed to generate proper perturbations, whereby the perturbed pilot signal can hide the hardware feature and misclassify the model. We theoretically show that the perturbation would not affect the communication function within a tolerable perturbation threshold. We also implement the pilot signal fingerprinting and the proposed perturbation process in a practical LTE system. Extensive experiment results demonstrate that the RF fingerprints can be effectively erased to protect the user privacy.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

Movable Antenna Enhanced NOMA Short-Packet Transmission

This letter investigates a short-packet downlink transmission system using non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) enhanced via movable antenna (MA). We focuses on maximizing the effective throughput for a core user while ensuring reliable communication for an edge user by optimizing the MAs' coordinates and the power and rate allocations from the access point (AP). The optimization challenge is approached by decomposing it into two subproblems, utilizing successive convex approximation (SCA) to handle the highly non-concave nature of channel gains. Numerical results confirm that the proposed solution offers substantial improvements in effective throughput compared to NOMA short-packet communication with fixed position antennas (FPAs).

eess.SP↗

arXiv2024

Universal spectral moment theorem and its applications in non-Hermitian systems

The high sensitivity of the spectrum and wavefunctions to boundary conditions, termed the non-Hermitian skin effect, represents a fundamental aspect of non-Hermitian systems. While it endows non-Hermitian systems with unprecedented physical properties, it presents notable obstacles in grasping universal properties that are robust against microscopic details and boundary conditions. In this Letter, we introduce a pivotal theorem: in the thermodynamic limit, for any non-Hermitian systems with finite-range interactions, all spectral moments are invariant quantities, independent of boundary conditions, posing strong constraints on the spectrum. Utilizing this invariance, we propose a new criterion for bulk dynamical phases based on experimentally observable features and applicable to any dimensions and any boundary conditions. Based on this criterion, we define the bulk dispersive-to-proliferative phase transition, which is distinct from the real-to-complex spectral transition and contrary to traditional expectations. We verify these findings in 1D and 2D lattice models.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Structural Knowledge-Driven Meta-Learning for Task Offloading in Vehicular Networks with Integrated Communications, Sensing and Computing

Task offloading is a potential solution to satisfy the strict requirements of computation-intensive and latency-sensitive vehicular applications due to the limited onboard computing resources. However, the overwhelming upload traffic may lead to unacceptable uploading time. To tackle this issue, for tasks taking environmental data as input, the data perceived by roadside units (RSU) equipped with several sensors can be directly exploited for computation, resulting in a novel task offloading paradigm with integrated communications, sensing and computing (I-CSC). With this paradigm, vehicles can select to upload their sensed data to RSUs or transmit computing instructions to RSUs during the offloading. By optimizing the computation mode and network resources, in this paper, we investigate an I-CSC-based task offloading problem to reduce the cost caused by resource consumption while guaranteeing the latency of each task. Although this non-convex problem can be handled by the alternating minimization (AM) algorithm that alternatively minimizes the divided four sub-problems, it leads to high computational complexity and local optimal solution. To tackle this challenge, we propose a creative structural knowledge-driven meta-learning (SKDML) method, involving both the model-based AM algorithm and neural networks. Specifically, borrowing the iterative structure of the AM algorithm, also referred to as structural knowledge, the proposed SKDML adopts long short-term memory (LSTM) network-based meta-learning to learn an adaptive optimizer for updating variables in each sub-problem, instead of the handcrafted counterpart in the AM algorithm.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Digital Twin-based 3D Map Management for Edge-assisted Device Pose Tracking in Mobile AR

Edge-device collaboration has the potential to facilitate compute-intensive device pose tracking for resource-constrained mobile augmented reality (MAR) devices. In this paper, we devise a 3D map management scheme for edge-assisted MAR, wherein an edge server constructs and updates a 3D map of the physical environment by using the camera frames uploaded from an MAR device, to support local device pose tracking. Our objective is to minimize the uncertainty of device pose tracking by periodically selecting a proper set of uploaded camera frames and updating the 3D map. To cope with the dynamics of the uplink data rate and the user's pose, we formulate a Bayes-adaptive Markov decision process problem and propose a digital twin (DT)-based approach to solve the problem. First, a DT is designed as a data model to capture the time-varying uplink data rate, thereby supporting 3D map management. Second, utilizing extensive generated data provided by the DT, a model-based reinforcement learning algorithm is developed to manage the 3D map while adapting to these dynamics. Numerical results demonstrate that the designed DT outperforms Markov models in accurately capturing the time-varying uplink data rate, and our devised DT-based 3D map management scheme surpasses benchmark schemes in reducing device pose tracking uncertainty.

cs.NI↗