arXiv subjects

Urbashi Mitra

Publications and source records attributed to Urbashi Mitra.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Is Synchronization a Bottleneck for Pilot-Assisted URLLC Links?

We propose a framework to evaluate the so-called random-coding union bound with parameter $s$ (RCUs) on the achievable error probability in the finite-blocklength regime for a pilot-assisted transmission scheme operating over an imperfectly synchronized and memoryless block-fading waveform channel. Unlike previous results, which disregard the effects of imperfect synchronization, our framework utilizes pilots for both synchronization and channel estimation. Specifically, we provide an algorithm to perform joint synchronization and channel estimation, and verify its accuracy by observing its tightness in comparison with the Cramer-Rao bound. Then, we develop an RCUs bound on the error probability, which applies for a receiver that treats the estimates provided by the algorithm as accurate. Additionally, we utilize the saddlepoint approximation to provide a numerically efficient method for evaluating the RCUs bound in this scenario. Our numerical experiments verify the accuracy of the proposed approximation. Moreover, when the delays are modeled as fully dependent across fading blocks, numerical results indicate that the number of pilot symbols needed to estimate the fading channel gains to the level of accuracy required in ultra-reliable low-latency communication is also sufficient to acquire sufficiently good synchronization. However, when the delays are modeled as independent across blocks, synchronization becomes the bottleneck for the system performance.

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arXiv2024

Coverage Analysis of Multi-Environment Q-Learning Algorithms for Wireless Network Optimization

Q-learning is widely used to optimize wireless networks with unknown system dynamics. Recent advancements include ensemble multi-environment hybrid Q-learning algorithms, which utilize multiple Q-learning algorithms across structurally related but distinct Markovian environments and outperform existing Q-learning algorithms in terms of accuracy and complexity in large-scale wireless networks. We herein conduct a comprehensive coverage analysis to ensure optimal data coverage conditions for these algorithms. Initially, we establish upper bounds on the expectation and variance of different coverage coefficients. Leveraging these bounds, we present an algorithm for efficient initialization of these algorithms. We test our algorithm on two distinct real-world wireless networks. Numerical simulations show that our algorithm can achieve %50 less policy error and %40 less runtime complexity than state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms. Furthermore, our algorithm exhibits robustness to changes in network settings and parameters. We also numerically validate our theoretical results.

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arXiv2024

Guaranteed Private Communication with Secret Block Structure

A novel private communication framework is proposed where privacy is induced by transmitting over a channel instances of linear inverse problems that are identifiable to the legitimate receiver but unidentifiable to an eavesdropper. The gap in identifiability is created in the framework by leveraging secret knowledge between the transmitter and the legitimate receiver. Specifically, the case where the legitimate receiver harnesses a secret block structure to decode a transmitted block-sparse message from underdetermined linear measurements in conditions where classical compressed sensing would provably fail is examined. The applicability of the proposed scheme to practical multiple-access wireless communication systems is discussed. The protocol's privacy is studied under a single transmission, and under multiple transmissions without refreshing the secret block structure. It is shown that, under a specific scaling of the channel dimensions and transmission parameters, the eavesdropper can attempt to overhear the block structure from the fourth-order moments of the channel output. Computation of a statistical lower bound suggests that the proposed fourth-order moment secret block estimation strategy is near optimal. The performance of a spectral clustering algorithm is studied to that end, defining scaling laws on the lifespan of the secret key before the communication is compromised. Finally, numerical experiments corroborating the theoretical findings are conducted.

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arXiv2024

Channel State Information-Free Location-Privacy Enhancement: Fake Path Injection

In this paper, a channel state information (CSI)-free, fake path injection (FPI) scheme is proposed for location-privacy preservation. By leveraging the geometrical feasibility of the fake paths, under mild conditions, it can be proved that the illegitimate device cannot distinguish between a fake and true path, thus degrading the illegitimate devices' ability to localize. Two closed-form, lower bounds on the illegitimate devices' estimation error are derived via the analysis of the Fisher information of the location-relevant channel parameters, thus characterizing the enhanced location privacy. A transmit precoder is proposed, which efficiently injects the virtual fake paths. The intended device receives the two parameters of the precoder design over a secure channel in order to enable localization. The impact of leaking the precoder structure and the associated localization leakage are analyzed. Theoretical analyses are verified via simulation. Numerical results show that a 20dB degradation of the illegitimate devices' localization accuracy can be achieved and validate the efficacy of the proposed FPI versus using unstructured Gaussian noise or a CSI-dependent beamforming strategy.

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arXiv2024

Channel State Information-Free Location-Privacy Enhancement: Delay-Angle Information Spoofing

In this paper, a delay-angle information spoofing (DAIS) strategy is proposed for location-privacy enhancement. By shifting the location-relevant delays and angles without the aid of channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter, the eavesdropper is obfuscated by a physical location that is distinct from the true one. A precoder is designed to preserve location-privacy while the legitimate localizer can remove the obfuscation with the securely shared information. Then, a lower bound on the localization error is derived via the analysis of the geometric mismatch caused by DAIS, validating the enhanced location-privacy. The statistical hardness for the estimation of the shared information is also investigated to assess the robustness to the potential leakage of the designed precoder structure. Numerical comparisons show that the proposed DAIS scheme results in more than 15 dB performance degradation for the illegitimate localizer at high signal-to-noise ratios, which is comparable to a recently proposed CSI-free location-privacy enhancement strategy and is less sensitive to the precoder structure leakage than the prior approach.

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arXiv2024

Optimized Parameter Design for Channel State Information-Free Location Spoofing

In this paper, an augmented analysis of a delay-angle information spoofing (DAIS) is provided for location-privacy preservation, where the location-relevant delays and angles are artificially shifted to obfuscate the eavesdropper with an incorrect physical location. A simplified misspecified Cramer-Rao bound (MCRB) is derived, which clearly manifests that not only estimation error, but also the geometric mismatch introduced by DAIS can lead to a significant increase in localization error for an eavesdropper. Given an assumption of the orthogonality among wireless paths, the simplified MCRB can be further expressed as a function of delay-angle shifts in a closed-form, which enables the more straightforward optimization of these design parameters for location-privacy enhancement. Numerical results are provided, validating the theoretical analysis and showing that the root-mean-square error for eavesdropper's localization can be more than 150 m with the optimized delay-angle shifts for DAIS.

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arXiv2024

Can FSK Be Optimised for Integrated Sensing and Communications?

Motivated by the ideal peak-to-average-power ratio and radar sensing capability of traditional frequency-coded radar waveforms, this paper considers the frequency shift keying (FSK) based waveform for joint communications and radar (JCR). An analysis of the probability distributions of its ambiguity function (AF) sidelobe levels (SLs) and peak sidelobe level (PSL) is conducted to study the radar sensing capability of random FSK. Numerical results show that the independent frequency modulation introduces uncontrollable AF PSLs. In order to address this problem, the initial phases of waveform sub-pulses are designed by solving a min-max optimisation problem. Numerical results indicate that the optimisation-based phase design can effectively reduce the AF PSL to a level close to well-designed radar waveforms while having no impact on the data rate and the receiver complexity. For large numbers of waveform sub-pulses and modulation orders, the impact on the error probability is also insignificant.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Leveraging Digital Cousins for Ensemble Q-Learning in Large-Scale Wireless Networks

Optimizing large-scale wireless networks, including optimal resource management, power allocation, and throughput maximization, is inherently challenging due to their non-observable system dynamics and heterogeneous and complex nature. Herein, a novel ensemble Q-learning algorithm that addresses the performance and complexity challenges of the traditional Q-learning algorithm for optimizing wireless networks is presented. Ensemble learning with synthetic Markov Decision Processes is tailored to wireless networks via new models for approximating large state-space observable wireless networks. In particular, digital cousins are proposed as an extension of the traditional digital twin concept wherein multiple Q-learning algorithms on multiple synthetic Markovian environments are run in parallel and their outputs are fused into a single Q-function. Convergence analyses of key statistics and Q-functions and derivations of upper bounds on the estimation bias and variance are provided. Numerical results across a variety of real-world wireless networks show that the proposed algorithm can achieve up to 50% less average policy error with up to 40% less runtime complexity than the state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms. It is also shown that theoretical results properly predict trends in the experimental results.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Multi-Timescale Ensemble Q-learning for Markov Decision Process Policy Optimization

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a classical tool to solve network control or policy optimization problems in unknown environments. The original Q-learning suffers from performance and complexity challenges across very large networks. Herein, a novel model-free ensemble reinforcement learning algorithm which adapts the classical Q-learning is proposed to handle these challenges for networks which admit Markov decision process (MDP) models. Multiple Q-learning algorithms are run on multiple, distinct, synthetically created and structurally related Markovian environments in parallel; the outputs are fused using an adaptive weighting mechanism based on the Jensen-Shannon divergence (JSD) to obtain an approximately optimal policy with low complexity. The theoretical justification of the algorithm, including the convergence of key statistics and Q-functions are provided. Numerical results across several network models show that the proposed algorithm can achieve up to 55% less average policy error with up to 50% less runtime complexity than the state-of-the-art Q-learning algorithms. Numerical results validate assumptions made in the theoretical analysis.

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arXiv2023

Interference-Constrained Scheduling of a Cognitive Multi-hop Underwater Acoustic Network

This paper investigates optimal scheduling for a cognitive multi-hop underwater acoustic network with a primary user interference constraint. The network consists of primary and secondary users, with multi-hop transmission adopted for both user types to provide reliable communications. Critical characteristics of underwater acoustic channels, including significant propagation delay, distance-and-frequency dependent attenuation, half-duplex modem, and inter-hop interference, are taken into account in the design and analysis. In particular, time-slot allocation is found to be more effective than frequency-slot allocation due to the underwater channel model. The goal of the network scheduling problem is to maximize the end-to-end throughput of the overall system while limiting the throughput loss of primary users. Both centralized and decentralized approaches are considered. Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDP) framework is applied to formulate the optimization problem, and an optimal dynamic programming algorithm is derived. However, the optimal dynamic programming solution is computationally intractable. Key properties are shown for the objective function, enabling the design of approximate schemes with significant complexity reduction. Numerical results show that the proposed schemes significantly increase system throughput while maintaining the primary throughput loss constraint. Under certain traffic conditions, the throughput gain over frequency-slot allocation schemes can be as high as 50%.

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arXiv2023

Two-sided Delay Constrained Scheduling: Managing Fresh and Stale Data

Energy or time-efficient scheduling is of particular interest in wireless communications, with applications in sensor network design, cellular communications, and more. In many cases, wireless packets to be transmitted have deadlines that upper bound the times before their transmissions, to avoid staleness of transmitted data. In this paper, motivated by emerging applications in security-critical communications, age of information, and molecular communications, we expand the wireless packet scheduling framework to scenarios which involve strict limits on the time after transmission, in addition to the conventional pre-transmission delay constraints. As a result, we introduce the scheduling problem under two-sided individual deadlines, which captures systems wherein transmitting too late (stale) and too early (fresh) are both undesired. Subject to said two-sided deadlines, we provably solve the optimal (energy-minimizing) offline packet scheduling problem. Leveraging this result and the inherent duality between rate and energy, we propose and solve the completion-time-optimal offline packet scheduling problem under the introduced two-sided framework. Overall, the developed theoretical framework can be utilized in applications wherein packets have finite lifetimes both before and after their transmission (e.g., security-critical applications), or applications with joint strict constraints on packet delay and information freshness.

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arXiv2023

Matrix Approximation with Side Information: When Column Sampling is Enough

A novel matrix approximation problem is considered herein: observations based on a few fully sampled columns and quasi-polynomial structural side information are exploited. The framework is motivated by quantum chemistry problems wherein full matrix computation is expensive, and partial computations only lead to column information. The proposed algorithm successfully estimates the column and row-space of a true matrix given a priori structural knowledge of the true matrix. A theoretical spectral error bound is provided, which captures the possible inaccuracies of the side information. The error bound proves it scales in its signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio. The proposed algorithm is validated via simulations which enable the characterization of the amount of information provided by the quasi-polynomial side information.

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arXiv2023

Channel State Information-Free Artificial Noise-Aided Location-Privacy Enhancement

In this paper, an artificial noise-aided strategy is presented for location-privacy preservation. A novel framework for the reduction of location-privacy leakage is introduced, where structured artificial noise is designed to degrade the structure of the illegitimate devices' channel, without the aid of channel state information at the transmitter. Then, based on the location-privacy enhancement framework, a transmit beamformer is proposed to efficiently inject the structured artificial noise. Furthermore, the securely shared information is characterized to enable the legitimate devices to localize accurately. Numerical results show a 9dB degradation of illegitimate devices' localization accuracy is achieved, and validate the efficacy of structured artificial noise versus unstructured Gaussian noise.

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arXiv2022

Maximal Dissent: a State-Dependent Way to Agree in Distributed Convex Optimization

Consider a set of agents collaboratively solving a distributed convex optimization problem, asynchronously, under stringent communication constraints. In such situations, when an agent is activated and is allowed to communicate with only one of its neighbors, we would like to pick the one holding the most informative local estimate. We propose new algorithms where the agents with maximal dissent average their estimates, leading to an information mixing mechanism that often displays faster convergence to an optimal solution compared to randomized gossip. The core idea is that when two neighboring agents whose distance between local estimates is the largest among all neighboring agents in the network average their states, it leads to the largest possible immediate reduction of the quadratic Lyapunov function used to establish convergence to the set of optimal solutions. As a broader contribution, we prove the convergence of max-dissent subgradient methods using a unified framework that can be used for other state-dependent distributed optimization algorithms. Our proof technique bypasses the need of establishing the information flow between any two agents within a time interval of uniform length by intelligently studying convergence properties of the Lyapunov function used in our analysis.

math.OC↗

arXiv2022

On the Stability of Super-Resolution and a Beurling-Selberg Type Extremal Problem

Super-resolution estimation is the problem of recovering a stream of spikes (point sources) from the noisy observation of a few numbers of its first trigonometric moments. The performance of super-resolution is recognized to be intimately related to the separation between the spikes to recover. A novel notion of stability of the Fisher information matrix (FIM) of the super-resolution problem is introduced when the minimal eigenvalue of the FIM is not asymptotically vanishing. The regime where the minimal separation is inversely proportional to the number of acquired moments is considered. It is shown that there is a separation threshold above which the eigenvalues of the FIM can be bounded by a quantity that does not depend on the number of moments. The proof relies on characterizing the connection between the stability of the FIM and a generalization of the Beurling-Selberg box approximation problem.

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arXiv2022

UAV-aided RF Mapping for Sensing and Connectivity in Wireless Networks

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) as flying radio access network (RAN) nodes offers a promising complement to traditional fixed terrestrial deployments. More recently yet still in the context of wireless networks, drones have also been envisioned for use as radio frequency (RF) sensing and localization devices. In both cases, the advantage of using UAVs lies in their ability to navigate themselves freely in 3D and in a timely manner to locations of space where the obtained network throughput or sensing performance is optimal. In practice, the selection of a proper location or trajectory for the UAV very much depends on local terrain features, including the position of surrounding radio obstacles. Hence, the robot must be able to map the features of its radio environment as it performs its data communication or sensing services. The challenges related to this task, referred here as radio mapping, are discussed in this paper. Its promises related to efficient trajectory design for autonomous radio-aware UAVs are highlighted, along with algorithm solutions. The advantages induced by radio-mapping in terms of connectivity, sensing, and localization performance are illustrated.

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arXiv2022

Uncertainty-Based Non-Parametric Active Peak Detection

Active, non-parametric peak detection is considered. As a use case, active source localization is examined and an uncertainty-based sampling scheme algorithm to effectively localize the peak from a few energy measurements is designed. It is shown that under very mild conditions, the source localization error with $m$ actively chosen energy measurements scales as $O(\log^2 m/m)$. Numerically, it is shown that in low-sample regimes, the proposed method enjoys superior performance on several types of data and outperforms the state-of-the-art passive source localization approaches and in the low sample regime, can outperform greedy methods as well.

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arXiv2022

Joint Localization and Orientation Estimation in Millimeter-Wave MIMO OFDM Systems via Atomic Norm Minimization

Herein, an atomic norm based method for accurately estimating the location and orientation of a target from millimeter-wave multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signals is presented. A novel virtual channel matrix is introduced and an algorithm to extract localization-relevant channel parameters from its atomic norm decomposition is designed. Then, based on the extended invariance principle, a weighted least squares problem is proposed to accurately recover the location and orientation using both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight channel information. The conditions for the optimality and uniqueness of the estimate and theoretical guarantees for the estimation error are characterized for the noiseless and the noisy scenarios. Theoretical results are confirmed via simulation. Numerical results investigate the robustness of the proposed algorithm to incorrect model order selection or synchronization error, and highlight performance improvements over a prior method. The resultant performance nearly achieves the Cramer-Rao lower bound on the estimation error.

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