arXiv subjects

Walid Saad

Publications and source records attributed to Walid Saad.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Event-Based Framework for Agile Resilience in Criticality-Aware Wireless Networks

As mission- and safety-critical wireless applications grow in complexity and diversity, next-generation wireless systems must meet increasingly stringent and multifaceted requirements. These systems demand resilience along with enhanced intelligence and adaptability to ensure reliable communication under diverse conditions. This paper proposes an event-based multi-stage resilience framework for systematically integrating complementary error mitigation techniques in wireless networks. The framework is applied to uplink transmission of mixedcriticality data under random link blockages. A key component is a novel mixed-criticality rate-splitting multiple access (MC-RSMA) scheme that combines multi- and single-connectivity to balance rate and blockage robustness. MC-RSMA is complemented by one-sided access point cooperation and central decoding, which are integrated into an event-driven algorithm. Here, increasingly effective but more complex mechanisms are activated sequentially to systematically counteract blockages while balancing resilience with cost. From a cross-layer perspective, two transmit power allocation problems are formulated: One for separate decoding and one for central decoding, to ensure fair queue utilization under heterogeneous quality-of-service requirements. Extensive simulations are used to evaluate the delay performance under varying blockage durations and examine the cost tradeoffs among resilience mechanisms within the proposed framework. Results show that the proposed framework achieves resilience across disruption regimes: MC-RSMA balances efficiency and robustness as a criticality-aware core scheme, active robustness strategies handle frequent short-term fluctuations, and adaptive recovery ensures performance during rare, prolonged blockages.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

Dual-Mind World Models: A General Framework for Learning in Dynamic Wireless Networks

Despite the popularity of reinforcement learning (RL) in wireless networks, existing approaches that rely on model-free RL (MFRL) and model-based RL (MBRL) are data inefficient and short-sighted. Such RL-based solutions cannot generalize to novel network states since they capture only statistical patterns rather than the underlying physics and logic from wireless data. These limitations become particularly challenging in complex wireless networks with high dynamics and long-term planning requirements. To address these limitations, in this paper, a novel dual-mind world model-based learning framework is proposed with the goal of optimizing completeness-weighted age of information (CAoI) in a challenging mmWave V2X scenario. Inspired by cognitive psychology, the proposed dual-mind world model encompasses a pattern-driven System 1 component and a logic-driven System 2 component to learn dynamics and logic of the wireless network, and to provide long-term link scheduling over reliable imagined trajectories. Link scheduling is learned through end-to-end differentiable imagined trajectories with logical consistency over an extended horizon rather than relying on wireless data obtained from environment interactions. Moreover, through imagination rollouts, the proposed world model can jointly reason network states and plan link scheduling. During intervals without observations, the proposed method remains capable of making efficient decisions. Extensive experiments are conducted on a realistic simulator based on Sionna with real-world physical channel, ray-tracing, and scene objects with material properties. Simulation results show that the proposed world model achieves a significant improvement in data efficiency and achieves strong generalization and adaptation to unseen environments, compared to the state-of-the-art RL baselines, and the world model approach with only System 1.

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arXiv2025

R-SFLLM: Jamming Resilient Framework for Split Federated Learning with Large Language Models

Split federated learning (SFL) is a compute-efficient paradigm in distributed machine learning (ML), where components of large ML models are outsourced to remote servers. A significant challenge in SFL, particularly when deployed over wireless channels, is the susceptibility of transmitted model parameters to adversarial jamming that could jeopardize the learning process. This is particularly pronounced for embedding parameters in large language models (LLMs) and vision language models (VLMs), which are learned feature vectors essential for domain understanding. In this paper, rigorous insights are provided into the influence of jamming embeddings in SFL by deriving an expression for the ML training loss divergence and showing that it is upper-bounded by the mean squared error (MSE). Based on this analysis, a physical layer framework is developed for resilient SFL with LLMs (R-SFLLM) over wireless networks. R-SFLLM leverages wireless sensing data to gather information on the jamming directions-of-arrival (DoAs) for the purpose of devising a novel, sensing-assisted anti-jamming strategy while jointly optimizing beamforming, user scheduling, and resource allocation. Extensive experiments using both LLMs and VLMs demonstrate R-SFLLM's effectiveness, achieving close-to-baseline performance across various natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision (CV) tasks, datasets, and modalities. The proposed methodology further introduces an adversarial training component, where controlled noise exposure significantly enhances the model's resilience to perturbed parameters during training. The results show that more noise-sensitive models, such as RoBERTa, benefit from this feature, especially when resource allocation is unfair. It is also shown that worst-case jamming in particular translates into worst-case model outcomes, thereby necessitating the need for jamming-resilient SFL protocols.

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arXiv2025

DMWM: Dual-Mind World Model with Long-Term Imagination

Imagination in world models is crucial for enabling agents to learn long-horizon policy in a sample-efficient manner. Existing recurrent state-space model (RSSM)-based world models depend on single-step statistical inference to capture the environment dynamics, and, hence, they are unable to perform long-term imagination tasks due to the accumulation of prediction errors. Inspired by the dual-process theory of human cognition, we propose a novel dual-mind world model (DMWM) framework that integrates logical reasoning to enable imagination with logical consistency. DMWM is composed of two components: an RSSM-based System 1 (RSSM-S1) component that handles state transitions in an intuitive manner and a logic-integrated neural network-based System 2 (LINN-S2) component that guides the imagination process through hierarchical deep logical reasoning. The inter-system feedback mechanism is designed to ensure that the imagination process follows the logical rules of the real environment. The proposed framework is evaluated on benchmark tasks that require long-term planning from the DMControl suite. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework yields significant improvements in terms of logical coherence, trial efficiency, data efficiency and long-term imagination over the state-of-the-art world models.

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arXiv2025

A Theoretically-Grounded Codebook for Digital Semantic Communications

The use of a learnable codebook provides an efficient way for semantic communications to map vector-based high-dimensional semantic features onto discrete symbol representations required in digital communication systems. In this paper, the problem of codebook-enabled quantization mapping for digital semantic communications is studied from the perspective of information theory. Particularly, a novel theoretically-grounded codebook design is proposed for jointly optimizing quantization efficiency, transmission efficiency, and robust performance. First, a formal equivalence is established between the one-to-many synonymous mapping defined in semantic information theory and the many-to-one quantization mapping based on the codebook's Voronoi partitions. Then, the mutual information between semantic features and their quantized indices is derived in order to maximize semantic information carried by discrete indices. To realize the semantic maximum in practice, an entropy-regularized quantization loss based on empirical estimation is introduced for end-to-end codebook training. Next, the physical channel-induced semantic distortion and the optimal codebook size for semantic communications are characterized under bit-flip errors and semantic distortion. To mitigate the semantic distortion caused by physical channel noise, a novel channel-aware semantic distortion loss is proposed. Simulation results on image reconstruction tasks demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed theoretically-grounded codebook that achieves a 24.1% improvement in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and a 46.5% improvement in learned perceptual image patch similarity (LPIPS) compared to the existing codebook designs when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is 10 dB.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

A Framework for AI-Native Semantic-Based Dynamic Slicing for 6G Networks

In the ensuing ultra-dense and diverse environment in future \ac{6G} communication networks, it will be critical to optimize network resources via mechanisms that recognize and cater to the diversity, density, and dynamicity of system changes. However, coping with such environments cannot be done through the current network approach of compartmentalizing data as distinct from network operations. Instead, we envision a computing continuum where the content of the transmitted data is considered as an essential element in the transmission of that data, with data sources and streams analyzed and distilled to their essential elements, based on their semantic context, and then processed and transmitted over dedicated slices of network resources. By exploiting the rich content and semantics within data for dynamic and autonomous optimization of the computing continuum, this article opens the door to integrating communication, computing, cyber-physical systems, data flow, and AI, presenting new and exciting opportunities for cross-layer design. We propose semantic slicing, a two-pronged approach that builds multiple virtual divisions within a single physical and data infrastructure, each with its own distinct characteristics and needs. We view semantic slicing as a novel shift from current static slicing techniques, extending existing slicing approaches such that it can be applied dynamically at different levels and categories of resources in the computing continuum. Further it propels the advancement of semantic communication via the proposed architectural framework.

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arXiv2025

A Unified Learning-based Optimization Framework for 0-1 Mixed Problems in Wireless Networks

Several wireless networking problems are often posed as 0-1 mixed optimization problems, which involve binary variables (e.g., selection of access points, channels, and tasks) and continuous variables (e.g., allocation of bandwidth, power, and computing resources). Traditional optimization methods as well as reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have been widely exploited to solve these problems under different network scenarios. However, solving such problems becomes more challenging when dealing with a large network scale, multi-dimensional radio resources, and diversified service requirements. To this end, in this paper, a unified framework that combines RL and optimization theory is proposed to solve 0-1 mixed optimization problems in wireless networks. First, RL is used to capture the process of solving binary variables as a sequential decision-making task. During the decision-making steps, the binary (0-1) variables are relaxed and, then, a relaxed problem is solved to obtain a relaxed solution, which serves as prior information to guide RL searching policy. Then, at the end of decision-making process, the search policy is updated via suboptimal objective value based on decisions made. The performance bound and convergence guarantees of the proposed framework are then proven theoretically. An extension of this approach is provided to solve problems with a non-convex objective function and/or non-convex constraints. Numerical results show that the proposed approach reduces the convergence time by about 30% over B&B in small-scale problems with slightly higher objective values. In large-scale scenarios, it can improve the normalized objective values by 20% over RL with a shorter convergence time.

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arXiv2025

A Deep Incremental Framework for Multi-Service Multi-Modal Devices in NextG AI-RAN Systems

In this paper, we propose a deep incremental framework for efficient RAN management, introducing the Multi-Service-Modal UE (MSMU) system, which enables a single UE to handle eMBB and uRLLC services simultaneously. We formulate an optimization problem integrating traffic demand prediction, route optimization, RAN slicing, service identification, and radio resource management under uncertainty. We decompose it into long-term (L-SP) and short-term (S-SP) subproblems then propose a Transformer model for L-SP optimization, predicting eMBB and uRLLC traffic demands and optimizing routes for RAN slicing. To address non-stationary network traffic with evolving trends and scale variations, we integrate reversible instance normalization (ReVIN) into the forecasting pipeline. For the S-SP, we propose an LSTM model enabling real-time service type identification and resource management, utilizing L-SP predictions. We incorporate continual learning into the S-SP framework to adapt to new service types while preserving prior knowledge. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed framework achieves up to 46.86% reduction in traffic demand prediction error, 26.70% and 18.79% improvement in PRBs and power estimation, 7.23% higher route selection accuracy, and 7.29% improvement in service identification over the baselines with 95% average accuracy in continual service identification across seven sequential tasks.

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arXiv2025

DNN-Based Precoding in RIS-Aided mmWave MIMO Systems With Practical Phase Shift

In this paper, the precoding design is investigated for maximizing the throughput of millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with obstructed direct communication paths. In particular, a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is employed to enhance MIMO transmissions, considering mmWave characteristics related to line-of-sight (LoS) and multipath effects. The traditional exhaustive search (ES) for optimal codewords in the continuous phase shift is computationally intensive and time-consuming. To reduce computational complexity, permuted discrete Fourier transform (DFT) vectors are used for finding codebook design, incorporating amplitude responses for practical or ideal RIS systems. However, even if the discrete phase shift is adopted in the ES, it results in significant computation and is time-consuming. Instead, the trained deep neural network (DNN) is developed to facilitate faster codeword selection. Simulation results show that the DNN maintains sub-optimal spectral efficiency even as the distance between the end-user and the RIS has variations in the testing phase. These results highlight the potential of DNN in advancing RIS-aided systems.

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arXiv2025

Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Precoding for Multi-RIS-Aided Multiuser Downlink Systems with Practical Phase Shift

This study considers multiple reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs)-aided multiuser downlink systems with the goal of jointly optimizing the transmitter precoding and RIS phase shift matrix to maximize spectrum efficiency. Unlike prior work that assumed ideal RIS reflectivity, a practical coupling effect is considered between reflecting amplitude and phase shift for the RIS elements. This makes the optimization problem non-convex. To address this challenge, we propose a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG)-based deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework. The proposed model is evaluated under both fixed and random numbers of users in practical mmWave channel settings. Simulation results demonstrate that, despite its complexity, the proposed DDPG approach significantly outperforms optimization-based algorithms and double deep Q-learning, particularly in scenarios with random user distributions.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

Markov Modeling for Licensed and Unlicensed Band Allocation in Underlay and Overlay D2D

In this paper, a novel analytical model for resource allocation is proposed for a device-to-device (D2D) assisted cellular network. The proposed model can be applied to underlay and overlay D2D systems for sharing licensed bands and offloading cellular traffic. The developed model also takes into account the problem of unlicensed band sharing with Wi-Fi systems. In the proposed model, a global system state reflects the interaction among D2D, conventional cellular, and Wi-Fi packets. Under the standard traffic model assumptions, a threshold-based flow control is proposed for guaranteeing the quality-of-service (QoS) of Wi-Fi. The packet blockage probability is then derived. Simulation results show the proposed scheme sacrifices conventional cellular performance slightly to improve overlay D2D performance significantly while maintaining the performance for Wi-Fi users. Meanwhile, the proposed scheme has more flexible adjustments between D2D and Wi-Fi than the underlay scheme.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

Agentic DDQN-Based Scheduling for Licensed and Unlicensed Band Allocation in Sidelink Networks

In this paper, we present an agentic double deep Q-network (DDQN) scheduler for licensed/unlicensed band allocation in New Radio (NR) sidelink (SL) networks. Beyond conventional reward-seeking reinforcement learning (RL), the agent perceives and reasons over a multi-dimensional context that jointly captures queueing delay, link quality, coexistence intensity, and switching stability. A capacity-aware, quality of service (QoS)-constrained reward aligns the agent with goal-oriented scheduling rather than static thresholding. Under constrained bandwidth, the proposed design reduces blocking by up to 87.5% versus threshold policies while preserving throughput, highlighting the value of context-driven decisions in coexistence-limited NR SL networks. The proposed scheduler is an embodied agent (E-agent) tailored for task-specific, resource-efficient operation at the network edge.

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arXiv2025

Digital Twin-based Cooperative Autonomous Driving in Smart Intersections: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach

Unsignalized intersections pose safety and efficiency challenges due to complex traffic flows and blind spots. In this paper, a digital twin (DT)-based cooperative driving system with roadside unit (RSU)-centric architecture is proposed for enhancing safety and efficiency at unsignalized intersections. The system leverages comprehensive bird-eye-view (BEV) perception to eliminate blind spots and employs a hybrid reinforcement learning (RL) framework combining offline pre-training with online fine-tuning. Specifically, driving policies are initially trained using conservative Q-learning (CQL) with behavior cloning (BC) on real datasets, then fine-tuned using multi-agent proximal policy optimization (MAPPO) with self-attention mechanisms to handle dynamic multi-agent coordination. The RSU implements real-time commands via vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. Experimental results show that the proposed method yields failure rates below 0.03\% coordinating up to three connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs), significantly outperforming traditional methods. In addition, the system exhibits sub-linear computational scaling with inference times under 40 ms. Furthermore, it demonstrates robust generalization across diverse unsignalized intersection scenarios, indicating its practicality and readiness for real-world deployment.

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arXiv2025

Green Learning for STAR-RIS mmWave Systems with Implicit CSI

In this paper, a green learning (GL)-based precoding framework is proposed for simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS)-aided millimeter-wave (mmWave) MIMO broadcasting systems. Motivated by the growing emphasis on environmental sustainability in future 6G networks, this work adopts a broadcasting transmission architecture for scenarios where multiple users share identical information, improving spectral efficiency and reducing redundant transmissions and power consumption. Different from conventional optimization methods, such as block coordinate descent (BCD) that require perfect channel state information (CSI) and iterative computation, the proposed GL framework operates directly on received uplink pilot signals without explicit CSI estimation. Unlike deep learning (DL) approaches that require CSI-based labels for training, the proposed GL approach also avoids deep neural networks and backpropagation, leading to a more lightweight design. Although the proposed GL framework is trained with supervision generated by BCD under full CSI, inference is performed in a fully CSI-free manner. The proposed GL integrates subspace approximation with adjusted bias (Saab), relevant feature test (RFT)-based supervised feature selection, and eXtreme gradient boosting (XGBoost)-based decision learning to jointly predict the STAR-RIS coefficients and transmit precoder. Simulation results show that the proposed GL approach achieves competitive spectral efficiency compared to BCD and DL-based models, while reducing floating-point operations (FLOPs) by over four orders of magnitude. These advantages make the proposed GL approach highly suitable for real-time deployment in energy- and hardware-constrained broadcasting scenarios.

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arXiv2025

Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Collaborative Spatial Perception via Multimodal Large Language Models

Accurate prediction of communication link quality metrics is essential for vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) systems, enabling smooth handovers, efficient beam management, and reliable low-latency communication. The increasing availability of sensor data from modern vehicles motivates the use of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) because of their adaptability across tasks and reasoning capabilities. However, MLLMs inherently lack three-dimensional spatial understanding. To overcome this limitation, a lightweight, plug-and-play bird's-eye view (BEV) injection connector is proposed. In this framework, a BEV of the environment is constructed by collecting sensing data from neighboring vehicles. This BEV representation is then fused with the ego vehicle's input to provide spatial context for the large language model. To support realistic multimodal learning, a co-simulation environment combining CARLA simulator and MATLAB-based ray tracing is developed to generate RGB, LiDAR, GPS, and wireless signal data across varied scenarios. Instructions and ground-truth responses are programmatically extracted from the ray-tracing outputs. Extensive experiments are conducted across three V2I link prediction tasks: line-of-sight (LoS) versus non-line-of-sight (NLoS) classification, link availability, and blockage prediction. Simulation results show that the proposed BEV injection framework consistently improved performance across all tasks. The results indicate that, compared to an ego-only baseline, the proposed approach improves the macro-average of the accuracy metrics by up to 13.9%. The results also show that this performance gain increases by up to 32.7% under challenging rainy and nighttime conditions, confirming the robustness of the framework in adverse settings.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Next-Generation Sustainable Wireless Systems: Energy Efficiency Meets Environmental Impact

Aligning with the global mandates pushing towards advanced technologies with reduced resource consumption and environmental impacts, the sustainability of wireless networks becomes a significant concern in 6G systems. To address this concern, a native integration of sustainability into the operations of next-generation networks through novel designs and metrics is necessary. Nevertheless, existing wireless sustainability efforts remain limited to energy-efficient network designs which fail to capture the environmental impact of such systems. In this paper, a novel sustainability metric is proposed that captures emissions per bit, providing a rigorous measure of the environmental footprint associated with energy consumption in 6G networks. This metric also captures how energy, computing, and communication resource parameters influence the reduction of emissions per bit. Then, the problem of allocating the energy, computing and communication resources is posed as a multi-objective (MO) optimization problem. To solve the resulting non-convex problem, our framework leverages MO reinforcement learning (MORL) to maximize the novel sustainability metric alongside minimizing energy consumption and average delays in successfully delivering the data, all while adhering to constraints on energy resource capacity. The proposed MORL methodology computes a global policy that achieves a Pareto-optimal tradeoff among multiple objectives, thereby balancing environmental sustainability with network performance. Simulation results show that the proposed approach reduces the average emissions per bit by around 26% compared to state-of-the-art methods that do not explicitly integrate carbon emissions into their control objectives.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

Large-Scale Model Enabled Semantic Communication Based on Robust Knowledge Distillation

Large-scale models (LSMs) can be an effective framework for semantic representation and understanding, thereby providing a suitable tool for designing semantic communication (SC) systems. However, their direct deployment is often hindered by high computational complexity and resource requirements. In this paper, a novel robust knowledge distillation based semantic communication (RKD-SC) framework is proposed to enable efficient and \textcolor{black}{channel-noise-robust} LSM-powered SC. The framework addresses two key challenges: determining optimal compact model architectures and effectively transferring knowledge while maintaining robustness against channel noise. First, a knowledge distillation-based lightweight differentiable architecture search (KDL-DARTS) algorithm is proposed. This algorithm integrates knowledge distillation loss and a complexity penalty into the neural architecture search process to identify high-performance, lightweight semantic encoder architectures. Second, a novel two-stage robust knowledge distillation (RKD) algorithm is developed to transfer semantic capabilities from an LSM (teacher) to a compact encoder (student) and subsequently enhance system robustness. To further improve resilience to channel impairments, a channel-aware transformer (CAT) block is introduced as the channel codec, trained under diverse channel conditions with variable-length outputs. Extensive simulations on image classification tasks demonstrate that the RKD-SC framework significantly reduces model parameters while preserving a high degree of the teacher model's performance and exhibiting superior robustness compared to existing methods.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Analysis and Detection of RIS-based Spoofing in Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC)

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a key feature of next-generation 6G wireless systems, allowing them to achieve high data rates and sensing accuracy. While prior research has primarily focused on addressing communication safety in ISAC systems, the equally critical issue of sensing safety remains largely under-explored. In this paper, the possibility of spoofing the sensing function of ISAC in vehicle networks is examined, whereby a malicious reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is deployed to compromise the sensing functionality of a roadside unit (RSU). For this scenario, the requirements on the malicious RIS' phase shifts design and number of reflecting elements are analyzed. Under such spoofing, the practical estimation bias of the vehicular user (VU)'s Doppler shift and angle-of-departure (AoD) for an arbitrary time slot is analytically derived. Moreover, from the attacker's view, a Markov decision process (MDP) is formulated to optimize the RIS' phase shifts design. The goal of this MDP is to generate complete and plausible fake trajectories by incorporating the concept of spatial-temporal consistency. To defend against this sensing spoofing attack, a signal temporal logic (STL)-based neuro-symbolic attack detection framework is proposed and shown to learn interoperable formulas for identifying spoofed trajectories.

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