arXiv subjects

Wen Chen

Publications and source records attributed to Wen Chen.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Movable Antennas Enabled Wireless Powered Networks: Principles and Technologies

As an emerging framework, movable antenna (MA)-enabled wireless powered networks (WPNs) have attracted growing attention. WPNs integrate wireless communication and energy transfer. MA can dynamically adjust the position of antenna units by introducing additional spatial degrees of freedom, so as to make full use of channel gain, optimize the effect of energy beamforming, and further improve the performance of WPNs. In this article, we first classify the implementations of MA, and review the fundamental principles of WPNs. We then highlight the key advantages of MA-enabled WPNs in enhancing wireless power transfer efficiency, realizing flexible and adaptive beamforming, and improving system robustness and interference resilience. Furthermore, four representative application scenarios and three key enabling technologies are discussed. A case study is also presented to show the improvement of energy harvesting performance brought by MA for WPNs. Finally, we discuss the challenges and future directions of MA-enabled WPNs, aiming to provide reference for future research and practice.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2026

AFDM-Enabled ISAC in Dynamic Environments: Fundamentals, Technologies and Opportunities

Dynamic environments pose fundamental challenges to integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), particularly due to severe Doppler effects, rapidly time-varying channels, and the intricate coupling between delay and Doppler shifts. Affine frequency-division multiplexing (AFDM), with its inherent capability of characterizing and separating delay and Doppler effects, has emerged as a promising waveform for dynamic ISAC. This article provides a comprehensive overview on AFDM-enabled ISAC in dynamic environments, covering its fundamental principles, distinctive advantages, representative application scenarios, and key enabling technologies. We first characterize the key features of ISAC in dynamic environments and introduce the fundamentals of AFDM, followed by an analysis of scenarios where AFDM can provide significant performance benefits. Then, several key enabling technologies for AFDM-based ISAC in dynamic environments are elaborated upon, accompanied by case studies on the critical aspects therein. Finally, open challenges and promising future research directions are discussed, aiming to provide a comprehensive reference for researchers and practitioners while inspiring further innovation in this emerging field.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2026

Revisiting Topological Graphs for Macro Action based Closed-loop Reinforcement Learning of Vision Language Navigation in Continuous Environment

Vision-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments (VLN-CE) requires an agent to follow natural language instructions through unseen environments. Existing imitation learning (IL) pipelines struggle in this closed-loop setting: behavior cloning suffers from distribution shift, and DAgger's expert actions become ambiguous upon trajectory deviation. While Reinforcement Learning (RL) offers a natural paradigm to address this, directly applying RL to micro action spaces is sample-inefficient due to reward sparsity. To overcome this bottleneck, we reformulate VLN-CE as a Hierarchical Markov Decision Process (MDP), explicitly decoupling high-level planning from low-level control. By abstracting the environment into a topological graph, our high-level policy operates on a macro action space of frontier nodes, with a training-free low-level controller acting as its state transition, which significantly compresses the decision horizon and makes closed-loop RL tractable. To support RL optimization on the macro MDP, we propose an action-aware value head to effectively evaluate state values under the dynamic frontier action space, powering a graph-based PPO. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our architecture. Finally, our model achieves state-of-the-art performance on the R2R-CE and RxR-CE benchmarks.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2026

Adaptive Beam Hopping and Power Control for Dual-Layer Over-the-Air Online Federated Learning in LEO Satellite Networks

This paper investigates over-the-air (OTA) computation enabled online federated learning (FL) in low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks. Specifically, we consider a dual-layer OTA aggregation architecture, where ground devices upload analog model updates to serving satellites via uplink OTA aggregation, and satellites forward the aggregated signals to a data processing center through the second round OTA aggregation. Then, we formulate a long-term data-utilization maximization problem in which devices continuously collect new data and untrained samples gradually lose freshness. The problem is subject to the satellite beam budget, transmit-power limit, and global mean squared error (MSE) constraint that governs end-to-end aggregation distortion. This yields a coupled mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, involving tightly coupled discrete beam-hopping decisions and continuous power control. Due to the combinatorial action space and nonconvex constraints, the problem is NP-hard and computationally intractable. Furthermore, the time-varying satellite topology and dynamic data generation render it a sequential decision-making problem, necessitating adaptive online scheduling. To address these issues, we cast the problem as a Markov decision process and develop a proximal policy optimization (PPO)-based deep reinforcement learning framework that jointly optimizes adaptive beam hopping and power control, using an MSE-aware reward to balance data utilization and aggregation accuracy. Numerical simulation results verify that the proposed algorithm consistently outperforms other benchmark schemes, achieving superior long-term data utilization and faster FL convergence while satisfying the MSE requirement.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Rotatable Antenna Enabled Multi-Satellite Communications: Joint Satellite Selection and Boresight Trajectory Optimization

This paper considers a satellite-to-ground communication system in which a ground station (GS) equipped with independently rotatable antenna (RA) elements jointly decodes independent streams from multiple low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites over a shared time--frequency resource. Specifically, we formulate a two-timescale throughput maximization problem under exogenous cochannel interference, capturing serving-set composition, RA-enabled channel shaping, time-varying satellite geometry, and mechanically constrained inter-epoch reconfiguration. We first characterize the joint effects of interference-whitened channel strength and spatial separability on multi-satellite reception, motivating the joint design of satellite selection and RA control. With the RA trajectory fixed, we establish the monotone submodularity of the epoch-level selection objective and construct an incumbent-tight modular lower-bound surrogate, leading to an efficient discrete Minorization-Maximization (MM) selection algorithm. For fixed serving sets, we develop slew-feasible RA updates based on Riemannian gradients and organize them into a two-color parallel update scheme. The two blocks are integrated into a monotone alternating algorithm with guaranteed objective convergence. Simulations demonstrate consistent gains over benchmark schemes and reveal an optimal balance between channel strength and spatial separability. The results further show that satellite selection is particularly important in underloaded and actuator-limited regimes, whereas RA shaping becomes more influential near full spatial loading.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2026

Intelligent Reflecting Surface Deployment for Low-Altitude Coverage: Illumination Geometry, Directional Characteristics, and Optimization

Terrestrial base stations (BSs) are typically configured with fixed downtilt to serve ground users, resulting in weak illumination of low-altitude airspace even under line-of-sight (LoS) propagation. In this paper, we establish a channel model that incorporates BS and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) radiation patterns for three-dimensional (3D) low-altitude coverage while preserving the existing BS configuration. We formulate a budget-constrained IRS deployment problem that jointly determines candidate-site selection, IRS orientations, and phase shifts to maximize the worst-case signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over the 3D low-altitude airspace. The selected sites and optimized IRS parameters remain fixed after deployment, yielding a quasi-static IRS configuration. We characterize the illumination geometry between the fixed-downtilt BS and rooftop candidates by deriving the nonnegative installation-height range satisfying the BS main-lobe condition. The separation between the mapped main-lobe height boundaries grows linearly with horizontal BS-to-site distance and decreases inversely with the number of BS antennas. We further derive an analytical lower bound on the regional worst-case normalized array gain achievable through IRS phase design over served directions with different direction spans. The resulting sufficient direction span decreases inversely with the square root of the number of IRS elements when the same worst-case normalized gain guarantee is maintained. We develop a mixed-integer alternating optimization (AO) algorithm to solve the resulting problem. Simulation results validate the analytical characterizations and show that the proposed scheme achieves higher worst-case SNR than benchmarks across different deployment budgets.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Signed random Fourier features for fast density estimation with indefinite kernels

Kernel density estimation (KDE) is one of the most fundamental statistical estimators of density functions. Its direct implementation on a dataset of $N$ points incurs an $\mathcal{O}(N^{2})$ computational cost, which is prohibitive for large-scale datasets. Kernel approximation techniques can be applied to bring the computational cost down to $\mathcal{O}(N)$. The random Fourier features (RFF) technique, based on sampling from the spectral density of the kernel function, has become popular to speed up kernel estimators for machine learning applications. Unfortunately, it is restricted to positive definite kernels, while the majority of kernel functions popular in KDE, such as the parabolic kernel, do not satisfy this property. To overcome this limitation, this article introduces the signed random Fourier features (SRFF) technique. It is a generalization of RFF compatible with indefinite kernels whose inverse Fourier transform is absolutely integrable. The motivation for introducing this method is to speed up KDE in the case of multivariate compact kernels, which are generally not positive definite. We detail how to implement SRFF for both product kernels and isotropic kernels. For the class of Kuttner-Golubov kernels $K(\boldsymbol{x}_{i},\boldsymbol{x}_{j})=(1-\left\Vert \boldsymbol{x}_{i}-\boldsymbol{x}_{j}\right\Vert ^{\alpha})^{\beta}\mathbf{1}_{\{\left\Vert \boldsymbol{x}_{i}-\boldsymbol{x}_{j}\right\Vert \leq1\}}$ where $\boldsymbol{x}_{i}\in\mathbb{R}^{d}$, $\boldsymbol{x}_{j}\in\mathbb{R}^{d}$, $\alpha>0$, $\beta>0$, which includes the triangular, parabolic, biweight, triweight, and other kernel functions of interest for KDE as particular examples, we provide an explicit acceptance-rejection algorithm to sample from its signed spectral density. Our numerical tests on a dataset of one million points confirm the computational efficiency and accuracy of SRFF for large-scale KDE.

stat.CO↗

arXiv2026

Rotatable Antenna Relaying: Joint Precoding and Antenna Pointing Design

This paper investigates a rotatable antenna (RA)-enhanced half-duplex amplify-and-forward relaying system, where a multi-antenna base station (BS) serves multiple single-antenna users via a multi-antenna relay. The BS and users employ isotropic antennas, whereas the relay employs directional RAs whose pointing matrix is shared by both hops to avoid inter-hop reorientation delay and control overhead. We aim to maximize the minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) among all users by jointly optimizing the BS precoding, relay precoding, and RA pointing matrices. To tackle this non-convex problem, we first investigate the single-user scenario and reduce the joint design to RA pointing optimization using the optimal relay precoding matrix available in closed form. A manifold-aware Frank--Wolfe (MFW) method is then employed to obtain a suboptimal pointing solution. Under a symmetric far-field line-of-sight geometry, we further characterize the globally optimal pointing structure and derive a directivity threshold separating common pointing from antenna splitting. Building on this MFW procedure, we next address the general multiuser scenario. Specifically, the quadratic transform is first applied to obtain an equivalent auxiliary-variable formulation, which is subsequently solved suboptimally via alternating optimization (AO). In particular, we employ a safeguarded extension of the MFW method based on log-sum-exp smoothing to update the RA pointing matrix in each AO iteration. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms consistently achieve the best signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and SINR performance among all considered schemes. It is further shown that the optimized RA pointing adapts to the two-hop geometry, the preferred directivity factor depends on user load, and relay placement with relatively balanced two-hop propagation conditions is generally preferable.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2026

What's Your NIC Whispering? Network Threat Behavior Recognition via NIC Electromagnetic Side-Channel Leakage

Conventional network threat detection primarily relies on packet-level, flow-level, or host-level telemetry. This paper investigates a different observation surface: unintended electromagnetic(EM) emissions generated by network interface card(NIC) activity, and asks whether such physical leakage contains sufficiently structured information for network threat-behavior recognition. We present NICWhisper, which externally captures NIC EM emissions, transforms raw measurements into time-frequency representations, and recognizes network behaviors without inspecting packet contents or host-side runtime states. Rather than competing with traffic-based detection, NICWhisper exploits the physical manifestation of traffic-driven NIC activity, whose timing, rate, concurrency, and burst organization naturally shape the measured EM leakage. We construct a NIC EM dataset covering active benign workloads and seven representative threat behaviors under diverse execution conditions, and systematically evaluate signal dependence, execution variation, measurement perturbation, and cross-device transfer. NICWhisper achieves 80.67\% Macro-F1 across eight behavior classes, while further experiments show that the observed behavior-related information extends beyond simple signal magnitude and remains partially transferable across execution conditions and NIC hardware. These results establish NIC EM leakage as a complementary physical observation source for network security monitoring when direct access to conventional traffic or host telemetry is limited or undesirable.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2026

Towards Faithful Simulation of Human Shopping Behavior

Simulating realistic user shopping behavior underpins offline evaluation and reinforcement learning in e-commerce scenarios. While recent LLM- and VLM-based simulators have made encouraging progress, reproducing a real browsing session remains difficult for two reasons. (i) Memory Challenge: a shopping session spans dozens of pages, yet existing agents either discard long-range observation histories, losing the evolving user state, or naively concatenate them, overwhelming the context window and even degrading simulation quality. (ii) Optimization Challenge: current user simulators are typically supervised to match each logged action via imitation or step-level rewards; the resulting sessions often display unrealistic patterns, such as over-exploration or excessive passivity, which per-step supervision can neither detect nor correct. To address the above challenges, we present RecVerse, a GUI-grounded simulation agent that perceives pages through screenshots and produces faithful multi-turn trajectories. For the memory challenge, RecVerse adopts a cognitive-inspired hierarchical memory: Working Memory for short-term focus, Episodic Memory for in-session traces, and Preference Memory for high-level intent, with memory updates treated as actions so that the agent adaptively learns when and what to memorize. For the optimization challenge, RecVerse is optimized with a trajectory-level RL objective that scores entire sessions, aligning both macro-level action-type distributions and micro-level shopping intent with real users. We further release USB (User Simulation Benchmark), an interactive e-commerce GUI trajectory dataset for multi-turn user simulation. Experiments show that RecVerse significantly outperforms existing baselines in both behavioral fidelity and intent consistency.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2026

Sign-problem-resilient singular-value probe in determinant quantum Monte Carlo

The sign problem limits determinant quantum Monte Carlo studies of strongly correlated fermion systems. In the spin-channel Hubbard-Stratonovich decoupling, spin correlations are exactly related to auxiliary-field correlations. This relation implies that an antiferromagnetic transition reorganizes auxiliary-field configurations and thereby changes the statistical structure of the resulting fermion matrices. We use the adjacent gap ratio of low-lying singular values of the space-time fermion matrix to probe interaction-driven transitions in two half-filled honeycomb-lattice Hubbard models. In the sign-free honeycomb Hubbard model, the statistic tracks the established transition from a Dirac semimetal to an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator. In the complex-weight Haldane-Hubbard model, the transition-sensitive feature remains visible in the phase-quenched reference ensemble and occurs near previous estimates of the transition. Moreover, phase reweighting only weakly modifies the gap ratio over the regimes investigated, despite the rapid suppression of the average phase. These results establish singular-value statistics as a sign-problem-resilient probe of interaction-driven transitions in determinant quantum Monte Carlo.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2026

Dual-Layer Over-the-Air Federated Learning in LEO Satellite Networks: Architecture, Key Technologies and Applications

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks are emerging as a pivotal infrastructure for global edge intelligence. In this context, integrating over-the-air (OTA) computation with adaptive beam hopping (BH) provides an innovative framework that seamlessly merges physical-layer analog aggregation with dynamic resource orchestration. This effectively overcomes the stringent bandwidth and power constraints of space platforms while extending federated learning (FL) to pervasive Internet-of-things (IoT) deployments. In this article, we first outline the fundamental principles of the dual-layer OTA model and introduce the adaptive BH mechanism designed for time-varying topologies. Then, we summarize the distinct advantages of this learning-centric architecture, which include decoupling aggregation latency from device density, optimizing spatio-temporal resource efficiency, and balancing data freshness with channel quality. Several application scenarios are explored to highlight the framework's potential across diverse vertical industries. Furthermore, a specific case is studied to demonstrate the practical efficacy of the proposed scheduling policy. The results reveal substantial performance gains in terms of model convergence speed and data utilization for satellite-based FL systems. Finally, we discuss the implementation challenges and outline future research directions, aiming to provide insights for the evolution of ubiquitous non-terrestrial intelligence.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2026

Antenna Positioning and Beamforming Optimization in MA Enabled Secure ISAC Systems: A Gradient-Based Meta Learning Approach

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) significantly improves spectral efficiency but introduces security risks regarding the interception of embedded communication signals. This paper proposes an movable antenna (MA)-enabled secure ISAC system that utilizes the spatial degrees of freedom of MA to mitigate these risks. Then, a problem is formulated to maximize the system secrecy rate by jointly optimizing antenna positioning, transmit beamforming, and artificial noise. However, the principal challenge arises from the non-convexity of the optimization problem and the strong coupling of the optimization variables. Generally, traditional optimization methods for this problem suffer from complex mathematical derivations, while existing deep learning approaches rely heavily on the training data distribution. To address these issues, we introduce a gradient-based meta learning (GML) algorithm, which works without pre-training and demonstrates favorable performance. Specifically, the algorithm establishes a neural network for each optimization variable, where the gradient of the objective function with respect to the variable serves as the input, and the output of the network determines the variable's update step. By handling the constraints and constructing penalty terms, the global loss function is used to guide the optimization process. Extensive numerical simulations confirm that the proposed algorithm achieves satisfactory performance in terms of both communication security and sensing capabilities.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2026

GML-Based Optimization for Movable Antenna Wireless Networks: Challenges and Opportunities

Movable antenna (MA) is proposed as an emerging technology for future wireless networks. By leveraging the additional spatial degrees of freedom, MA can proactively reshape the wireless propagation environment, thereby enhancing network performance.However, fully unlocking the potential of MA networks necessitates the joint optimization of MA antenna positioning and beamforming. For this non-convex and highly coupled problem, existing solutions exhibit significant limitations. Therefore, this paper proposes a gradient-based meta learning (GML) optimization framework. Specifically, we first elaborate on the hardware architecture and channel characteristics of MA, based on which we analyze the primary challenges in optimizing MA wireless networks. Subsequently, we introduce the fundamental logic of the GML framework and compare it with existing methods. Furthermore, we discuss the constraint handling strategies for applying the proposed optimization framework to MA networks. A specific case is studied to show the performance of proposed framework based on numerical simulation. Finally, this paper outlines future research directions for both the GML framework and MA wireless networks.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2026

Sparse Rotatable Arrays (SRA): Unifying Array Aperture and Antenna Directivity for Wireless Communications

Sparse rotatable array (SRA) is a novel reconfigurable antenna architecture that jointly exploits sparse aperture configuration and antenna directivity to enhance spatial resolution for future wireless communications. Specifically, SRA activates a subset of rotatable antennas over a large candidate aperture and adjusts their boresight directions, thereby creating a directionally selective sparse aperture with reduced hardware requirements and enhanced spatial flexibility. In this paper, we investigate an SRA-aided multi-group communication system, where users are organized into spatial groups with different service requirements. We develop a group-aware SRA design framework by jointly optimizing the sparse-aperture allocation, RA orientations, and transmit beamforming to maximize the weighted max-min signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). Then, we characterize the operating principles of SRA and reveal that sparse aperture improves spatial resolution by enlarging the effective array aperture, while antenna directivity suppresses inter-group coupling through directional control, thereby enabling simplified group-wise beamforming structures. Guided by these insights, we develop a structured low-complexity alternating optimization algorithm that embeds a closed-form projected group-center RA orientation rule into the sparse-aperture allocation and beamforming design. The proposed algorithm combines analysis-guided initialization, sampled multi-start antenna-allocation search, and bisection-based second-order cone programming for beamforming. Numerical results show that the proposed SRA design closely approaches fully-shared SRA benchmarks and significantly outperforms compact subarray and omni sparse-array schemes.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

DREAM Technical Report

Industrial recommender systems commonly use cascaded retrieval, ranking, and re-ranking pipelines. Although efficient, these pipelines fragment information and objectives across modules, rely on rigid rules, and have limited awareness of real-time intent, leaving session-level shifts among browsing, comparison, and purchase insufficiently addressed. We present DREAM (Developing Recommender Engine with Agentic Methods), an autonomous optimization control architecture that adds a perception-aware, orchestrable, and auditable policy layer atop existing pipelines without replacing them. DREAM has two core components. First, a three-tier Intent Engine fuses on-device signals into structured L0/L1/L2 intent representations; its edge-cloud trigger chain reduces reporting volume to approximately 8.7%. Second, a Meta Engine uses a MetaModel for layered M1-to-M2-to-M3 reasoning: intent summarization, strategy planning informed by Strategy Memory, and parameter translation. It dispatches the resulting parameters through a unified outlet with safety guardrails. A Reward Dual Loop continuously optimizes both components by combining offline simulation for strategy-space exploration with online feedback for outcome calibration, forming a cycle of generation, execution, evaluation, and experience accumulation. Large-scale A/B tests on Taobao's homepage feed show that re-ranking control alone improves IPV by 2.06%, Core IPV by 2.39%, and GMV by 0.88%. Extending control to fine ranking raises these gains to 2.71%, 3.06%, and 1.31%, respectively, while consistently improving PV by more than 1%. These gains require neither replacement of pipeline models nor compromise of serving stability, supporting agentic meta-control as a viable paradigm for industrial recommendation.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2026

SG-WAM: Text-Grounded and Spatial-aware Semantic Guidance for World-Action Models

World-Action Models (WAMs) have emerged as a promising paradigm for robotic manipulation. However, most existing WAMs generate future videos and actions by relying mainly on visual cues rather than language instructions, since off-the-shelf text encoders embed instructions independently of visual observations. As a result, the videos predicted by these WAMs are often semantically misaligned with their corresponding language instructions, which degrades the accuracy of the predicted actions. To overcome this limitation, we propose SG-WAM, a semantic guidance method for world-action models that leverages a vision-language model (VLM) as a semantic planner to enhance the instruction-grounding capacity of world-action models. Specifically, we train a VLM-based planner to predict text-grounded and spatial-aware semantic foresight. The text-grounded semantic foresight grounds the instruction by identifying the correct target objects, and the spatial-aware semantic foresight provides the scene geometry for precise manipulation. We then inject this foresight into the world-action model as high-level semantic guidance, ensuring that both future-video generation and action prediction faithfully follow the language instruction. Extensive experiments in simulation and the real world demonstrate the superiority of our semantic guidance method, showcasing precise manipulation and strong instruction-following capabilities.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2026

Is Forward Prediction Enough? Physical State Grounding for JEPA World Models

Learning structured and control-relevant latent representations remains a key challenge for world models. Recent JEPA-based world models learn action-conditioned predictive latent dynamics from observation sequences. However, their forward-prediction objectives do not explicitly enforce reliable identifiability of robot-centric physical state from individual latents or state changes from latent pairs, which can limit downstream planning and policy performance. We propose PSG-JEPA, a physically grounded JEPA world model that shapes its latent space with two complementary grounding objectives beyond forward prediction: grounding individual latents in robot proprioceptive state, and grounding latent pairs in multi-horizon joint-angle changes. Both objectives are applied only during training, leaving the inference architecture and computational cost unchanged. To comprehensively evaluate PSG-JEPA, we conduct experiments at three levels: (1) latent identifiability via probing, (2) goal-conditioned planning on frozen latents, and (3) policy learning in simulation and on a real robot. Experiments demonstrate that our PSG-JEPA consistently outperforms state-of-the-art latent world-model baselines at all three levels.

cs.RO↗