arXiv subjects

Yulong Zou

Publications and source records attributed to Yulong Zou.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

ClinReadNet: A clinical reading-inspired network for low-dose abdominal CT image quality assessment

In abdominal CT imaging, developing a low-dose, no-reference image quality assessment (No-reference IQA) model that mimics doctors' reading habits for evaluating CT image quality has significant practical value. This paper proposes a novel deep learning-based framework, ClinReadNet, whose design aligns with the clinical reading logic of radiologists: first, it introduces the Sobel ordinal quality network (SOQN) module, which can simultaneously focus on edge details highly relevant to image quality and the quality distribution pattern of the entire image, accurately matching the clinical image-reading judgment habit of "considering both local details and overall context"; second, the framework integrates the (shifted) window multi-scale temperature multi-head self-attention ((S)W-MTMSA) module, which further replicates the radiologists' image-reading process of shifting from overall scanning to local focusing, and accurately locks in regions of interest through multi-sharpness attention; third, it designs the hierarchical ranked probability score (HRPS) loss function, which combines the dual logics of coarse classification and fine classification, while paying attention to the distance information between grading labels, effectively improving the performance of image quality assessment. Experiments conducted on the LDCTIQAG2023 dataset show that the proposed method achieves the current state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance: the values of Pearson's linear correlation coefficient (PLCC), Spearman's rank-order correlation coefficient (SROCC), and Kendall's rank-order correlation coefficient (KROCC) reach 0.9507, 0.9554, and 0.8629 respectively, with the sum of their absolute values (Score) being 2.7690, outperforming existing methods.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

CausalDisenSeg: A Causality-Guided Disentanglement Framework with Counterfactual Reasoning for Robust Brain Tumor Segmentation Under Missing Modalities

In clinical practice, the robustness of deep learning models for multimodal brain tumor segmentation is severely compromised by incomplete MRI data. This vulnerability stems primarily from modality bias, where models exploit spurious correlations as shortcuts rather than learning true anatomical structures. Existing feature fusion methods fail to fundamentally eliminate this dependency. To address this, we propose CausalDisenSeg, a novel Structural Causal Model (SCM)-grounded framework that achieves robust segmentation via causality-guided disentanglement and counterfactual reasoning. We reframe the problem as isolating the anatomical Causal Factor from the stylistic Bias Factor. Our framework implements a three-stage causal intervention: (1) Explicit Causal Disentanglement: A Conditional Variational Autoencoder (CVAE) coupled with an HSIC constraint mathematically enforces statistical orthogonality between anatomical and style features. (2) Causal Representation Reinforcement: A Region Causality Module (RCM) explicitly grounds causal features in physical tumor regions. (3) Counterfactual Reasoning: A dual-adversarial strategy actively suppresses the residual Natural Direct Effect (NDE) of the bias, forcing its spatial attention to be mutually exclusive from the causal path. Extensive experiments on the BraTS 2020 dataset demonstrate that CausalDisenSeg significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in accuracy and consistency across severe missing-modality scenarios. Furthermore, cross-dataset evaluation on BraTS 2023 under the same protocol yields a state-of-the-art macro-average DSC of 84.49.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

MGML: A Plug-and-Play Meta-Guided Multi-Modal Learning Framework for Incomplete Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation

Leveraging multimodal information from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) plays a vital role in lesion segmentation, especially for brain tumors. However, in clinical practice, multimodal MRI data are often incomplete, making it challenging to fully utilize the available information. Therefore, maximizing the utilization of this incomplete multimodal information presents a crucial research challenge. We present a novel meta-guided multi-modal learning (MGML) framework that comprises two components: meta-parameterized adaptive modality fusion and consistency regularization module. The meta-parameterized adaptive modality fusion (Meta-AMF) enables the model to effectively integrate information from multiple modalities under varying input conditions. By generating adaptive soft-label supervision signals based on the available modalities, Meta-AMF explicitly promotes more coherent multimodal fusion. In addition, the consistency regularization module enhances segmentation performance and implicitly reinforces the robustness and generalization of the overall framework. Notably, our approach does not alter the original model architecture and can be conveniently integrated into the training pipeline for end-to-end model optimization. We conducted extensive experiments on the public BraTS2020 and BraTS2023 datasets. Compared to multiple state-of-the-art methods from previous years, our method achieved superior performance. On BraTS2020, for the average Dice scores across fifteen missing modality combinations, building upon the baseline, our method obtained scores of 87.55, 79.36, and 62.67 for the whole tumor (WT), the tumor core (TC), and the enhancing tumor (ET), respectively. We have made our source code publicly available at https://github.com/worldlikerr/MGML.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

Uncertain Location Transmitter and UAV-Aided Warden Based LEO Satellite Covert Communication Systems

We propose a novel covert communication system in which a ground user, Alice, transmits unauthorized message fragments to Bob, a low-Earth orbit satellite (LEO), and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) warden (Willie) attempts to detect these transmissions. The key contribution is modeling a scenario where Alice and Willie are unaware of each other's exact locations and move randomly within a specific area. Alice utilizes environmental obstructions to avoid detection and only transmits when the satellite is directly overhead. LEO satellite technology allows users to avoid transmitting messages near a base station. We introduce two key performance metrics: catch probability (Willie detects and locates Alice during a message chunk transmission) and overall catch probability over multiple message chunks. We analyze how two parameters impact these metrics: 1) the size of the detection window and 2) the number of message chunks. The paper proposes two algorithms to optimize these parameters. The simulation results show that the algorithms effectively reduce the detection risks. This work advances the understanding of covert communication under mobility and uncertainty in satellite-aided systems.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

RIS-Aided Monitoring With Cooperative Jamming: Design and Performance Analysis

We investigate a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) aided wireless surveillance system. In this system, a monitor not only receives signal from suspicious transmitter via a RIS-enhanced legitimate surveillance (LS) link but also simultaneously takes control of multiple jammers to degrade the quality of received suspicious signal. Under this setup, to enhance monitoring performance requires improvements of both the received signal quality at the monitor and the cooperative jamming (CJ). Considering that the surveillance system is aided by one RIS, whose phase shift optimization involves both channel state information (CSI) of the LS and CJ links, we utilize partial CSI to alleviate the CSI acquisition burden in our design. We propose two RIS-aided monitoring schemes with optimal jammer selection (OJS), and derive their closed-form expressions of surveillance success probability (SSP), respectively. Furthermore, we consider RIS-aided monitoring schemes with random jammer selection as corresponding benchmarks. Thereafter, we analyze special cases where the jammers are using power control to avoid being found, making it appears like passive monitoring. Also, the effect of RIS is highlighted by considering asymptotically large number of RIS elements. Numerical results verify that the proposed OJS strategy further enhances the RIS-aided monitoring performance compared with non-jammer-selection RISLR and RISCR schemes, where the superiority comes at the cost of CSI knowledge and becomes marginal in the region of high jamming power. In addition, the RISLO shows surveillance performance advantage overRISCOwhen the suspicious power is low or when the number of RIS elements is large.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2024

Securing FC-RIS and UAV Empowered Multiuser Communications Against a Randomly Flying Eavesdropper

This paper investigates a wireless network consisting of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) base station (BS), a fully-connected reconfigurable intelligent surface (FC-RIS), and multiple users, where the downlink signal can simultaneously be captured by an aerial eavesdropper at a random location. To improve the physical-layer security (PLS) of the considered downlink multiuser communications, we propose the fully-connected reconfigurable intelligent surface aided round-robin scheduling (FCR-RS) and the FC-RIS and ground channel state information (CSI) aided proportional fair scheduling (FCR-GCSI-PFS) schemes. Thereafter, we derive closed-form expressions of the zero secrecy rate probability (ZSRP). Numerical results not only validate the closed-form ZSRP analysis, but also verify that the proposed GCSI-PFS scheme obtains the same performance gain as the full-CSI-aided PFS in FC-RIS-aided communications. Furthermore, optimizing the hovering altitude remarkably enhances the PLS of the FC-RIS and UAV empowered multiuser communications.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2024

Interference Management by Harnessing Multi-Domain Resources in Spectrum-Sharing Aided Satellite-Ground Integrated Networks

A spectrum-sharing satellite-ground integrated network is conceived, consisting of a pair of non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) constellations and multiple terrestrial base stations, which impose the co-frequency interference (CFI) on each other. The CFI may increase upon increasing the number of satellites. To manage the potentially severe interference, we propose to rely on joint multi-domain resource aided interference management (JMDR-IM). Specifically, the coverage overlap of the constellations considered is analyzed. Then, multi-domain resources - including both the beam-domain and power-domain - are jointly utilized for managing the CFI in an overlapping coverage region. This joint resource utilization is performed by relying on our specifically designed beam-shut-off and switching based beam scheduling, as well as on long short-term memory based joint autoregressive moving average assisted deep Q network aided power scheduling. Moreover, the outage probability (OP) of the proposed JMDR-IM scheme is derived, and the asymptotic analysis of the OP is also provided. Our performance evaluations demonstrate the superiority of the proposed JMDR-IM scheme in terms of its increased throughput and reduced OP.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Joint Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Location and Passive Beamforming Optimization for Maximizing the Secrecy-Rate

The physical layer security (PLS) is investigated for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted wireless networks, where a source transmits its confidential information to a legitimate destination with the aid of a single small RIS in the presence of a malicious eavesdropper. A new joint RIS location and passive beamforming (J-LPB) optimization scheme is proposed for the sake of maximizing the secrecy rate under the RIS location constraint and the constraint that the modulus of the reflecting coefficient at each RIS's unit is not larger than 1. Specifically, we analyze the optimal location of the RIS, and conclude that the product involving the source-RIS distance and the RIS-destination distance should be minimized. Since the product minimization problem is nonconvex, we then propose a two-tier optimization algorithm for solving it. Based on the near-optimal RIS 3D location obtained, we further formulate the passive beamforming optimization problem, and then propose to apply the Charnes-Cooper transformation along with the sequential rank-one constraint relaxation (SROCR) algorithm to solve it. Our numerical results show that the secrecy rate of the proposed J-LPB optimization scheme is higher than that of the benchmarks. Explicitly, we use the following benchmarks: the near-source-based RIS location and passive beamforming (NSB-LPB) optimization scheme, the near-destination-based RIS location and passive beamforming (NDB-LPB) optimization scheme, and the random RIS location and passive beamforming (R-LPB) optimization scheme. Finally, the benefits of our J-LPB scheme are further increased with the number of RIS units.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2020

Physical Layer Security Enhancement Using Artificial Noise in Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) Networks

The secure transmission of confidential information in cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communication networks is vitally important for user's personal safety. However, for C-V2X there have not been much studies on the physical layer security (PLS). Since artificial noise (AN) and secure beamforming are popular PLS techniques for cellular communications, in this paper we investigate the potential of these PLS techniques for enhancing the security of C-V2X networks. In particular, leveraging stochastic geometry, we study the PLS of an AN assisted C-V2X network, where the locations of legitimate vehicular nodes, malicious vehicular nodes and road side units (RSUs) are modeled by Cox processes driven by a common Poisson line process (PLP), and the locations of cellular base stations (BSs) are modeled by a two-dimensional (2D) Poisson point process (PPP). Based on the maximum signal-to-interference-ratio (SIR) association scheme, we calculate the coverage probability of the network. We also derive bounds on the secrecy probability, which are validated by simulation results. Moreover, we obtain an analytical result of the effective secrecy throughput for characterizing the reliability and security of wiretap channels. Simulation results are given to validate the analytical result, and provide interesting insights into the impact of network parameters on the achievable secrecy performance. Simulation results show that a larger array antenna can provide a better robustness of the secure transmission strategy, and the optimal power allocation ratio between confidential information and AN remains almost unchanged for different numbers of antennas.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Smart Home Energy Management

In this paper, we investigate an energy cost minimization problem for a smart home in the absence of a building thermal dynamics model with the consideration of a comfortable temperature range. Due to the existence of model uncertainty, parameter uncertainty (e.g., renewable generation output, non-shiftable power demand, outdoor temperature, and electricity price) and temporally-coupled operational constraints, it is very challenging to determine the optimal energy management strategy for scheduling Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems and energy storage systems in the smart home. To address the challenge, we first formulate the above problem as a Markov decision process, and then propose an energy management strategy based on Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients (DDPG). It is worth mentioning that the proposed strategy does not require the prior knowledge of uncertain parameters and building thermal dynamics model. Simulation results based on real-world traces demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed strategy.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2019

Joint Power Splitting and Relay Selection in Energy-Harvesting Communications for IoT Networks

In this paper, we consider an energy-harvesting (EH) relay system consisting of a source, a destination, and multiple EH decode-and-forward (DF) relays that can harvest the energy from their received radio signals. A power-splitting ratio is employed at an EH DF relay to characterize a trade-off between an energy used for decoding the source signal received at the relay and the remaining energy harvested for retransmitting the decode outcome. We propose an optimal power splitting and relay selection (OPS-RS) framework and also consider the conventional equal power splitting and relay selection (EPS-RS) for comparison purposes. We derive closed-form expressions of outage probability for both the OPS-RS and EPS-RS schemes and characterize their diversity gains through an asymptotic outage analysis in the high signal-to-noise ratio region. We further examine an extension of our OPS-RS framework to an energy-harvesting battery (EHB) enabled cooperative relay scenario, where the EH relays are equipped with batteries used to store their harvested energies. We propose an amplify-and-forward (AF) based EHB-OPS-RS and a DF based EHB-OPS-RS schemes for AF and DF relay networks, respectively. Numerical results show that the proposed OPS-RS always outperforms the EPS-RS in terms of outage probability. Moreover, the outage probabilities of AF and DF based EHB-OPS-RS schemes are much smaller than that of OPS-RS and EPS-RS methods, demonstrating the benefit of exploiting the batteries in EH relays. Additionally, the DF based EHB-OPS-RS substantially outperforms the AF based EHB-OPS-RS and such an outage advantage becomes more significant, as the number of EH relays increases.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Secrecy Outage and Diversity Analysis of Multiple Cooperative Source-Destination Pairs

We study the physical-layer security of a multiple source-destination (SD) pairs coexisting wireless network in the face of an eavesdropper, where an eavesdropper intends to wiretap the signal transmitted by the SD pairs. In order to protect the wireless transmission against eavesdropping, we propose a cooperation framework relying on two stages. Specifically, an SD pair is selected to access the total allocated spectrum using an appropriately designed scheme at the beginning of the first stage. The other source nodes (SNs) simultaneously transmit their data to the SN of the above-mentioned SD pair relying on an orthogonal way during the first stage. Then, the SN of the chosen SD pair transmits the data packets containing its own messages and the other SNs' messages to its dedicated destination node (DN) in the second stage, which in turn will forward all the other DNs' data to the application center via the core network. We conceive a specific SD pair selection scheme, termed as the transmit antenna selection aided source-destination pair selection (TAS-SDPS). We derive the secrecy outage probability (SOP) expressions for the TAS-SDPS, as well as for the conventional round-robin source-destination pair selection (RSDPS) and non-cooperative (Non-coop) schemes for comparison purposes. Furthermore, we carry out the secrecy diversity gain analysis in the high main-to-eavesdropper ratio (MER) region, showing that the TAS-SDPS scheme is capable of achieving the maximum attainable secrecy diversity order.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Optimal Power Allocation for Minimizing Outage Probability of UAV Relay Communications

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks have grown rapidly in recent years and become attractive for various emergence communications scenarios. In this paper, we consider a UAV acting as a relay node to assist wireless transmissions from a base station (BS) to a ground user (GUs). A closed-form expression of outage probability for the BS-GUs transmission via UAV relaying is derived over Rician fading channels. We then formulate an optimization problem to minimize the outage probability of UAV relay communications with a constraint on the total transit power of the BS and GUs. It is proved that our formulated optimization problem is convex and an optimal power allocation solution is found for the outage probability minimization. Simulation results demonstrate that with an increasing power allocation factor, the outage probability initially decreases and then starts to increase, showing the existence of an optimal power allocation solution. Additionally, it is shown that the proposed optimal power allocation scheme significantly outperforms the conventional equal power allocation in terms of the outage probability.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Secrecy Outage Analysis of Non-Orthogonal Spectrum Sharing for Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

In this paper, we investigate physical-layer security for a heterogeneous cellular network consisting of a macro cell and a small cell in the presence of a passive eavesdropper that intends to tap both the macro-cell and small-cell transmissions. Both the orthogonal spectrum sharing (OSS) and non-orthogonal spectrum sharing (NOSS) are considered for the heterogeneous cellular network. The OSS allows the macro cell and small cell to access a given spectrum band in an orthogonal manner, whereas the NOSS enables them to access the same spectrum simultaneously and mutual interference exits. As a consequence, we present two NOSS schemes, namely the interference-limited NOSS (IL-NOSS) and interference-canceled NOSS (IC-NOSS), where the mutual interference is constrained below a tolerable level in the IL-NOSS through power control and the IC-NOSS scheme exploits a specially-designed signal for canceling out the interference received a legitimate cellular user while confusing the passive eavesdropper. We derive closed-form expressions for an overall secrecy outage probability of the OSS, IL-NOSS, and IC-NOSS schemes, which take into account the transmission secrecy of both the macro cell and small cell. We further characterize the secrecy diversity of OSS, IL-NOSS and IC-NOSS schemes through an asymptotic secrecy outage analysis in the high signal-to-noise ratio region. It is shown that the OSS and IL-NOSS methods obtain the same secrecy diversity gain of zero only, and a higher secrecy diversity gain of one is achieved by the IC-NOSS scheme. Additionally, numerical results demonstrate that the IC-NOSS scheme significantly performs better than the OSS and IL-NOSS methods in terms of the overall secrecy outage probability.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2018

Security-Reliability Tradeoff for Distributed Antenna Systems in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

In this paper, we investigate physical-layer security for a spectrum-sharing heterogeneous cellular network comprised of a macro cell and a small cell, where a passive eavesdropper is assumed to tap the transmissions of both the macro cell and small cell. In the macro cell, a macro base station (MBS) equipped with multiple distributed antennas sends its confidential information to a macro user (MU) through an opportunistic transmit antenna. Meanwhile, in the small cell, a small base station (SBS) transmits to a small user (SU) over the same spectrum used by MBS. We propose an interference-canceled opportunistic antenna selection (IC-OAS) scheme to enhance physical-layer security for the heterogeneous network. To be specific, when MBS sends its confidential message to MU through an opportunistic distributed antenna, a special signal is artificially designed and emitted at MBS to ensure that the received interference at MU from SBS is canceled out. For comparison, the conventional interference-limited opportunistic antenna selection (IL-OAS) is considered as a benchmark. We characterize the security-reliability tradeoff (SRT) for the proposed IC-OAS and conventional IL-OAS schemes in terms of deriving their closed-form expressions of intercept probability and outage probability. Numerical results show that compared with the conventional IL-OAS, the proposed IC-OAS scheme not only brings SRT benefits to the macro cell, but also has the potential of improving the SRT of small cell by increasing the number of distributed antennas. Additionally, by jointly taking into account the macro cell and small cell, an overall SRT of the proposed IC-OAS scheme is shown to be significantly better than that of the conventional IL-OAS approach in terms of a sum intercept probability versus sum outage probability.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2018

Secrecy Energy Efficiency Optimization for Artificial Noise Aided Physical-Layer Security in OFDM-Based Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, we investigate the power allocation of primary base station (PBS) and cognitive base station (CBS) across different orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers for energy-efficient secure downlink communication in OFDM-based cognitive radio networks (CRNs) with the existence of an eavesdropper having multiple antennas. We propose a secrecy energy efficiency maximization (SEEM) scheme by exploiting the instantaneous channel state information (ICSI) of the eavesdropper, called ICSI based SEEM (ICSI-SEEM) scheme with a given total transmit power budget for different OFDM subcarriers of both PBS and CBS. As for the case when the eavesdropper's ICSI is unknown, we also propose an SEEM scheme through using the statistical CSI (SCSI) of the eavesdropper, namely SCSI based SEEM (SCSI-SEEM) scheme. Since the ICSI-SEEM and SCSI-SEEM problems are fractional and non-convex, we first transform them into equivalent subtractive problems, and then achieve approximate convex problems through employing the difference of two-convex functions approximation method. Finally, new two-tier power allocation algorithms are proposed to achieve $\varepsilon$-optimal solutions of our formulated ICSI-SEEM and SCSI-SEEM problems. Simulation results illustrate that the ICSI-SEEM has a better secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) performance than SCSI-SEEM, and moreover, the proposed ICSI-SEEM and SCSI-SEEM schemes outperform conventional SR maximization and EE maximization approaches in terms of their SEE performance.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2018

Intelligent Interference Exploitation for Heterogeneous Cellular Networks against Eavesdropping

This paper explores the co-existence of a macro cell and a small cell for heterogeneous cellular networks, where a macro base station (MBS) and small base station (SBS) transmit to respective macro user (MU) and small user (SU) through their shared spectrum in the face of a common eavesdropper. We consider two spectrum sharing mechanisms, namely the overlay spectrum sharing (OSS) and underlay spectrum sharing (USS). In the OSS, MBS and SBS take turns to access their shared spectrum. By contrast, the USS allows MBS and SBS to simultaneously transmit over the shared spectrum with the aid of power control for limiting their mutual interference, thus called interference-limited USS (IL-USS). In order to take advantage of mutual interference in confusing the eavesdropper without causing adverse effect on the MU, we propose an interference-canceled USS (IC-USS) scheme. Closed-form expressions of overall outage probability and intercept probability are derived for OSS, IL-USS and IC-USS schemes by taking into account both MBS-MU and SBS-SU transmissions. The secrecy diversity analysis is also carried out by characterizing an asymptotic behavior of the overall outage probability with a given intercept probability in the high signal-to-noise ratio region. It is shown that the secrecy diversity gains of conventional OSS and IL-USS are zero, whereas the proposed IC-USS achieves a higher secrecy diversity gain of one. This implies that with an arbitrarily low overall intercept probability, the conventional OSS and IL-USS methods converge to their respective outage probability floors, however the proposed IC-USS scheme can make the overall outage probability asymptotically decrease to zero by simply increasing the transmit power. Additionally, numerical results demonstrate an obvious advantage of the proposed IC-USS over OSS and IL-USS against eavesdropping.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2017

Distributed Real-Time HVAC Control for Cost-Efficient Commercial Buildings under Smart Grid Environment

In this paper, we investigate the problem of minimizing the long-term total cost (i.e., the sum of energy cost and thermal discomfort cost) associated with a Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system of a multizone commercial building under smart grid environment. To be specific, we first formulate a stochastic program to minimize the time average expected total cost with the consideration of uncertainties in electricity price, outdoor temperature, the most comfortable temperature level, and external thermal disturbance. Due to the existence of temporally and spatially coupled constraints as well as unknown information about the future system parameters, it is very challenging to solve the formulated problem. To this end, we propose a realtime HVAC control algorithm based on the framework of Lyapunov optimization techniques without the need to predict any system parameters and know their stochastic information. The key idea of the proposed algorithm is to construct and stabilize virtual queues associated with indoor temperatures of all zones. Moreover, we provide a distributed implementation of the proposed realtime algorithm with the aim of protecting user privacy and enhancing algorithmic scalability. Extensive simulation results based on real-world traces show that the proposed algorithm could reduce energy cost effectively with small sacrifice in thermal comfort.

eess.SY↗