Integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveillance or monitoring applications into fifth generation (5G) New Radio (NR) cellular networks is an intriguing problem that has recently tackled a lot of interest in both academia and industry. For an efficient spectrum usage, we consider a recently-proposed sky-ground nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme, where a cellular-connected UAV acting as aerial user (AU) and a static terrestrial user (TU) are paired to simultaneously transmit their uplink signals to a base station (BS) in the same time-frequency resource blocks. In such a case, due to the highly dynamic nature of the UAV, the signal transmitted by the AU experiences both time dispersion due to multipath propagation effects and frequency dispersion caused by Doppler shifts. On the other hand, for a static ground network, frequency dispersion of the signal transmitted by the TU is negligible and only multipath effects have to be taken into account. To decode the superposed signals at the BS through successive interference cancellation, accurate estimates of both the AU and TU channels are needed. In this paper, we propose channel estimation procedures that suitably exploit the different circular/noncircular modulation formats (modulation diversity) and the different almost-cyclostationarity features (Doppler diversity) of the AU and TU by means of widely-linear time-varying processing. Our estimation approach is semi-blind since Doppler shifts and time delays of the AU are estimated based on the received data only, whereas the remaining relevant parameters of the AU and TU channels are acquired relying also on the available training symbols. Monte Carlo numerical results demonstrate that the proposed channel estimation algorithms can satisfactorily acquire all the relevant parameters in different operative conditions.
Ensuring the reliability and security of smart inverters that provide the interface between distributed energy resources (DERs) and the power grid becomes paramount with the surge in integrating DERs into the (smart) power grid. Despite the importance of having updated firmware / software versions within a reasonable time frame, existing methods for establishing trust through firmware updates lack effective historical tracking and verification. This paper introduces a novel framework to manage and track firmware update history, leveraging verifiable credentials. By tracking the update history and implementing a trust cycle based on these verifiable updates, we aim to improve grid resilience, enhance cybersecurity, and increase transparency for stakeholders.
This article discusses the implementation of a software joint velocity limitation dedicated to a Spherical Parallel Manipulator (SPM) with coaxial input shafts (CoSPM) using a speed control loop. Such an algorithm takes as input the current joint positions as well as the joint reference velocities computed by the speed controller and limit the latter in order to avoid any known singular configuration. This limitation takes into account the workspace properties of the mechanism and the physical characteristics of its actuators. In particular, one takes advantage of the coaxiality of the input shafts of the CoSPM and the resulting unlimited bearing.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have highlighted the necessity of effective unlearning mechanisms to comply with data regulations and ethical AI practices. LLM unlearning aims at removing undesired data influences and associated model capabilities without compromising utility out of the scope of unlearning. While interest in studying LLM unlearning is growing,the impact of the optimizer choice for LLM unlearning remains under-explored. In this work, we shed light on the significance of optimizer selection in LLM unlearning for the first time, establishing a clear connection between {second-order optimization} and influence unlearning (a classical approach using influence functions to update the model for data influence removal). This insight propels us to develop a second-order unlearning framework, termed SOUL, built upon the second-order clipped stochastic optimization (Sophia)-based LLM training method. SOUL extends the static, one-shot model update using influence unlearning to a dynamic, iterative unlearning process. Our extensive experiments show that SOUL consistently outperforms conventional first-order methods across various unlearning tasks, models, and metrics, suggesting the promise of second-order optimization in providing a scalable and easily implementable solution for LLM unlearning.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques are being used more frequently to improve high-tech Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), but many of these techniques are integrated without the inclusion of the users' perspectives. As many of these tools are created with children in mind, autistic adults are often neglected in the design of AAC tools to begin with. We conducted in-depth interviews with 12 autistic adults to find the pain points of current AAC and determine what general technological advances they would find helpful. We found that in addition to technological issues, there are many societal issues as well. We found 9 different categories of themes from our interviews: input options, output options, selecting or adapting AAC for a good fit, when to start or swap AAC, benefits (of use), access (to AAC), stumbling blocks for continued use, social concerns, and lack of control. In this paper, we go through these nine categories in depth and then suggest possible guidelines for the NLP community, AAC application makers, and policy makers to improve AAC use for autistic adults.
We propose a time-dependent Advection Reaction Diffusion (ARD) $N$-species competition model to investigate the Stocking and Harvesting (SH) effect on population dynamics. For ongoing analysis, we explore the outcomes of a competition between two competing species in a heterogeneous environment under no-flux boundary conditions, meaning no individual can cross the boundaries. We establish results concerning the existence, uniqueness, and positivity of the solution. As a continuation, we propose, analyze, and test two novel fully discrete decoupled linearized algorithms for a nonlinearly coupled ARD $N$-species competition model with SH effort. The time-stepping algorithms are first and second order accurate in time and optimally accurate in space. Stability and optimal convergence theorems of the decoupled schemes are proved rigorously. We verify the predicted convergence rates of our analysis and the efficacy of the algorithms using numerical experiments and synthetic data for analytical test problems. We also study the effect of harvesting or stocking and diffusion parameters on the evolution of species population density numerically and observe the coexistence scenario subject to optimal stocking or harvesting.
Meeting the strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of terminals has imposed a signiffcant challenge on Multiaccess Edge Computing (MEC) systems, due to the limited multidimensional resources. To address this challenge, we propose a collaborative MEC framework that facilitates resource sharing between the edge servers, and with the aim to maximize the long-term QoS and reduce the cache switching cost through joint optimization of service caching, collaborative offfoading, and computation and communication resource allocation. The dual timescale feature and temporal recurrence relationship between service caching and other resource allocation make solving the problem even more challenging. To solve it, we propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based dual timescale scheme, called DGL-DDPG, which is composed of a short-term genetic algorithm (GA) and a long short-term memory network-based deep deterministic policy gradient (LSTM-DDPG). In doing so, we reformulate the optimization problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) where the small-timescale resource allocation decisions generated by an improved GA are taken as the states and input into a centralized LSTM-DDPG agent to generate the service caching decision for the large-timescale. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm outperforms the baseline algorithms in terms of the average QoS and cache switching cost.
Generative AI (GAI) can enhance the cognitive, reasoning, and planning capabilities of intelligent modules in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) by synthesizing augmented datasets, completing sensor data, and making sequential decisions. In addition, the mixture of experts (MoE) can enable the distributed and collaborative execution of AI models without performance degradation between connected vehicles. In this survey, we explore the integration of MoE and GAI to enable Artificial General Intelligence in IoV, which can enable the realization of full autonomy for IoV with minimal human supervision and applicability in a wide range of mobility scenarios, including environment monitoring, traffic management, and autonomous driving. In particular, we present the fundamentals of GAI, MoE, and their interplay applications in IoV. Furthermore, we discuss the potential integration of MoE and GAI in IoV, including distributed perception and monitoring, collaborative decision-making and planning, and generative modeling and simulation. Finally, we present several potential research directions for facilitating the integration.
FPGAs are rarely mentioned when discussing the implementation of large machine learning applications, such as Large Language Models (LLMs), in the data center. There has been much evidence showing that single FPGAs can be competitive with GPUs in performance for some computations, especially for low latency, and often much more efficient when power is considered. This suggests that there is merit to exploring the use of multiple FPGAs for large machine learning applications. The challenge with using multiple FPGAs is that there is no commonly-accepted flow for developing and deploying multi-FPGA applications, i.e., there are no tools to describe a large application, map it to multiple FPGAs and then deploy the application on a multi-FPGA platform. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of implementing large transformers using multiple FPGAs by developing a scalable multi-FPGA platform and some tools to map large applications to the platform. We validate our approach by designing an efficient multi-FPGA version of the I-BERT transformer and implement one encoder using six FPGAs as a working proof-of-concept to show that our platform and tools work. Based on our proof-of-concept prototype and the estimations of performance using the latest FPGAs compared to GPUs, we conclude that there can be a place for FPGAs in the world of large machine learning applications. We demonstrate a promising first step that shows that with the right infrastructure and tools it is reasonable to continue to explore the possible benefits of using FPGAs for applications such as LLMs.
Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly emerging in Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, especially in the fields of natural language processing and generative AI. Not limited to text generation applications, these models inherently possess the opportunity to leverage prompt engineering, where the inputs of such models can be appropriately structured to articulate a model's purpose explicitly. A prominent example of this is intent-based networking, an emerging approach for automating and maintaining network operations and management. This paper presents semantic routing to achieve enhanced performance in LLM-assisted intent-based management and orchestration of 5G core networks. This work establishes an end-to-end intent extraction framework and presents a diverse dataset of sample user intents accompanied by a thorough analysis of the effects of encoders and quantization on overall system performance. The results show that using a semantic router improves the accuracy and efficiency of the LLM deployment compared to stand-alone LLMs with prompting architectures.
Within the rapidly developing Internet of Things (IoT), numerous and diverse physical devices, Edge devices, Cloud infrastructure, and their quality of service requirements (QoS), need to be represented within a unified specification in order to enable rapid IoT application development, monitoring, and dynamic reconfiguration. But heterogeneities among different configuration knowledge representation models pose limitations for acquisition, discovery and curation of configuration knowledge for coordinated IoT applications. This paper proposes a unified data model to represent IoT resource configuration knowledge artifacts. It also proposes IoT-CANE (Context-Aware recommendatioN systEm) to facilitate incremental knowledge acquisition and declarative context driven knowledge recommendation.