Mitigation of Radar Range Deception Jamming Using Random Finite Sets

This paper presents a radar target tracking framework for addressing main-beam range deception jamming attacks using random finite sets (RFSs). Our system handles false alarms and detections with false range information through multiple hypothesis tracking (MHT) to resolve data association uncertainties. We focus on range gate pull-off (RGPO) attacks, where the attacker adds positive delays to the radar pulse, thereby mimicking the target trajectory while appearing at a larger distance from the radar. The proposed framework incorporates knowledge about the spatial behavior of the attack into the assumed RFS clutter model and uses only position information without relying on additional signal features. We present an adaptive solution that estimates the jammer-induced biases to improve tracking accuracy as well as a simpler non-adaptive version that performs well when accurate priors on the jamming range are available. Furthermore, an expression for RGPO attack detection is derived, where the adaptive solution offers superior performance. The presented strategies provide tracking resilience against multiple RGPO attacks in terms of position estimation accuracy and jamming detection without degrading tracking performance in the absence of jamming.

Continuously Optimizing Radar Placement with Model Predictive Path Integrals

Continuously optimizing sensor placement is essential for precise target localization in various military and civilian applications. While information theory has shown promise in optimizing sensor placement, many studies oversimplify sensor measurement models or neglect dynamic constraints of mobile sensors. To address these challenges, we employ a range measurement model that incorporates radar parameters and radar-target distance, coupled with Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) control to manage complex environmental obstacles and dynamic constraints. We compare the proposed approach against stationary radars or simplified range measurement models based on the root mean squared error (RMSE) of the Cubature Kalman Filter (CKF) estimator for the targets' state. Additionally, we visualize the evolving geometry of radars and targets over time, highlighting areas of highest measurement information gain, demonstrating the strengths of the approach. The proposed strategy outperforms stationary radars and simplified range measurement models in target localization, achieving a 38-74% reduction in mean RMSE and a 33-79% reduction in the upper tail of the 90% Highest Density Interval (HDI) over 500 Monte Carl (MC) trials across all time steps. Code will be made publicly available upon acceptance.

ECG-SMART-NET: A Deep Learning Architecture for Precise ECG Diagnosis of Occlusion Myocardial Infarction

In this paper we describe ECG-SMART-NET for identification of occlusion myocardial infarction (OMI). OMI is a severe form of heart attack characterized by complete blockage of one or more coronary arteries requiring immediate referral for cardiac catheterization to restore blood flow to the heart. Two thirds of OMI cases are difficult to visually identify from a 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) and can be potentially fatal if not identified in a timely fashion. Previous works on this topic are scarce, and current state-of-the-art evidence suggests that both random forests with engineered features and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are promising approaches to improve the ECG detection of OMI. While the ResNet architecture has been successfully adapted for use with ECG recordings, it is not ideally suited to capture informative temporal features within each lead and the spatial concordance or discordance across leads. We propose a clinically informed modification of the ResNet-18 architecture. The model first learns temporal features through temporal convolutional layers with 1xk kernels followed by a spatial convolutional layer, after the residual blocks, with 12x1 kernels to learn spatial features. The new ECG-SMART-NET was benchmarked against the original ResNet-18 and other state-of-the-art models on a multisite real-word clinical dataset that consists of 10,893 ECGs from 7,297 unique patients (rate of OMI = 6.5%). ECG-SMART-NET outperformed other models in the classification of OMI with a test AUC score of 0.889 +/- 0.027 and a test average precision score of 0.587 +/- 0.087.

Multistatic-Radar RCS-Signature Recognition of Aerial Vehicles: A Bayesian Fusion Approach

Radar Automated Target Recognition (RATR) for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) involves transmitting Electromagnetic Waves (EMWs) and performing target type recognition on the received radar echo, crucial for defense and aerospace applications. Previous studies highlighted the advantages of multistatic radar configurations over monostatic ones in RATR. However, fusion methods in multistatic radar configurations often suboptimally combine classification vectors from individual radars probabilistically. To address this, we propose a fully Bayesian RATR framework employing Optimal Bayesian Fusion (OBF) to aggregate classification probability vectors from multiple radars. OBF, based on expected 0-1 loss, updates a Recursive Bayesian Classification (RBC) posterior distribution for target UAV type, conditioned on historical observations across multiple time steps. We evaluate the approach using simulated random walk trajectories for seven drones, correlating target aspect angles to Radar Cross Section (RCS) measurements in an anechoic chamber. Comparing against single radar Automated Target Recognition (ATR) systems and suboptimal fusion methods, our empirical results demonstrate that the OBF method integrated with RBC significantly enhances classification accuracy compared to other fusion methods and single radar configurations.

Corticomorphic Hybrid CNN-SNN Architecture for EEG-based Low-footprint Low-latency Auditory Attention Detection

In a multi-speaker "cocktail party" scenario, a listener can selectively attend to a speaker of interest. Studies into the human auditory attention network demonstrate cortical entrainment to speech envelopes resulting in highly correlated Electroencephalography (EEG) measurements. Current trends in EEG-based auditory attention detection (AAD) using artificial neural networks (ANN) are not practical for edge-computing platforms due to longer decision windows using several EEG channels, with higher power consumption and larger memory footprint requirements. Nor are ANNs capable of accurately modeling the brain's top-down attention network since the cortical organization is complex and layer. In this paper, we propose a hybrid convolutional neural network-spiking neural network (CNN-SNN) corticomorphic architecture, inspired by the auditory cortex, which uses EEG data along with multi-speaker speech envelopes to successfully decode auditory attention with low latency down to 1 second, using only 8 EEG electrodes strategically placed close to the auditory cortex, at a significantly higher accuracy of 91.03%, compared to the state-of-the-art. Simultaneously, when compared to a traditional CNN reference model, our model uses ~15% fewer parameters at a lower bit precision resulting in ~57% memory footprint reduction. The results show great promise for edge-computing in brain-embedded devices, like smart hearing aids.

EEG-based Texture Roughness Classification in Active Tactile Exploration with Invariant Representation Learning Networks

During daily activities, humans use their hands to grasp surrounding objects and perceive sensory information which are also employed for perceptual and motor goals. Multiple cortical brain regions are known to be responsible for sensory recognition, perception and motor execution during sensorimotor processing. While various research studies particularly focus on the domain of human sensorimotor control, the relation and processing between motor execution and sensory processing is not yet fully understood. Main goal of our work is to discriminate textured surfaces varying in their roughness levels during active tactile exploration using simultaneously recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) data, while minimizing the variance of distinct motor exploration movement patterns. We perform an experimental study with eight healthy participants who were instructed to use the tip of their dominant hand index finger while rubbing or tapping three different textured surfaces with varying levels of roughness. We use an adversarial invariant representation learning neural network architecture that performs EEG-based classification of different textured surfaces, while simultaneously minimizing the discriminability of motor movement conditions (i.e., rub or tap). Results show that the proposed approach can discriminate between three different textured surfaces with accuracies up to 70%, while suppressing movement related variability from learned representations.

Stopping Criterion Design for Recursive Bayesian Classification: Analysis and Decision Geometry

Systems that are based on recursive Bayesian updates for classification limit the cost of evidence collection through certain stopping/termination criteria and accordingly enforce decision making. Conventionally, two termination criteria based on pre-defined thresholds over (i) the maximum of the state posterior distribution; and (ii) the state posterior uncertainty are commonly used. In this paper, we propose a geometric interpretation over the state posterior progression and accordingly we provide a point-by-point analysis over the disadvantages of using such conventional termination criteria. For example, through the proposed geometric interpretation we show that confidence thresholds defined over maximum of the state posteriors suffer from stiffness that results in unnecessary evidence collection whereas uncertainty based thresholding methods are fragile to number of categories and terminate prematurely if some state candidates are already discovered to be unfavorable. Moreover, both types of termination methods neglect the evolution of posterior updates. We then propose a new stopping/termination criterion with a geometrical insight to overcome the limitations of these conventional methods and provide a comparison in terms of decision accuracy and speed. We validate our claims using simulations and using real experimental data obtained through a brain computer interfaced typing system.

Active Recursive Bayesian Inference with Posterior Trajectory Analysis Using $α$-Divergence

Recursive Bayesian inference (RBI) provides optimal Bayesian latent variable estimates in real-time settings with streaming noisy observations. Active RBI attempts to effectively select queries that lead to more informative observations to rapidly reduce uncertainty until a confident decision is made. However, typically the optimality objectives of inference and query mechanisms are not jointly selected. Furthermore, conventional active querying methods stagger due to misleading prior information. Motivated by information theoretic approaches, we propose an active RBI framework with unified inference and query selection steps through Renyi entropy and $\alpha$-divergence. We also propose a new objective based on Renyi entropy and its changes called Momentum that encourages exploration for misleading prior cases. The proposed active RBI framework is applied to the trajectory of the posterior changes in the probability simplex that provides a coordinated active querying and decision making with specified confidence. Under certain assumptions, we analytically demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms conventional methods such as mutual information by allowing the selections of unlikely events. We present empirical and experimental performance evaluations on two applications: restaurant recommendation and brain-computer interface (BCI) typing systems.

Asymptotic Analysis of Objectives based on Fisher Information in Active Learning

Obtaining labels can be costly and time-consuming. Active learning allows a learning algorithm to intelligently query samples to be labeled for efficient learning. Fisher information ratio (FIR) has been used as an objective for selecting queries in active learning. However, little is known about the theory behind the use of FIR for active learning. There is a gap between the underlying theory and the motivation of its usage in practice. In this paper, we attempt to fill this gap and provide a rigorous framework for analyzing existing FIR-based active learning methods. In particular, we show that FIR can be asymptotically viewed as an upper bound of the expected variance of the log-likelihood ratio. Additionally, our analysis suggests a unifying framework that not only enables us to make theoretical comparisons among the existing querying methods based on FIR, but also allows us to give insight into the development of new active learning approaches based on this objective.

Decoding Emotional Experience through Physiological Signal Processing

There is an increasing consensus among re- searchers that making a computer emotionally intelligent with the ability to decode human affective states would allow a more meaningful and natural way of human-computer interactions (HCIs). One unobtrusive and non-invasive way of recognizing human affective states entails the exploration of how physiological signals vary under different emotional experiences. In particular, this paper explores the correlation between autonomically-mediated changes in multimodal body signals and discrete emotional states. In order to fully exploit the information in each modality, we have provided an innovative classification approach for three specific physiological signals including Electromyogram (EMG), Blood Volume Pressure (BVP) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR). These signals are analyzed as inputs to an emotion recognition paradigm based on fusion of a series of weak learners. Our proposed classification approach showed 88.1% recognition accuracy, which outperformed the conventional Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier with 17% accuracy improvement. Furthermore, in order to avoid information redundancy and the resultant over-fitting, a feature reduction method is proposed based on a correlation analysis to optimize the number of features required for training and validating each weak learner. Results showed that despite the feature space dimensionality reduction from 27 to 18 features, our methodology preserved the recognition accuracy of about 85.0%. This reduction in complexity will get us one step closer towards embedding this human emotion encoder in the wireless and wearable HCI platforms.