Learn More by Using Less: Distributed Learning with Energy-Constrained Devices

Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a solution for distributed model training across decentralized, privacy-preserving devices, but the different energy capacities of participating devices (system heterogeneity) constrain real-world implementations. These energy limitations not only reduce model accuracy but also increase dropout rates, impacting on convergence in practical FL deployments. In this work, we propose LeanFed, an energy-aware FL framework designed to optimize client selection and training workloads on battery-constrained devices. LeanFed leverages adaptive data usage by dynamically adjusting the fraction of local data each device utilizes during training, thereby maximizing device participation across communication rounds while ensuring they do not run out of battery during the process. We rigorously evaluate LeanFed against traditional FedAvg on CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100 datasets, simulating various levels of data heterogeneity and device participation rates. Results show that LeanFed consistently enhances model accuracy and stability, particularly in settings with high data heterogeneity and limited battery life, by mitigating client dropout and extending device availability. This approach demonstrates the potential of energy-efficient, privacy-preserving FL in real-world, large-scale applications, setting a foundation for robust and sustainable pervasive AI on resource-constrained networks.

Consistent Estimation of a Class of Distances Between Covariance Matrices

This work considers the problem of estimating the distance between two covariance matrices directly from the data. Particularly, we are interested in the family of distances that can be expressed as sums of traces of functions that are separately applied to each covariance matrix. This family of distances is particularly useful as it takes into consideration the fact that covariance matrices lie in the Riemannian manifold of positive definite matrices, thereby including a variety of commonly used metrics, such as the Euclidean distance, Jeffreys' divergence, and the log-Euclidean distance. Moreover, a statistical analysis of the asymptotic behavior of this class of distance estimators has also been conducted. Specifically, we present a central limit theorem that establishes the asymptotic Gaussianity of these estimators and provides closed form expressions for the corresponding means and variances. Empirical evaluations demonstrate the superiority of our proposed consistent estimator over conventional plug-in estimators in multivariate analytical contexts. Additionally, the central limit theorem derived in this study provides a robust statistical framework to assess of accuracy of these estimators.

Statistical Framework for Clustering MU-MIMO Wireless via Second Order Statistics

This work explores the clustering of wireless users by examining the distances between their channel covariance matrices, which reside on the Riemannian manifold of positive definite matrices. Specifically, we consider an estimator of the Log-Euclidean distance between multiple sample covariance matrices (SCMs) consistent when the number of samples and the observation size grow unbounded at the same rate. Within the context of multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) wireless communication systems, we develop a statistical framework that allows to accurate predictions of the clustering algorithm's performance under realistic conditions. Specifically, we present a central limit theorem that establishes the asymptotic Gaussianity of the consistent estimator of the log-Euclidean distance computed over two sample covariance matrices.

Deterministic Equivalent of the Log-Euclidean Distance between Sample Covariance Matrices

Log-Euclidean distances are commonly used to quantify the similarity between positive definite matrices using geometric considerations. This paper analyzes the behavior of this distance when it is used to measure closeness between independent sample covariance matrices. A closed form expression is given for the deterministic equivalent of such distance, which asymptotically approximates the actual distance in the large observation regime (both sample size and observation dimension grow to infinity at the same rate). The deterministic equivalent can be used to analyze the performance of the log-Euclidean metric when compared to other commonly used metrics such as the Euclidean norm or the symmetrized Kullback-Leibler divergence.

F-KANs: Federated Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks

In this paper, we present an innovative federated learning (FL) approach that utilizes Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) for classification tasks. By utilizing the adaptive activation capabilities of KANs in a federated framework, we aim to improve classification capabilities while preserving privacy. The study evaluates the performance of federated KANs (F- KANs) compared to traditional Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) on classification task. The results show that the F-KANs model significantly outperforms the federated MLP model in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, F1 score and stability, and achieves better performance, paving the way for more efficient and privacy-preserving predictive analytics.

Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) for Time Series Analysis

This paper introduces a novel application of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) to time series forecasting, leveraging their adaptive activation functions for enhanced predictive modeling. Inspired by the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem, KANs replace traditional linear weights with spline-parametrized univariate functions, allowing them to learn activation patterns dynamically. We demonstrate that KANs outperforms conventional Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) in a real-world satellite traffic forecasting task, providing more accurate results with considerably fewer number of learnable parameters. We also provide an ablation study of KAN-specific parameters impact on performance. The proposed approach opens new avenues for adaptive forecasting models, emphasizing the potential of KANs as a powerful tool in predictive analytics.

Asymptotics of Distances Between Sample Covariance Matrices

This work considers the asymptotic behavior of the distance between two sample covariance matrices (SCM). A general result is provided for a class of functionals that can be expressed as sums of traces of functions that are separately applied to each covariance matrix. In particular, this class includes very conventional metrics, such as the Euclidean distance or Jeffrery's divergence, as well as a number of other more sophisticated distances recently derived from Riemannian geometry considerations, such as the log-Euclidean metric. In particular, we analyze the asymptotic behavior of this class of functionals by establishing a central limit theorem that allows us to describe their asymptotic statistical law. In order to account for the fact that the sample sizes of two SCMs are of the same order of magnitude as their observation dimension, results are provided by assuming that these parameters grow to infinity while their quotients converge to fixed quantities. Numerical results illustrate how this type of result can be used in order to predict the performance of these metrics in practical machine learning algorithms, such as clustering of SCMs.

Floor Map Reconstruction Through Radio Sensing and Learning By a Large Intelligent Surface

Environmental scene reconstruction is of great interest for autonomous robotic applications, since an accurate representation of the environment is necessary to ensure safe interaction with robots. Equally important, it is also vital to ensure reliable communication between the robot and its controller. Large Intelligent Surface (LIS) is a technology that has been extensively studied due to its communication capabilities. Moreover, due to the number of antenna elements, these surfaces arise as a powerful solution to radio sensing. This paper presents a novel method to translate radio environmental maps obtained at the LIS to floor plans of the indoor environment built of scatterers spread along its area. The usage of a Least Squares (LS) based method, U-Net (UN) and conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (cGANs) were leveraged to perform this task. We show that the floor plan can be correctly reconstructed using both local and global measurements.

Beam Aware Stochastic Multihop Routing for Flying Ad-hoc Networks

Routing is a crucial component in the design of Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs). State of the art routing solutions exploit the position of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and their mobility information to determine the existence of links between them, but this information is often unreliable, as the topology of FANETs can change quickly and unpredictably. In order to improve the tracking performance, the uncertainty introduced by imperfect measurements and tracking algorithms needs to be accounted for in the routing. Another important element to consider is beamforming, which can reduce interference, but requires accurate channel and position information to work. In this work, we present the Beam Aware Stochastic Multihop Routing for FANETs (BA-SMURF), a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) routing scheme that takes into account the positioning uncertainty and beamforming design to find the most reliable routes in a FANET. Our simulation results show that joint consideration of the beamforming and routing can provide a 5% throughput improvement with respect to the state of the art.

User Clustering for Rate Splitting using Machine Learning

Hierarchical Rate Splitting (HRS) schemes proposed in recent years have shown to provide significant improvements in exploiting spatial diversity in wireless networks and provide high throughput for all users while minimising interference among them. Hence, one of the major challenges for such HRS schemes is the necessity to know the optimal clustering of these users based only on their Channel State Information (CSI). This clustering problem is known to be NP hard and, to deal with the unmanageable complexity of finding an optimal solution, in this work a scalable and much lighter clustering mechanism based on Neural Network (NN) is proposed. The accuracy and performance metrics show that the NN is able to learn and cluster the users based on the noisy channel response and is able to achieve a rate comparable to other more complex clustering schemes from the literature.