Joint Precoder and Reflector Design for RIS-assisted Multi-user OAM Communication Systems

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) can enhance the spectral efficiency by multiplying a set of orthogonal modes on the same frequency channel. To maintain the orthogonal among different OAM modes, perfect alignments between transmitters and receivers are strictly required. However, in multi-user OAM communications, the perfect alignments between the transmitter and all the receivers are impossible. The phase turbulence, caused by misaligned transmitters and receivers, leads to serious inter-mode interference, which greatly degrades the capacity of OAM transmissions. To eliminate the negative effects of phase turbulence and further enhance the transmission capacity, we introduce RIS into the system, and propose a joint precoder and reflector design for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted multi-user OAM communication systems. Specifically, we propose a three-layer design at the transmitter side, which includes inter-user OAM mode interference cancellation, inter-mode self-interference elimination and the power allocation among different users. By analyzing the characteristics of the overall channels, we are able to give the specific expressions of the precoder designs, which significantly reduce the optimization complexity. We further leverage RIS to guarantee the line-ofsight (LoS) transmissions between the transmitter and users for better sum rate performance. To verify the superiority of the proposed multi-user OAM transmission system, we compare it with traditional MIMO transmission schemes, numerical results have shown that our proposed design can achieve better sum rate performance due to the well-designed orthogonality among different users and OAM modes.

Harnessing Rydberg Atomic Receivers: From Quantum Physics to Wireless Communications

The intrinsic integration of Rydberg atomic receivers into wireless communication systems is proposed, by harnessing the principles of quantum physics in wireless communications. More particularly, we conceive a pair of Rydberg atomic receivers, one incorporates a local oscillator (LO), referred to as an LO-dressed receiver, while the other operates without an LO and is termed an LO-free receiver. The appropriate wireless model is developed for each configuration, elaborating on the receiver's responses to the radio frequency (RF) signal, on the potential noise sources, and on the system performance. Next, we investigate the association distortion effects that might occur, specifically demonstrating the boundaries of linear dynamic regions, which provides critical insights into its practical implementations in wireless systems. Extensive simulation results are provided for characterizing the performance of wireless systems, harnessing this pair of Rydberg atomic receivers. Our results demonstrate that they deliver complementary benefits: LO-free systems excel in proximity operations, while LO-dressed systems are eminently suitable for long-distance sensing at extremely low power levels. More specifically, LO-dressed systems achieve a significant signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain of approximately 44 dB over conventional RF receivers, exhibiting an effective coverage range extension over conventional RF receivers by a factor of 150. Furthermore, LO-dressed systems support higher-order quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) at reduced symbol error rates (SER) compared to conventional RF receivers, hence significantly enhancing wireless communication performance.

Experimental Study of RCS Diversity with Novel No-divergent OAM Beams

This research proposes a novel approach utilizing Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) beams to enhance Radar Cross Section (RCS) diversity for target detection in future transportation systems. Unlike conventional OAM beams with hollow-shaped divergence patterns, the new proposed OAM beams provide uniform illumination across the target without a central energy void, but keep the inherent phase gradient of vortex property. We utilize waveguide slot antennas to generate four different modes of these novel OAM beams at X-band frequency. Furthermore, these different mode OAM beams are used to illuminate metal models, and the resulting RCS is compared with that obtained using plane waves. The findings reveal that the novel OAM beams produce significant azimuthal RCS diversity, providing a new approach for the detection of weak and small targets.This study not only reveals the RCS diversity phenomenon based on novel OAM beams of different modes but also addresses the issue of energy divergence that hinders traditional OAM beams in long-range detection applications.

Innovative RIS Prototyping Enhancing Wireless Communication with Real-Time Spot Beam Tracking and OAM Wavefront Manipulation

This paper presents a sophisticated reconfigurable metasurface architecture that introduces an advanced concept of flexible full-array space-time wavefront manipulation with enhanced dynamic capabilities. The practical 2-bit phase-shifting unit cell on the RIS is distinguished by its ability to maintain four stable phase states, each with ${90^ \circ }$ differences, and features an insertion loss of less than 0.6 dB across a bandwidth of 200 MHz. All reconfigurable units are equipped with meticulously designed control circuits, governed by an intelligent core composed of multiple Micro-Controller Units (MCUs), enabling rapid control response across the entire RIS array. Owing to the capability of each unit cell on the metasurface to independently switch states, the entire RIS is not limited to controlling general beams with specific directional patterns, but also generates beams with more complex structures, including multi-focus 3D spot beams and vortex beams. This development substantially broadens its applicability across various industrial wireless transmission scenarios. Moreover, by leveraging the rapid-respond space-time coding and the full-array independent programmability of the RIS prototyping operating at 10.7 GHz, we have demonstrated that: 1) The implementation of 3D spot beams scanning facilitates dynamic beam tracking and real-time communication under the indoor near-field scenario; 2) The rapid wavefront rotation of vortex beams enables precise modulation of signals within the Doppler domain, showcasing an innovative approach to wireless signal manipulation; 3) The beam steering experiments for blocking users under outdoor far-field scenarios, verifying the beamforming capability of the RIS board.

MRIo3DS-Net: A Mutually Reinforcing Images to 3D Surface RNN-like framework for model-adaptation indoor 3D reconstruction

This paper is the first to propose an end-to-end framework of mutually reinforcing images to 3D surface recurrent neural network-like for model-adaptation indoor 3D reconstruction,where multi-view dense matching and point cloud surface optimization are mutually reinforced by a RNN-like structure rather than being treated as a separate issue.The characteristics are as follows:In the multi-view dense matching module, the model-adaptation strategy is used to fine-tune and optimize a Transformer-based multi-view dense matching DNN,so that it has the higher image feature for matching and detail expression capabilities;In the point cloud surface optimization module,the 3D surface reconstruction network based on 3D implicit field is optimized by using model-adaptation strategy,which solves the problem of point cloud surface optimization without knowing normal vector of 3D surface.To improve and finely reconstruct 3D surfaces from point cloud,smooth loss is proposed and added to this module;The MRIo3DS-Net is a RNN-like framework,which utilizes the finely optimized 3D surface obtained by PCSOM to recursively reinforce the differentiable warping for optimizing MVDMM.This refinement leads to achieving better dense matching results, and better dense matching results leads to achieving better 3D surface results recursively and mutually.Hence, model-adaptation strategy can better collaborate the differences between the two network modules,so that they complement each other to achieve the better effect;To accelerate the transfer learning and training convergence from source domain to target domain,a multi-task loss function based on Bayesian uncertainty is used to adaptively adjust the weights between the two networks loss functions of MVDMM and PCSOM;In this multi-task cascade network framework,any modules can be replaced by any state-of-the-art networks to achieve better 3D reconstruction results.

SFC: Achieve Accurate Fast Convolution under Low-precision Arithmetic

Fast convolution algorithms, including Winograd and FFT, can efficiently accelerate convolution operations in deep models. However, these algorithms depend on high-precision arithmetic to maintain inference accuracy, which conflicts with the model quantization. To resolve this conflict and further improve the efficiency of quantized convolution, we proposes SFC, a new algebra transform for fast convolution by extending the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) with symbolic computing, in which only additions are required to perform the transformation at specific transform points, avoiding the calculation of irrational number and reducing the requirement for precision. Additionally, we enhance convolution efficiency by introducing correction terms to convert invalid circular convolution outputs of the Fourier method into effective ones. The numerical error analysis is presented for the first time in this type of work and proves that our algorithms can provide a 3.68x multiplication reduction for 3x3 convolution, while the Winograd algorithm only achieves a 2.25x reduction with similarly low numerical errors. Experiments carried out on benchmarks and FPGA show that our new algorithms can further improve the computation efficiency of quantized models while maintaining accuracy, surpassing both the quantization-alone method and existing works on fast convolution quantization.

A Comprehensive Taxonomy and Analysis of Talking Head Synthesis: Techniques for Portrait Generation, Driving Mechanisms, and Editing

Talking head synthesis, an advanced method for generating portrait videos from a still image driven by specific content, has garnered widespread attention in virtual reality, augmented reality and game production. Recently, significant breakthroughs have been made with the introduction of novel models such as the transformer and the diffusion model. Current methods can not only generate new content but also edit the generated material. This survey systematically reviews the technology, categorizing it into three pivotal domains: portrait generation, driven mechanisms, and editing techniques. We summarize milestone studies and critically analyze their innovations and shortcomings within each domain. Additionally, we organize an extensive collection of datasets and provide a thorough performance analysis of current methodologies based on various evaluation metrics, aiming to furnish a clear framework and robust data support for future research. Finally, we explore application scenarios of talking head synthesis, illustrate them with specific cases, and examine potential future directions.

A general approach to enhance the survivability of backdoor attacks by decision path coupling

Backdoor attacks have been one of the emerging security threats to deep neural networks (DNNs), leading to serious consequences. One of the mainstream backdoor defenses is model reconstruction-based. Such defenses adopt model unlearning or pruning to eliminate backdoors. However, little attention has been paid to survive from such defenses. To bridge the gap, we propose Venom, the first generic backdoor attack enhancer to improve the survivability of existing backdoor attacks against model reconstruction-based defenses. We formalize Venom as a binary-task optimization problem. The first is the original backdoor attack task to preserve the original attack capability, while the second is the attack enhancement task to improve the attack survivability. To realize the second task, we propose attention imitation loss to force the decision path of poisoned samples in backdoored models to couple with the crucial decision path of benign samples, which makes backdoors difficult to eliminate. Our extensive evaluation on two DNNs and three datasets has demonstrated that Venom significantly improves the survivability of eight state-of-the-art attacks against eight state-of-the-art defenses without impacting the capability of the original attacks.

Multi-mode OAM Convergent Transmission with Co-divergent Angle Tailored by Airy Wavefront

Wireless backhaul offers a more cost-effective, time-efficient, and reconfigurable solution than wired backhaul to connect the edge-computing cells to the core network. As the amount of transmitted data increases, the low-rank characteristic of Line-of-Sight (LoS) channel severely limits the growth of channel capacity in the point-to-point backhaul transmission scenario. Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM), also known as vortex beam, is considered a potentially effective solution for high-capacity LoS wireless transmission. However, due to the shortcomings of its energy divergence and the specificity of multi-mode divergence angles, OAM beams have been difficult to apply in practical communication systems for a long time. In this work, a novel multi-mode convergent transmission with co-scale reception scheme is proposed. OAM beams of different modes can be transmitted with the same beam divergent angle, while the wavefronts are tailored by the ring-shaped Airy compensation lens during propagation, so that the energy will converge to the same spatial area for receiving. Based on this scheme, not only is the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) greatly improved, but it is also possible to simultaneously receive and demodulate OAM channels multiplexed with different modes in a limited space area. Through prototype experiments, we demonstrated that 3 kinds of OAM modes are tunable, and different channels can be separated simultaneously with receiving power increasing. The measurement isolations between channels are over 11 dB, which ensures a reliable 16-QAM multiplexing wireless transmission demo system. This work may explore the potential applications of OAM-based multi-mode convergent transmission in LoS wireless communications.

Human Behavior in the Time of COVID-19: Learning from Big Data

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic in March 2020, there have been over 600 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than six million deaths as of October 2022. The relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and human behavior is complicated. On one hand, human behavior is found to shape the spread of the disease. On the other hand, the pandemic has impacted and even changed human behavior in almost every aspect. To provide a holistic understanding of the complex interplay between human behavior and the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have been employing big data techniques such as natural language processing, computer vision, audio signal processing, frequent pattern mining, and machine learning. In this study, we present an overview of the existing studies on using big data techniques to study human behavior in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we categorize these studies into three groups - using big data to measure, model, and leverage human behavior, respectively. The related tasks, data, and methods are summarized accordingly. To provide more insights into how to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and future global catastrophes, we further discuss challenges and potential opportunities.