Inter-agent communication serves as an effective mechanism for enhancing performance in collaborative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) systems. However, the inherent communication latency in practical systems induces both action decision delays and outdated information sharing, impeding MARL performance gains, particularly in time-critical applications like autonomous driving. In this work, we propose a Value-of-Information aware Low-latency Communication (VIL2C) scheme that proactively adjusts the latency distribution to mitigate its effects in MARL systems. Specifically, we define a Value of Information (VoI) metric to quantify the importance of delayed messages on the recipient agent's decision. We then design a VoI aware resource allocation method that dynamically prioritizes message transmission based on each delayed message's importance. Moreover, we propose a progressive message reception mechanism to adaptively adjust the reception duration based on received messages. We derive the optimized VoI aware resource allocation and theoretically prove the performance advantage of the proposed VIL2C scheme. Extensive experiments demonstrate that VIL2C outperforms existing approaches under various communication conditions. These gains are attributed to the low-latency transmission of high-VoI messages via resource allocation and the elimination of unnecessary waiting periods via adaptive reception duration.

Multidevice cooperative wireless sensing offers a promising solution for human motion recognition, owing to its superior privacy preservation and robustness. In the sensing process, devices continuously extract features from channel echoes and transmit them to a fusion center for motion recognition over successive time slots. The intertwined sub-processes of sensing and communication jointly determine recognition accuracy, yet simultaneously compete for limited radio resources. Moreover, the dynamic nature of practical environments further complicates this interplay due to the presence of moving interference sources and time-varying number of cellular users sharing the available bandwidth. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to jointly optimize sensing and communication resource allocation among devices and across time slots, while meticulously accounting for the impacts of dynamic environment to maximize recognition accuracy. In this paper, we propose a task-oriented integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system for multidevice cooperative wireless motion recognition in dynamic environments. Specifically, we formulate a joint sensing and communication resource allocation problem to maximize recognition accuracy, represented by a discriminant gain metric that explicitly accounts for both sensing quality and communication constraints. Since this problem is a fractional program, we transform the original sum-of-ratios objective function into an equivalently subtractive form that facilities the development of a two-step iterative offline optimization (TSIO) algorithm to achieve the benchmark performance. Furthermore, to effectively cope with dynamic environmental influences, we further design a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL)-based online optimization (MRLO) scheme, which predicts environmental conditions at the subsequent time slot and adaptively optimizes resource allocation. Extensive numerical results illustrate that the proposed algorithm significantly enhances the recognition accuracy with dynamic environment influences, compared to existing benchmark algorithms. It is also observed from results that the sensing performance primarily drives recognition accuracy when energy is limited, whereas communication performance becomes the dominant factor under bandwidth constraints.

Agent-assisted memory recall is one critical research problem in the field of human-computer interaction. In conventional methods, the agent can retrieve information from its equipped memory module to help the person recall incomplete or vague memories. The limited size of memory module hinders the acquisition of complete memories and impacts the memory recall performance in practice. Memory theories suggest that the person’s relevant memory can be proactively activated through some effective cues. Inspired by this, we propose a novel strategy-guided agent-assisted memory recall method, allowing the agent to transform an original query into a cue-rich one via the judiciously designed strategy to help the person recall memories. To this end, there are two key challenges. (1) How to choose the appropriate recall strategy for diverse forgetting scenarios with distinct memory-recall characteristics? (2) How to obtain the high-quality responses leveraging recall strategies, given only abstract and sparsely annotated strategy patterns? To address the challenges, we propose a Recall Router framework. Specifically, we design a 5W Recall Map to classify memory queries into five typical scenarios and define fifteen recall strategy patterns across the corresponding scenarios. We then propose a hierarchical recall tree combined with the Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm to optimize the selection of strategy and the generation of strategy responses. We construct an instruction tuning dataset and fine-tune multiple open-source large language models (LLMs) to develop MemoCue, an agent that excels in providing memory-inspired responses. Experiments on three representative datasets show that MemoCue surpasses LLM-based methods by 17.74% in recall inspiration. Further human evaluation highlights its advantages in memory-recall applications.

Traditional liquid detection approaches are often time-intensive and invasive, typically requiring the opening of containers for examination. While recent initiatives have proposed several innovative solutions, including camera-based and vibration sensor-based techniques, these approaches still face limitations in terms of convenience. The development of radio frequency (RF) technology, particularly millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar, offers a promising solution for non-invasive and contactless liquid detection. In particular, during the past few years, a number of radar-based sensing systems have been developed to detect or identify liquids. However, little work has been done on the simultaneous detection of multiple liquids. To fill this gap, we design a novel composite reflection model, which overcomes the detection challenges due to composite interference and environmental reflections, by utilizing the consistency and uniqueness of the reflection signals from multiple liquid targets. Based on the proposed model, we develop a system namedMultiScanner, which is able to detect different types of liquids in multi-target scenarios, exhibiting high location independence without the need for extensive data training. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness ofMultiScanner, achieving up to 95.91% accuracy in detecting 10 hazardous-normal liquid combinations in 2-target scenarios. Moreover, even in more complex 5-target scenarios, an detection accuracy of 86.49% can be obtained. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that uses RF signals for multi-liquid detection.

This study introduces a novel approach for preventing overexertion in home fitness through fine-grained detection of respiratory parameters. To overcome the robustness limitation associated with using a composite signal for wireless sensing, we introduce an optimization-based signal separation model. This model effectively disentangles composite signals into static and dynamic components, while preserving the intricate details of target movements or activities. Specifically, by constructing a reference signal derived from the dominant static component, we eliminate time-varying phase shifts and leverage the invariant property of the dynamic component’s amplitude for precise separation. A system calledFinerSenseis developed, which is able to accurately and robustly detect fine-grained respiratory parameters such as respiration rate, depth, and inhalation-to-exhalation ratio with accuracy rates exceeding 97%, 95%, and 91%, respectively. Extensive experiments show that the developed system outperforms state-of-the-art baselines significantly, empowering users to optimize exercise intensity and duration while mitigating the risk of overexertion. We believe that this work is able to facilitate the seamless transition of wireless sensing systems from laboratory prototypes to practical and user-friendly applications.

Multi-Camera Active Object Tracking is an attractive technique in the area of intelligent surveillance, where cameras share their observations via the wireless communication to collaboratively track the target. Due to the variability in wireless channel, the dynamic transmission delay between cameras significantly affects the collaboration performance, especially when the tracking is time-sensitive. In this paper, we propose a channel-aware multi-camera active object tracking (CAMAOT) system, to achieve the stable and improved tracking performance. Specifically, a communication decision module is designed in CAMAOT, where the cameras’ communication graph and communication resource allocation adapt to the channels. Our experiments demonstrate that for time-varying channels, CAMAOT has a stable performance improvement over other systems, particularly when the communication resources are limited.

IoT-based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) face significant energy constraints, which can be alleviated by wireless power transfer (WPT) technology. Integrating WPT with WSNs creates wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs), where optimizing charging efficiency and scheduling is critical. This paper introduces an ISAC-facilitated optimal on-demand mobile charging scheme for IoT-based WRSNs (IOMSN) with three key components. First, it presents an ISAC-assisted prioritized charging queue, incorporating four attributes with probability distributions: residual energy, traffic load, MCV travel time, and direction angle. Second, it provides ISAC-driven estimations of MCV distance, speed, and location to enhance prioritization, thereby optimizing the charging route and potentially reducing travel costs. Third, a time-allocated partial charging model improves charging efficiency. Numerical results show that the proposed protocol outperforms cutting-edge protocols in energy usage efficiency, travel distance, charging delay, and service time.

In the realm of the Internet of Things, a multitude of interconnected and intelligent devices enable profound interaction with the physical world. Within this context, a combination of aerial and ground robots for active target tracking aims to leverage their complementary capabilities to improve task efficiency in practice. However, most previous works rely on homogeneous and centralized methods among heterogeneous robots, which often leads to serious communication challenges that may undermine multirobot collaboration. At the same time, in nature, crows and wolves effectively collaborate in predation by utilizing their complementary abilities and communication mechanisms. Inspired by this phenomenon, we propose aerial-ground collaborative tracking (AGCoTrack), an independent reinforcement learning framework integrated with an efficient communication module for AGCoTrack. Empowered by this module, aerial and ground robots can dynamically determine the timing and content of communication. We conduct experiments in various environments, and the results demonstrate the ability of our method to reduce both communication frequency and bandwidth in comparison with baselines.

During the last decade, there have been lots of efforts on wireless sensing using Wi-Fi signals, which can be divided into two categories, i.e., the pattern-based approach and the model-based approach. Recently, more and more attention has been paid on the model-based approach, mainly due to its superiority of no need for collecting a large dataset or retraining the model for new environments. However, existing models are mainly designed for Line-of-Sight (LoS) scenarios, which are not applicable to Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) scenarios, such as through-wall sensing. To bridge this gap, we put forward a through-wall wireless sensing model to reveal the sensing mechanism of Wi-Fi signals in NLoS scenarios. In particular, arefraction-awareFresnel zone model is developed by taking into account both the reflection propagation and the refraction propagation of Wi-Fi signals. For the first time, we discover that the geometric distribution of Fresnel zones becomes uneven, due to the difference in dielectric constants between the air and the wall. Specifically, some areas become denser and other areas become sparser, leading to thesqueeze effectandstretch effectof Fresnel zones. Inspired by the insight, we further put forward a new metric namedcompression-ratioto quantify the through-wall sensing capability of Wi-Fi signals. Meanwhile, a set of algorithms are developed to guide the deployment of Wi-Fi sensing systems. To validate the proposed model, we implement a through-wall respiration sensing prototype system. Experiments show that the respiration detection performance varies significantly when the user locates in different areas. Specifically, for two sensing locations (one in the compression area and the other in the expansion area) symmetrically distributed on both sides of the transceivers’ connection line, the difference in mean absolute errors (MAE) can exceed 3 times.

As a non-intrusive sensing approach, the gait-based human identification technique attracts extensive attention. For the gait-based human identification technique, the unique gait feature is captured and extracted. Owing to the strong environment robustness and good privacy protection, the radar, especially the single-input multiple-output (SIMO) Doppler radar, is proposed as a promising way to capture the gait feature. However, the existing SIMO Doppler radar-based methods require the person to walk along a straight-line trajectory, which hinders their practical application. In this paper, we propose a gait-based human identification system for the weakly constrained trajectory, called CovertEye. In CovertEye, the person can be identified, when he/she walks along variable directions. To this end, we propose a trajectory segmentation algorithm to divide the trajectory into many straight-line trajectory segments. Based on the trajectory segments, we design the gait-based human identification method. In particular, we propose a normalization method to eliminate the differences in the direction of movement and the length among trajectory segments. The normalized signal spectrogram is exploited for the deep learning based feature extraction and human identification. We develop a prototype of the CovertEye system. The extensive experimental results demonstrate that our proposed system can achieve the identification accuracy of 82:4%.

The advantages of modular robot systems stem from their ability to change between different configurations, enabling them to adapt to complex and dynamic real-world environments. Then, how to perform the accurate and efficient change of the modular robot system, i.e., the self-reconfiguration problem, is essential. Existing reconfiguration algorithms are based on discrete motion primitives and are suitable for lattice-type modular robots. The modules of freeform modular robots are connected without alignment, and the motion space is continuous. It renders existing reconfiguration methods infeasible. In this paper, we design a parallel distributed self-reconfiguration algorithm for freeform modular robots based on multi-agent reinforcement learning to realize the automatic design of conflict-free reconfiguration controllers in continuous action spaces. To avoid conflicts, we incorporate a collaborative mechanism into reinforcement learning. Furthermore, we design the distributed termination criteria to achieve timely termination in the presence of limited communication and local observability. When compared to the baselines, simulations show that the proposed method improves efficiency and congruence, and module movement demonstrates altruism.

Multi-camera Active Object Tracking (AOT) has become a promising technique to continuously track the moving target in the intelligent surveillance system. The communication among cameras provides an essential way to share the information and improve the tracking performance. To achieve the efficient collaboration among cameras, we propose a novel communication-efficient multi-camera AOT system in this paper, where one camera cooperates with other cameras to realize the active object tracking by sharing its visual observations when necessary. In the proposed system, we design a binary classified neural network based switch to determine whether to communicate. Moreover, we propose an attention based communication group construction method, which allows the camera to decide who to communicate. Through the control of whether to communicate and who to communicate, many communication connections of less importance are pruned. We construct a high-fidelity environment to mimic the real-world scenario. Experimental results demonstrate that compared to the existing systems, the proposed system can significantly reduce the occupied bandwidth and achieve an improved tracking performance, especially for the high-speed moving target.

Within-basket recommendation is to recommend suitable items for the current basket with some already known items. The within-basket auxiliary item recommendation ( WBAIR ) is to recommend auxiliary items based on the primary items in the basket. Such a task exists in many real-life scenarios. Unlike the associations between items that can be transmitted in both directions, primary and auxiliary relationships are unidirectional. Then, the suitable matching patterns between primary and auxiliary items cannot be explored by traditional directionless methods. Therefore, we design the Matc4Rec algorithm to integrate the primary and auxiliary factors, and finally recommend items that not only match the interests of users but also satisfy the primary and auxiliary relationships between items. Specifically, we capture the pattern from three aspects: matchability within-basket , matchability between baskets , and ubiquity . By exploiting this pattern, the designed algorithm not only achieves good results on real-world datasets but also improves the interpretability of recommendations. As a result, we can know which commodities are suitable as auxiliary items. The experiment results demonstrate that our algorithm can also alleviate the cold start problem.

In this paper, we analyze the age of information (AoI) performance of a multi-user mobile edge computing (MEC) system where a base station (BS) generates and transmits computation-intensive packets to user equipments (UEs). In this MEC system, we consider two computing schemes, namely, the local computing scheme and the edge computing scheme. In the local computing scheme, each packet is transmitted to the UE and then computed by the local server at the UE. In the edge computing scheme, each packet is computed by the edge server at the BS and then transmitted to the UE. Considering exponentially distributed transmission time and computation time and adopting the first come first serve queuing policy, we derive the closed-form expressions for the average AoI of these two computing schemes. Simulation results corroborate our analysis and examine the impact of system parameters on the average AoI.

Thanks to the growing popularity and functionality, smartphone has become rapidly valuable potential tool for human behavior research, e.g., friendship relationship recognition, friend ship prediction, etc. Until recently, there have been many research efforts to study this issue using the sensed data collected from smartphones. However, almost previous works in finding friendship strength are based on several physical features or a few dimensions, such as using Bluetooth scanning and demographic data to explain friendship. Actually, friendship is complicated and coupled with many factors, such as physical propinquity, social, physical and psychological homophily. So, it is necessary and beneficial to examine it comprehensively, by taking into account all the involved factors. Aiming at closing part of this research gap, in this paper, from cross-space perspectives, we launch a friendship relationship study with smartphone-based sensing paradigm from cyber space, physical mobility, and personality trait homophily. By integrating the involved heterogeneous interactions, we propose a Deep AutoEncoder-based unified framework to predict the strength of friendship connections between users, where the friendship strength is categorized and asymmetrical. We conduct extensive experiments on a practically collected sensing data set, and show the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed approaches.

In this article, we propose a two-tier communication strategy to facilitate data collection in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled massive Internet of Things (IoT) systems through introducing ground access points (APs) to serve between the UAV and IoT devices. In the first tier of our proposed strategy, all IoT devices transmit their packets to their local APs via a multi-channel ALOHA-based random access scheme, while in the second tier, APs deliver their aggregated data to the UAV through coordinated time division multiple access. Thus, our introduced APs not only liberate the UAV from the potential massive IoT congestion but also facilitate the design of UAV's trajectory based on the location of APs. To examine the performance of our strategy, we propose a tractable framework to analyze the average system throughput. We reveal that the average two-tier throughput of each AP monotonically increases with its maximum achievable throughput in the second tier, while the increasing slope becomes steeper with a higher traffic load mean in the first tier. Then, we formulate the joint design of UAV's trajectory and resource allocation as a non-convex optimization problem to maximize the average system throughput while considering the heterogeneous quality of service requirement of each AP. To solve this problem, a low-complexity iterative algorithm is devised based on successive convex approximation. Numerical results demonstrate the substantial average system throughput gain achieved by our proposed strategy and design in the context of massive access, compared to the baseline schemes in the literature.

In this paper, we consider the application of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) communication systems, which exploits both the significant beamforming gain brought by the IRS and the high mobility of UAV for improving the system sum-rate. The joint design of UAV's trajectory, IRS scheduling, and communication resource allocation for the proposed system is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem to maximize the system sum-rate while taking into account the heterogeneous quality-of-service (QoS) requirement of each user. The existence of an IRS introduces both frequency-selectivity and spatial-selectivity in the fading of the composite channel from the UAV to ground users. To facilitate the design, we first derive the expression of the composite channels and propose a parametric approximation approach to establish an upper and a lower bound for the formulated problem. An alternating optimization algorithm is devised to handle the lower bound optimization problem and its performance is compared with the benchmark performance achieved by solving the upper bound problem. Simulation results unveil the small gap between the developed bounds and the promising sum-rate gain achieved by the deployment of an IRS in UAV-based communication systems.

In this paper, we propose the use of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)- based orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) communication systems. The proposed scheme exploits both the rich beamforming gain brought by the IRS and the high mobility of UAV for improving the system sum-rate. The joint design of UAV's trajectory, IRS scheduling, and communication resource allocation for the proposed system is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem to maximize the system sum-rate. The existence of an IRS introduces both frequency selectivity and spatial-selectivity in the fading of the composite channel from the UAV to ground users. To facilitate the design, we first derive the expression of the composite channel gain and propose a parametric approximation approach to establish a lower bound for the formulated problem. An alternating optimization algorithm is devised to handle the lower bound optimization problem. Simulation results unveil the promising sum-rate gain achieved by the deployment of an IRS in UAV-based communication systems.

In this paper, we propose a transmission control scheme for the approximate message passing (AMP)-based joint user identification and channel estimation in massive connectivity networks. In the proposed transmission control scheme, a transmission control function is designed to determine a user's transmission probability, when it has a transmission demand. By employing a step transmission control function for the proposed scheme, we derive the channel distribution experienced by the receiver to describe the effect of transmission control on the design of AMP algorithm. Based on that, we modify the AMP algorithm by designing a minimum mean squared error (MMSE) denoiser, to jointly identify the user activity and estimate their channels. We further derive the false alarm and missed detection probabilities to characterize the user identification performance of the proposed scheme. Closed-form expressions of the average packet delay and the network throughput are obtained. Furthermore, we optimize the transmission control function to maximize the network throughput. We demonstrate that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the user identification and channel estimation performance, reduce the average delay, and boost the throughput, compared to the conventional scheme without transmission control.

In this paper, we investigate the design and analysis of coded slotted ALOHA (CSA) schemes in the presence of channel erasure. We design the code probability distributions for CSA schemes with repetition codes and maximum distance separable codes to maximize the expected traffic load, under both packet erasure channels and slot erasure channels. We derive the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) functions of CSA schemes over erasure channels. By optimizing the convergence behavior of the derived EXIT functions, the code probability distributions to achieve the maximum expected traffic load are obtained. Then, we derive the asymptotic throughput of CSA schemes over erasure channels. In addition, we validate that the asymptotic throughput can give a good approximation to the throughput of CSA schemes over erasure channels.

In this paper we investigate the coded slotted ALOHA (CSA) schemes with repetition codes and maximum distance separable (MDS) codes over erasure channels. We derive the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) functions of the CSA schemes over erasure channels, which allow an asymptotic analysis of the packet recovering process. Moreover, we define a traffic load threshold provided that the recovered probability is more than a given recovery ratio. The optimal distribution of the codes chosen by users in the CSA schemes is then designed to maximize the peak throughput and traffic load threshold. By performing the asymptotic analysis, we show that our optimal distributions improve the traffic load threshold by 60% for ε = 0.1 and 86% for ε = 0.135 compared to the optimal distribution for collision channels. Using repetition codes as an example, simulation results show that the obtained distributions enhance the peak throughput for erasure channels when both packet erasure channels and slot erasure channels are considered.