Search Results (278)

The detection of aerial imagery captured by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is widely employed across various domains, including engineering construction, traffic regulation, and precision agriculture. However, aerial images are typically characterized by numerous small targets, significant occlusion issues, and densely clustered targets, rendering traditional detection algorithms largely ineffective for such imagery. This work proposes a small target detection algorithm, SR-YOLO. It is specifically tailored to address these challenges in UAV-captured aerial images. First, the Space-to-Depth layer and Receptive Field Attention Convolution are combined, and the SR-Conv module is designed to replace the Conv module within the original backbone network. This hybrid module extracts more fine-grained information about small target features by converting image spatial information into depth information and the attention of the network to targets of different scales. Second, a small target detection layer and a bidirectional feature pyramid network mechanism are introduced to enhance the neck network, thereby strengthening the feature extraction and fusion capabilities for small targets. Finally, the model’s detection performance for small targets is improved by utilizing the Normalized Wasserstein Distance loss function to optimize the Complete Intersection over Union loss function. Empirical results demonstrate that the SR-YOLO algorithm significantly enhances the precision of small target detection in UAV aerial images. Ablation experiments and comparative experiments are conducted on the VisDrone2019 and RSOD datasets. Compared to the baseline algorithm YOLOv8s, our SR-YOLO algorithm has improved mAP@0.5 by 6.3% and 3.5% and mAP@0.5:0.95 by 3.8% and 2.3% on the datasets VisDrone2019 and RSOD, respectively. It also achieves superior detection results compared to other mainstream target detection methods. Full article

With the rapid development of wireless communication technologies and the increasing demand for efficient spectrum utilization, broadband spectrum sensing has become critical in both civilian and military fields. Detecting narrowband signals under broadband environments, especially under low-signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) conditions, poses significant challenges due to the complexity of time–frequency features and noise interference. To this end, this study presents a signal detection model named deformable feature-enhanced network–You Only Look Once (DFN-YOLO), specifically designed for blind signal detection in broadband scenarios. The DFN-YOLO model incorporates a deformable channel feature fusion network (DCFFN), replacing the concatenate-to-fusion (C2f) module to enhance the extraction and integration of channel features. The deformable attention mechanism embedded in DCFFN adaptively focuses on critical signal regions, while the loss function is optimized to the focal scaled intersection over union (Focal_SIoU), improving detection accuracy under low-SNR conditions. To support this task, a signal detection dataset is constructed and utilized to evaluate the performance of DFN-YOLO. The experimental results for broadband time–frequency spectrograms demonstrate that DFN-YOLO achieves a mean average precision (mAP50–95) of 0.850, averaged over IoU thresholds ranging from 0.50 to 0.95 with a step of 0.05, significantly outperforming mainstream object detection models such as YOLOv8, which serves as the benchmark baseline in this study. Additionally, the model maintains an average time estimation error within $5.55\times {10}^{-5}$ s and provides preliminary center frequency estimation in the broadband spectrum. These findings underscore the strong potential of DFN-YOLO for blind signal detection in broadband environments, with significant implications for both civilian and military applications. Full article

In complex urban electromagnetic environments, wireless positioning signals are subject to various types of interference, including narrowband, chirp, and pulse jamming. Traditional generic suppression methods struggle to achieve global optimization tailored to specific interference mechanisms. This paper proposes a classification-driven differentiated jamming suppression (CDDJ) method, which adaptively selects the optimal mitigation strategy by pre-identifying interference types and integrating classification confidence levels. First, the theoretical bounds of the output carrier-to-noise ratio ($C/N_{0_{out}}$) under typical interference scenarios are derived, characterizing the performance distribution of anti-jamming efficiency ($\mathsf{\Gamma }$). Then, a mapping relationship between interference categories and their corresponding suppression strategies is established, along with decision criteria for strategy switching based on signal quality evaluation metrics. Finally, an OpenMax-Lite rejection layer is designed to handle low-confidence inputs, identify unknown jamming using the Weibull distribution, and implement a broadband conservative suppression policy. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits significant advantages across different interference types. Under high JSR conditions, the signal recovery rate improves by over 10% and 8% compared to that of the WPT and KLT methods, respectively. In terms of SINR performance, the proposed approach outperforms the AFF, TDPB, and FDPB methods by 1.5 dB, 1.1 dB, and 5.3 dB, respectively, thereby enhancing the reliability of wireless positioning in complex environments. Full article

In the past two decades, there has been a tremendous increase in demand for services requiring a high bandwidth, a low latency, and high data rates, such as broadband internet services, video streaming, cloud computing, IoT devices, and mobile data services (5G and beyond). Optical wireless communication (OWC) technology, which is also envisioned for next-generation satellite networks using laser links, offers a promising solution to meet these demands. Establishing a line-of-sight (LOS) link and initiating communication in laser links is a challenging task. This process is managed by the acquisition, pointing, and tracking (APT) system, which must deal with the narrow beam divergence and the presence of satellite platform vibrations. These factors increase acquisition time and decrease acquisition probability. This study presents a framework for evaluating the acquisition time of four different scanning methods: spiral, raster, square spiral, and hexagonal, using a probabilistic approach. A satellite platform vibration model is used, and an algorithm for estimating its power spectral density is applied. Maximum likelihood estimation is employed to estimate key parameters from satellite vibrations to optimize scan parameters, such as the overlap factor and beam divergence. The simulation results show that selecting the scan path, overlap factor, and beam divergence based on an accurate estimation of satellite vibrations can prevent multiple scans of the uncertainty region, improve target satellite detection, and increase acquisition probability, given that the satellite vibration amplitudes are within the constraints imposed by the scan parameters. This study contributes to improving the acquisition process, which can, in turn, enhance the pointing and tracking phases of the APT system in laser links. Full article

A wideband antenna with a relatively compact size along with a multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) configuration for millimeter wave applications is proposed in this work. The antenna offers a low profile and simple structure. First of all, an antenna is designed using Rogers RT/duroid 6002 (Rogers Corporation, Chandler, AZ, USA) with a thickness of 0.79 mm, offering wideband ranges from 21 to 35 GHz. Subsequently, the unit element is converted into a four-port MIMO antenna to improve the capacity of the system, resulting in a high data rate, which is critical for 5G as well as for devices operating in the mm wave spectrum. The proposed work exhibits total dimensions of 24 × 24 mm² and offers a peak gain of 8.5 dBi, with an efficiency of more than 80%. The MIMO performance parameters are also studied, and the antenna offers exceptional performance in terms of mutual coupling (S_ij) without inserting a decoupling structure, envelop correlation coefficient (ECC), and diversity parameters. The proposed MIMO antenna offers a minimum isolation of −25 dBi and an ECC of less than 0.018. All the other MIMO parameter values lie below the acceptable range. The High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) EM software (v.19) tool is used to analyze the antenna and study its performance. The simulated outcomes are verified by fabricating a prototype, where the result offers a good comparison among both results. Moreover, the contrast in terms of different performance parameters is carried out amongst recent research articles, highlighting the key contribution of the presented design. A compact size antenna with a wideband, simplified structure, and stable performance throughout the working band is achieved; thus, it is a solid contender for mm wave applications and 5G devices. Full article

Mobile virtual reality (VR) is considered a killer application for future mobile broadband networks. However, for cloud VR, the long content delivery path and time-varying transmission rate from the content provider’s cloud VR server to the users make the quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning for VR users very challenging. To this end, in this paper, we design a 360° VR video service system that leverages proactive caching and mobile edge computing (MEC) technologies. Furthermore, we propose a multiuser access control algorithm tailored to the system, based on analytical results of the delay violation probability, which is derived considering the impact of both the multi-hop wired network from the cloud VR server to the MEC server and the wireless network from the MEC server-connected base station (BS) to the users. The proposed access control algorithm aims to maximize the number of served users by exploiting real-time and dynamic network resources, while ensuring that the end-to-end delay violation probability for each accessed user remains within an acceptable limit. Simulation results are presented to analyze the impact of diverse system parameters on both the user access probability and the delay violation probability of the accessed users, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed multiuser access control algorithm. It is observed in the simulation that increasing the computing capacity of the MEC server or the communication bandwidth of the BS is one of the most effective methods to accommodate more users for the system. In the tested scenarios, when the MEC server’s computing capacity (the BS’s bandwidth) increases from 0.8 Tbps (50 MHz) to 3.2 Tbps (150 MHz), the user access probability improves on average by 92.53% (85.49%). Full article

Semantic communication technology, as it allows for source data meaning extraction and the transmission of appropriate semantic information only, has the potential to extend Shannon’s paradigm, which is concerned with the reproduction of a message from one location to another, regardless of its meaning. Nevertheless, some user terminals (UTs) may experience inadequate service due to their geolocation in reference to the base stations, which may entirely affect the accuracy of transmission and complicate deployment and implementation. A High-Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) serves as a key enabler for the deployment of wireless broadband in inaccessible areas, such as in coastal, desert, and mountainous areas. This paper proposes a novel HAPS relay-based semantic communication scheme, named DeepSTAS, which leverages deep learning techniques to enhance transmission accuracy. The proposed scheme focuses on attention-based semantic signal decoding, denoising, and forwarding modes; thus, called a CSA-DCGAN SDF HAPS relay network. The simulation results reveal that the proposed system with attention mechanisms significantly outperforms the system without attention mechanisms, both in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and multi-scale structural similarity index (MS-SSIM); the proposed system can achieve a 2 dB gain when leveraging the attention mechanisms, and a PSNR of 38.5 dB can be obtained, with an MS-SSIM exceeding 0.999 at an approximate SNR of only 20 dB. The system provides considerable performance, more than 37 dB, and a corresponding MS-SSIM close to 0.999 at an estimated SNR of 20 dB when the CIFAR-100 dataset is considered and an MS-SSIM of 0.965 at an approximate SNR of only 10 dB on the Kodak dataset. The proposed system holds promise to maintain consistent performance even at low SNRs across various channel conditions. Full article

The potential consequences of interference on communication networks are one of the main challenges in the nature and efficiency of wireless communication links. The interruption is seen as additional noise to the device, which can have a major impact on the efficiency of the connection. The rapid expansion of broadband wireless networks and the increasing congestion of the radio frequency spectrum due to shared usage by terrestrial and satellite networks have heightened concerns about potential interference. To optimize spectrum utilization, multiple terrestrial and satellite networks often coexist within the same frequency bands allocated for satellite communications services. Spectrum interference in wireless networks is a topic of much interest in the current scenario as it can present a lot of challenges. This article provides a critical review of the coexistence and spectrum sharing in wireless networks. Along with this, mitigation techniques to avoid interference have also been discussed in detail. The article aims to give a detailed discussion on the challenges and opportunities in this field by reviewing significant recent works in this field. Full article

With the widespread application of high-speed and heavy-load railways, the real-time detection of track surface defects has become increasingly crucial. To address the challenges in rail defect detection, this study proposes the PerMSCA-YOLO model, which aims to overcome the limitations of traditional object detection models in multi-scale, small target, and complex background scenarios. By incorporating the lightweight FasterNet backbone network, a multi-scale convolutional attention module, and perceptual loss, the proposed model significantly enhances the detection accuracy and robustness of track defects. Experimental results show that PerMSCA-YOLO achieves an mAP@0.5 of 0.856, an F1-score of 0.79, and an inference frame rate of 142 FPS, demonstrating superior detection accuracy and real-time performance compared to other mainstream models like YOLOv8n. Furthermore, the model exhibits strong adaptability and efficiency when dealing with complex track defects, such as microcracks and corrosion patches, indicating its broad practical application potential. The innovative contribution of this research lies in its effective strategy for improving detection accuracy and real-time performance through multi-scale feature fusion and deep semantic alignment mechanisms, providing a solution that balances both precision and efficiency for defect detection in complex track environments, with substantial engineering application potential. Full article

In this study, we present a novel design methodology for unit cells in chessboard metasurfaces with the aim of reducing the radar cross-section (RCS) for linearly polarized waves. The design employs rotational symmetry and incorporates ten continuous parameters to define the metasurface units, enabling the creation of flexible 2D structures. The geometrical parameters of the two units are then optimized using a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm to achieve a low RCS chessboard metasurface. Following optimization, the properties of the metasurface were experimentally verified. The experimental results show a significant RCS reduction of 10 dB within the 7.6–15.5 GHz range, with the peak reduction reaching-28 dB at normal incidence. For a bistatic RCS, the metasurface effectively scatters incident waves into four distinct lobes. The proposed method offers an alternative strategy for the inverse design of low RCS metasurfaces and can be extended to applications in polarization control, phase gradient manipulation, and transmissive metasurfaces. Full article

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are human-centric wireless networks, and implantable antennas represent a vital communication component within WBANs. The dielectric properties of human tissue are highly complex, with each layer exhibiting distinct dielectric constants that significantly influence the performance of implanted antennas. It is therefore imperative that a compact broadband implantable antenna be designed in order to address the instability in communication of medical implant devices. The antenna, coated in silicone, is a single-layer structure fed by a coaxial cable, with a volume of just 6 mm × 6 mm× 0.53 mm. A metallic patch is etched on the upper surface of the substrate, and the compact antenna design is enhanced with the introduction of S-shaped, F-shaped, and rectangular slots on the patch. The bottom side of the substrate is etched with rectangular ground planes, which broaden the impedance bandwidth of the antenna. The simulation results demonstrate that the antenna attains an impedance bandwidth of 23.8% (2.08–2.64 GHz), encompassing the entirety of the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band (2.4–2.48 GHz). In order to simulate the working environment of the antenna within the human body, physical tests were conducted on the antenna in pork tissue. The test results demonstrate that the antenna exhibits a measured bandwidth of 28% (2.3–3.03 GHz), with a radiation pattern that displays omnidirectional radiation characteristics. The antenna’s impedance matching and radiation characteristics remain essentially consistent in both bent and unbent states, indicating structural robustness. In comparison to other implantable antennas, this antenna displays a wider impedance bandwidth, a lower Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), and superior implant performance. Full article

We investigate the problem of detecting the distributed targets buried in the Gaussian noise whose covariance matrix is unknown when signal mismatch occurs. The idea is to add a fictitious signal under the null hypothesis of the origin detection problem so that when signal mismatch occurs, the fictitious signal captures the mismatched signals, thus making the null hypothesis more plausible. More precisely, the fictitious signal is modeled as a Gaussian component with a covariance matrix of a stochastic factor multiplied by a rank-one matrix. The generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) is employed to address the modification detection problem. We present an exhaustive derivation of the detector and prove that it possesses the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) property. The performance analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed detector. When the SNR is 23 dB, as generalized cosine squared decreases from 1 to 0.83, the detection probability of the proposed GLRT-SL drops to 0.65, exhibiting the fastest decline compared to the G-ABORT-HE, which falls to 0.98, and the GW-ABORT-HE, which decreases to 0.85. Full article

With the rapid growth of online educational resources, existing personalized course recommendation systems face challenges in multimodal feature integration and limited recommendation interpretability when dealing with complex and diverse instructional content. This paper proposes a graph-enhanced multimodal recommendation method (GEMRec), which effectively integrates text, video, and audio features through a graph attention network and differentiable pooling. Innovatively, GEMRec introduces graph edit distance into the recommendation system to measure the structural similarity between a learner’s knowledge state and course content at the knowledge graph level. Additionally, it combines SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) value computation with large language models to generate reliable and personalized recommendation explanations. Experiments on the MOOCCubeX dataset demonstrate that the GEMRec model exhibits strong convergence and generalization during training. Compared with existing methods, GEMRec achieves 0.267, 0.265, and 0.297 on the Precision@10, Recall@10, and NDCG@10 metrics, respectively, significantly outperforming traditional collaborative filtering and other deep learning models. These results validate the effectiveness of multimodal feature integration and knowledge graph enhancement in improving recommendation performance. Full article

Existing methods for 3D local feature description often struggle to achieve a good balance between distinctiveness, robustness, and computational efficiency. To address this challenge, a novel 3D local feature descriptor named Histograms of Projected Normal Vector Distribution (HPNVD) is proposed. The HPNVD descriptor consists of two main components. First, a local reference frame (LRF) is constructed based on the covariance matrix and neighborhood projection to achieve invariance to rigid transformations. Then, the local surface normals are projected onto three coordinate planes within the LRF, which allows for effective encoding of the local shape information. The projection planes are further divided into multiple regions, and a histogram is computed for each plane to generate the final HPNVD descriptor. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed HPNVD descriptor outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of descriptiveness and robustness, while maintaining compact storage and computational efficiency. Moreover, the HPNVD-based point cloud registration algorithm shows excellent performance, further validating the effectiveness of the descriptor. Full article

In today’s digital age, there is an increasing demand for integrated wireless and wired technologies; however, there is a difficulty in achieving secure and reliable communications within buildings and facilities. This paper presents a proposal for maintaining the infrastructure while expanding it to implement communication technologies with high transmission and reception speeds and high levels of data confidentiality to enhance the operational efficiency of organizations. Three main technologies have emerged as promising solutions for this purpose: Wi-Fi, Li-Fi, and BPL. Despite the advantages that each technology offers, some drawbacks appear in these technologies that affect data transmission. Wi-Fi, Li-Fi, and BPL can be combined to achieve maximum security and reduce noise and interference via the ESP8266 module. This combination could be an important step toward achieving an integrated and secure indoor communication system. The paper provides a comprehensive overview of the three techniques and how they are applied in practice. In addition, OSE, ABPF, and ASBF filters are used to detect and eliminate interference and attack secure internal networks. Full article