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24 pages, 7986 KB  
Article
GVMD-NLM: A Hybrid Denoising Method for GNSS Buoy Elevation Time Series Using Optimized VMD and Non-Local Means Filtering
by Huanghuang Zhang, Shengping Wang, Chao Dong, Guangyu Xu and Xiaobo Cai
Sensors 2026, 26(2), 522; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26020522 - 13 Jan 2026
Abstract
GNSS buoys are essential for real-time elevation monitoring in coastal waterways, yet the vertical coordinate time series are frequently contaminated by complex non-stationary noise, and existing denoising methods often rely on empirical parameter settings that compromise reliability. This paper proposes GVMD-NLM, a hybrid [...] Read more.
GNSS buoys are essential for real-time elevation monitoring in coastal waterways, yet the vertical coordinate time series are frequently contaminated by complex non-stationary noise, and existing denoising methods often rely on empirical parameter settings that compromise reliability. This paper proposes GVMD-NLM, a hybrid denoising framework optimized by an improved Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO). The method introduces an adaptive convergence factor decay function derived from the Sigmoid function to automatically determine the optimal parameters (K and α) for Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD). Sample Entropy (SE) is then employed to identify low-frequency effective signals, while the remaining high-frequency noise components are processed via Non-Local Means (NLM) filtering to recover residual information while suppressing stochastic disturbances. Experimental results from two datasets at the Dongguan Waterway Wharf demonstrate that GVMD-NLM consistently outperforms SSA, CEEMDAN, VMD, and GWO-VMD. In Dataset One, GVMD-NLM reduced the RMSE by 26.04% (vs. SSA), 17.87% (vs. CEEMDAN), 24.28% (vs. VMD), and 13.47% (vs. GWO-VMD), with corresponding SNR improvements of 11.13%, 7.00%, 10.18%, and 5.05%. In Dataset Two, the method achieved RMSE reductions of 28.87% (vs. SSA), 17.12% (vs. CEEMDAN), 18.45% (vs. VMD), and 10.26% (vs. GWO-VMD), with SNR improvements of 10.48%, 5.52%, 6.02%, and 3.11%, respectively. The denoised signal maintains high fidelity, with correlation coefficients (R) reaching 0.9798. This approach provides an objective and automated solution for GNSS data denoising, offering a more accurate data foundation for waterway hydrodynamics research and water level monitoring. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in GNSS Signal Processing and Navigation—Second Edition)
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24 pages, 5571 KB  
Article
Bearing Fault Diagnosis Based on a Depthwise Separable Atrous Convolution and ASPP Hybrid Network
by Xiaojiao Gu, Chuanyu Liu, Jinghua Li, Xiaolin Yu and Yang Tian
Machines 2026, 14(1), 93; https://doi.org/10.3390/machines14010093 - 13 Jan 2026
Abstract
To address the computational redundancy, inadequate multi-scale feature capture, and poor noise robustness of traditional deep networks used for bearing vibration and acoustic signal feature extraction, this paper proposes a fault diagnosis method based on Depthwise Separable Atrous Convolution (DSAC) and Acoustic Spatial [...] Read more.
To address the computational redundancy, inadequate multi-scale feature capture, and poor noise robustness of traditional deep networks used for bearing vibration and acoustic signal feature extraction, this paper proposes a fault diagnosis method based on Depthwise Separable Atrous Convolution (DSAC) and Acoustic Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP). First, the Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) is applied to the vibration and acoustic signals to convert them into time–frequency representations. The vibration CWT is then fed into a multi-scale feature extraction module to obtain preliminary vibration features, whereas the acoustic CWT is processed by a Deep Residual Shrinkage Network (DRSN). The two feature streams are concatenated in a feature fusion module and subsequently fed into the DSAC and ASPP modules, which together expand the effective receptive field and aggregate multi-scale contextual information. Finally, global pooling followed by a classifier outputs the bearing fault category, enabling high-precision bearing fault identification. Experimental results show that, under both clean data and multiple low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) noise conditions, the proposed DSAC-ASPP method achieves higher accuracy and lower variance than baselines such as ResNet, VGG, and MobileNet, while requiring fewer parameters and FLOPs and exhibiting superior robustness and deployability. Full article
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25 pages, 2617 KB  
Article
RF-Driven Adaptive Surrogate Models for LoRaDisC Network Performance Prediction in Smart Agriculture and Field Sensing Environments
by Showkat Ahmad Bhat, Ishfaq Bashir Sofi, Ming-Che Chen and Nen-Fu Huang
AgriEngineering 2026, 8(1), 27; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering8010027 - 11 Jan 2026
Viewed by 75
Abstract
LoRa-based IoT systems are increasingly used in smart farming, greenhouse monitoring, and large-scale agricultural sensing, where long-range, energy-efficient communication is essential. However, estimating link quality metrics such as PRR, RSSI, and SNR typically requires continuous packet transmission and sequence logging, an impractical approach [...] Read more.
LoRa-based IoT systems are increasingly used in smart farming, greenhouse monitoring, and large-scale agricultural sensing, where long-range, energy-efficient communication is essential. However, estimating link quality metrics such as PRR, RSSI, and SNR typically requires continuous packet transmission and sequence logging, an impractical approach for power-constrained field nodes. This study proposes a deep learning-driven framework for real-time prediction of link- and network-level performance in multihop LoRa networks, targeting the LoRaDisC protocol commonly deployed in agricultural environments. By integrating Bayesian surrogate modeling with Random Forest-guided hyperparameter optimization, the system accurately predicts PRR, RSSI, and SNR using multivariate time series features. Experiments on a large-scale outdoor LoRa testbed (ChirpBox) show that aggregated link layer metrics strongly correlate with PRR, with performance influenced by environmental variables such as humidity, temperature, and field topology. The optimized model achieves a mean absolute error (MAE) of 8.83 and adapts effectively to dynamic environmental conditions. This work enables energy-efficient, autonomous communication in agricultural IoT deployments, supporting reliable field sensing, crop monitoring, livestock tracking, and other smart farming applications that depend on resilient low-power wireless connectivity. Full article
25 pages, 4824 KB  
Article
SCMT-Net: Spatial Curvature and Motion Temporal Feature Synergy Network for Multi-Frame Infrared Small Target Detection
by Ruiqi Yang, Yuan Liu, Ming Zhu, Huiping Zhu and Yuanfu Yuan
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(2), 215; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18020215 - 9 Jan 2026
Viewed by 158
Abstract
Infrared small target (IRST) detection remains a challenging task due to extremely small target sizes, low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), and complex background clutter. Existing methods often fail to balance reliable detection with low false alarm rates due to limited spatial–temporal modeling. To address [...] Read more.
Infrared small target (IRST) detection remains a challenging task due to extremely small target sizes, low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), and complex background clutter. Existing methods often fail to balance reliable detection with low false alarm rates due to limited spatial–temporal modeling. To address this, we propose a multi-frame network that synergistically integrates spatial curvature and temporal motion consistency. Specifically, in the single-frame stage, a Gaussian Curvature Attention (GCA) module is introduced to exploit spatial curvature and geometric saliency, enhancing the discriminability of weak targets. In the multi-frame stage, a Motion-Aware Encoding Block (MAEB) utilizes MotionPool3D to capture temporal motion consistency and extract salient motion regions, while a Temporal Consistency Enhancement Module (TCEM) further refines cross-frame features to effectively suppress noise. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method achieves advanced overall performance. In particular, under low-SNR conditions, the method improves the detection rate by 0.29% while maintaining a low false alarm rate, providing an effective solution for the stable detection of weak and small targets. Full article
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19 pages, 2628 KB  
Article
DOA Estimation Based on Circular-Attention Residual Network
by Min Zhang, Hong Jiang, Jia Li and Jianglong Qu
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(2), 627; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16020627 - 7 Jan 2026
Viewed by 157
Abstract
Direction of arrival (DOA) estimation is a fundamental problem in array signal processing, with extensive applications in radar, communications, sonar, and other fields. Traditional DOA estimation methods, such as MUSIC and ESPRIT, rely on eigenvalue decomposition or spectral peak search, which suffer from [...] Read more.
Direction of arrival (DOA) estimation is a fundamental problem in array signal processing, with extensive applications in radar, communications, sonar, and other fields. Traditional DOA estimation methods, such as MUSIC and ESPRIT, rely on eigenvalue decomposition or spectral peak search, which suffer from high computational complexity and performance degradation under conditions of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), coherent signals, and array imperfections. Cylindrical arrays offer unique advantages for omnidirectional sensing due to their circular structure and three-dimensional coverage capability; however, their nonlinear array manifold increases the difficulty of estimation. This paper proposes a circular-attention residual network (CA-ResNet) for DOA estimation using uniform cylindrical arrays. The proposed approach achieves high accuracy and robust angle estimation through phase difference feature extraction, a multi-scale residual network, an attention mechanism, and a joint output module. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed CA-ResNet method delivers superior performance under challenging scenarios, including low SNR (−10 dB), a small number of snapshots (L = 5), and multiple sources (1 to 4 signal sources). The corresponding root mean square errors (RMSE) are 0.21°, 0.45°, and below 1.5°, respectively, significantly outperforming traditional methods like MUSIC and ESPRIT, as well as existing deep learning models (e.g., ResNet, CNN, MLP). Furthermore, the algorithm exhibits low computational complexity and a small parameter size, highlighting its strong potential for practical engineering applications and robustness. Full article
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27 pages, 11379 KB  
Article
Performance Analysis and Comparison of Two Deep Learning Methods for Direction-of-Arrival Estimation with Observed Data
by Shuo Liu, Wen Zhang, Junqiang Song, Jian Shi, Hongze Leng and Qiankun Yu
Electronics 2026, 15(2), 261; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15020261 - 7 Jan 2026
Viewed by 129
Abstract
Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is fundamental in array signal processing, yet classical algorithms suffer from significant performance degradation under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions and require computationally intensive eigenvalue decomposition. This study presents a systematic comparative analysis of two backbone networks, a convolutional neural [...] Read more.
Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is fundamental in array signal processing, yet classical algorithms suffer from significant performance degradation under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions and require computationally intensive eigenvalue decomposition. This study presents a systematic comparative analysis of two backbone networks, a convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) for DOA estimation, addressing two critical research gaps: the lack of a mechanistic understanding of architecture-dependent performance under varying conditions and insufficient validation using real measured data. Both networks are trained using cross-spectral density matrices (CSDMs) from simulated uniform linear array (ULA) signals. Under baseline conditions (1° classification interval), both CNN and LSTM methods reach an accuracy (ACC) above 98%, in which the error is ±1° for CNN and ±2° for LSTM, only existing in the end-fire direction. Key findings reveal that LSTM maintains above 90% accuracy down to −20 dB SNR, demonstrating superior noise robustness, whereas CNN exhibits better angular resolution. Four performance boundaries are identified: optimal performance is achieved at half-wavelength element spacing; SNR crossover occurs at −20 dB below which accuracy drops sharply; the snapshot threshold of 32 marks the transition from snapshot-deficient to snapshot-sufficient conditions; the array size of 8 is the turning point for the performance variation rate. Comparative analysis against traditional methods demonstrates that deep learning approaches achieve superior resolution ability, batch processing efficiency, and noise robustness. Critically, models trained exclusively on single-target simulated data successfully generalize to multi-target experimental data from the Shallow Water Array Performance (SWAP) program, recovering primary target trajectories without domain adaptation. These results provide concrete engineering guidelines for architecture selection and validate the sim-to-real generalization capability of CSDM-based deep learning approaches in underwater acoustic environments. Full article
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27 pages, 4909 KB  
Article
Open-Set UAV Signal Identification Using Learnable Embeddings and Energy-Based Inference
by Yudong Long, Huaji Zhou, Wenbo Yu, Huan Ren, Feng Zhou and Yufei Zhang
Drones 2026, 10(1), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones10010036 - 6 Jan 2026
Viewed by 206
Abstract
Reliable recognition of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication signals is essential for low-altitude airspace safety and UAV monitoring. In practical electromagnetic environments, UAV signals exhibit complex time-frequency characteristics, and unknown signal types frequently appear, making open-set recognition necessary. This paper proposes a geometry-energy [...] Read more.
Reliable recognition of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication signals is essential for low-altitude airspace safety and UAV monitoring. In practical electromagnetic environments, UAV signals exhibit complex time-frequency characteristics, and unknown signal types frequently appear, making open-set recognition necessary. This paper proposes a geometry-energy open-set recognition (GE-OSR) method for UAV signal identification. First, a time-frequency convolutional hybrid network is developed to learn multi-scale representations from raw UAV signals. Then, learnable class embeddings with a dual-constraint embedding loss are introduced to improve feature compactness and separability. In addition, a free-energy alignment loss is introduced to assign low energy to known signals and high energy to unknown ones, forming an adaptive rejection boundary. Experiments under different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and openness levels show that GE-OSR provides stable performance. At 0 dB SNR under high openness, the method improves OSCR by about 2.95% over the recent S3R model and more than 6% over other baselines. These results show that GE-OSR is effective for practical UAV signal identification and unknown signal detection in complex low-altitude environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Drone Communications)
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22 pages, 12979 KB  
Article
DeepFluoNet: A Novel Deep Learning Framework for Enhanced Analysis of Fluorescence Microscopy Data
by Fatema A. Albalooshi, M. R. Qader, Mazen Ali and Yasser Ismail
Lights 2026, 2(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/lights2010001 - 4 Jan 2026
Viewed by 148
Abstract
Fluorescence microscopy is a cornerstone technique in biological research, offering unparalleled insights into cellular and subcellular structures. However, inherent limitations such as photobleaching, phototoxicity, and low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) often hinder its full potential. This paper introduces DeepFluoNet, a novel deep learning framework [...] Read more.
Fluorescence microscopy is a cornerstone technique in biological research, offering unparalleled insights into cellular and subcellular structures. However, inherent limitations such as photobleaching, phototoxicity, and low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) often hinder its full potential. This paper introduces DeepFluoNet, a novel deep learning framework designed to significantly enhance the analysis of fluorescence microscopy data. DeepFluoNet leverages a sophisticated convolutional neural network architecture, meticulously optimized for denoising, segmentation, and classification tasks in fluorescence images. DeepFluoNet achieved a 98.5% accuracy in cell nucleus classification, a 95.2% F1-score in mitochondrial segmentation, and a 25% improvement in SNR for low-light images, surpassing state-of-the-art methods by an average of 7.3% in overall performance metrics. Furthermore, the inference time of DeepFluoNet is optimized to be 0.05 s per image, making it suitable for high-throughput analysis. This research bridges critical gaps in existing methodologies by providing a robust, efficient, and highly accurate solution for fluorescence microscopy data analysis, paving the way for more precise biological discoveries. Full article
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20 pages, 6569 KB  
Article
Cross-Modality Guided Super-Resolution for Weak-Signal Fluorescence Imaging via a Multi-Channel SwinIR Framework
by Haoxuan Huang and Hasan Abbas
Electronics 2026, 15(1), 204; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15010204 - 1 Jan 2026
Viewed by 209
Abstract
Weak-signal fluorescence channels (e.g., 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI)) often fail to provide reliable structural details due to low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and insufficient high-frequency information, limiting the ability of single-channel super-resolution methods to restore edge continuity and texture. This study proposes a multi-channel guided super-resolution [...] Read more.
Weak-signal fluorescence channels (e.g., 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI)) often fail to provide reliable structural details due to low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and insufficient high-frequency information, limiting the ability of single-channel super-resolution methods to restore edge continuity and texture. This study proposes a multi-channel guided super-resolution method based on SwinIR, utilizing the high-SNR fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) channel as a structural reference. Dual-channel adaptation is implemented at the model input layer, enabling the window attention mechanism to fuse cross-channel correlation information and enhance the structural recovery capability of weak-signal channels. To address the loss of high-frequency information in weak-signal imaging, we introduce a frequency-domain consistency loss: this mechanism constrains spectral consistency between the predicted and true images in the Fourier domain, improving the clarity of fine-structure reconstruction. Experimental results on the DAPI channel demonstrate significant improvements: PSNR increases from 27.05 dB to 44.98 dB, and SSIM rises from 0.763 to 0.960. Visual analysis indicates that this method restores more continuous nuclear edges and weak textural details while suppressing background noise; frequency-domain results reduce the minimum resolvable feature size from approximately 1.5 μm to 0.8 μm. In summary, multi-channel structural information provides an effective and physically interpretable deep learning approach for super-resolution reconstruction of weak-signal fluorescence images. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Computer Science & Engineering)
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33 pages, 5065 KB  
Article
Delay-Compensated EKF and Adaptive Delay Threshold Weighting for AUV–MDS Docking
by Han Yan and Shuxue Yan
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2026, 14(1), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse14010086 - 1 Jan 2026
Viewed by 209
Abstract
This study tackles real-time state estimation for autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV)–mobile docking station (MDS) cooperation over low-bandwidth, high-latency, jitter-dominated acoustic links, with the goal of turning delayed/out-of-sequence measurements (OOSM) into consistent and informative constraints without sacrificing online operation. We propose an integrated scheme [...] Read more.
This study tackles real-time state estimation for autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV)–mobile docking station (MDS) cooperation over low-bandwidth, high-latency, jitter-dominated acoustic links, with the goal of turning delayed/out-of-sequence measurements (OOSM) into consistent and informative constraints without sacrificing online operation. We propose an integrated scheme centered on a delay-compensated extended Kalman filter (DC-EKF): a ring buffer enables backward updates and forward replay so that OOSM are absorbed strictly at their physical timestamps; a data-driven delay threshold is learned from “effective information gain” combined with normalized estimation error squared (NEES) filtering; and dynamic confidence, derived from innovation statistics, delay, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) proxies, scales the measurement noise to adapt fusion weights. Simulations show the learned delay threshold converges to about 6.4 s (final 6.35 s), error spikes are suppressed, and the overall position root-mean-square error (RMSE) is 5.751 m; across the full data stream, 1067 station measurements were accepted and 30 rejected, and the fusion weights shifted smoothly from inertial measurement unit (IMU)-dominant to station-dominant (≈0.16/0.84) over time. On this basis, a cooperative augmented EKF (Co-Aug-EKF) is added as a lightweight upper layer for unified-frame cooperative estimation, further improving relative consistency. The results indicate that the framework reliably maps delayed acoustic measurements into closed-loop useful information, significantly enhancing estimator stability and docking readiness, while remaining practical to deploy and readily extensible. Full article
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21 pages, 3893 KB  
Review
Progress in Spectral Information Processing Technology for Brillouin Microscopy
by Zhaohong Liu, Xiaoxuan Li, Xiaorui Sun, Zihan Yu, Yunjun Gao, Yun Zhang, Yu Zhou, Qiang Su, Yuanqing Xia, Yulei Wang and Zhiwei Lv
Photonics 2026, 13(1), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics13010036 - 31 Dec 2025
Viewed by 285
Abstract
This paper systematically reviews the key spectral information extraction methods in Brillouin microscopy, aiming to address the core challenge of accurately extracting material mechanical parameters from raw spectra. Based on technical principles, the methods are categorized into three types for elaboration: Spontaneous Brillouin [...] Read more.
This paper systematically reviews the key spectral information extraction methods in Brillouin microscopy, aiming to address the core challenge of accurately extracting material mechanical parameters from raw spectra. Based on technical principles, the methods are categorized into three types for elaboration: Spontaneous Brillouin Scattering (SpBS) is characterized by low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and strong background interference, and its processing relies on high-precision spectrometers and complex preprocessing procedures to mitigate noise and background effects; Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) operates on the mechanism of optical gain/loss, which achieves significantly improved data SNR and thereby enables more robust and accurate Lorentzian fitting for spectral analysis; Impulsive Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (ISBS) retrieves the frequency spectrum by inverting time-domain oscillating signals, and the core of its processing lies in super-resolution algorithms such as Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and the Matrix Pencil Method, which are tailored to match its high-speed data acquisition capability. The paper further compares the advantages and disadvantages of various methods, outlines future development trends of intelligent processing technologies such as deep learning and multi-modal data fusion, and provides a clear guide for selecting the optimal data processing strategy in different application scenarios. Full article
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17 pages, 49679 KB  
Article
A Lightweight Denoising Network with TCN–Mamba Fusion for Modulation Classification
by Yubo Kong, Yang Ge and Zhengbing Guo
Electronics 2026, 15(1), 188; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15010188 - 31 Dec 2025
Viewed by 149
Abstract
Automatic modulation classification (AMC) under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and complex channel conditions remains a significant challenge due to the trade-off between robustness and efficiency. This study proposes a lightweight temporal convolutional network (TCN) and Mamba fusion architecture designed to enhance modulation recognition [...] Read more.
Automatic modulation classification (AMC) under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and complex channel conditions remains a significant challenge due to the trade-off between robustness and efficiency. This study proposes a lightweight temporal convolutional network (TCN) and Mamba fusion architecture designed to enhance modulation recognition performance. In the modulation signal denoising stage, a non-local adaptive thresholding denoising module (NATM) is introduced to explicitly improve the effective signal-to-noise ratio. In the parallel feature extraction stage, TCN captures local symbol-level dependencies, while Mamba models long-range temporal relationships. In the output stage, their outputs are integrated through additive layer-wise fusion, which prevents parameter explosion. Experiments were conducted on the RadioML 2016.10A, 2016.10B, and 2018.01A datasets with leakage-controlled partitioning strategies including GroupKFold and Leave-One-SNR-Out cross-validation. The proposed method achieves up to a 3.8 dB gain in the required signal-to-noise ratio at 90 percent accuracy compared with state-of-the-art baselines, while maintaining a substantially lower parameter count and reduced inference latency. The denoising module provides clear robustness improvements under low signal-to-noise ratio conditions, particularly below −8 dB. The results show that the proposed network strikes a balance between accuracy and efficiency, highlighting its application potential in real-time wireless receivers under resource constraints. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue AI-Driven Signal Processing in Communications)
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32 pages, 907 KB  
Article
Performance Analysis of Uplink Opportunistic Scheduling for Multi-UAV-Assisted Internet of Things
by Long Suo, Zhichu Zhang, Lei Yang and Yunfei Liu
Drones 2026, 10(1), 18; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones10010018 - 28 Dec 2025
Viewed by 298
Abstract
Due to the high mobility, flexibility, and low cost, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide an efficient way for provisioning data communication and computing offloading services for massive Internet of Things (IoT) devices, especially in remote areas with limited infrastructure. However, current transmission [...] Read more.
Due to the high mobility, flexibility, and low cost, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide an efficient way for provisioning data communication and computing offloading services for massive Internet of Things (IoT) devices, especially in remote areas with limited infrastructure. However, current transmission schemes for unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted Internet of Things (UAV-IoT) predominantly employ polling scheduling, thus not fully exploiting the potential multiuser diversity gains offered by a vast number of IoT nodes. Furthermore, conventional opportunistic scheduling (OS) or opportunistic beamforming techniques are predominantly designed for downlink transmission scenarios. When applied directly to uplink IoT data transmission, these methods can incur excessive uplink training overhead. To address these issues, this paper first proposes a low-overhead multi-UAV uplink OS framework based on channel reciprocity. To avoid explicit massive uplink channel estimation, two scheduling criteria are designed: minimum downlink interference (MDI) and the maximum downlink signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (MD-SINR). Second, for a dual-UAV deployment scenario over Rayleigh block fading channels, we derive closed-form expressions for both the average sum rate and the asymptotic sum rate based on the MDI criterion. A degrees-of-freedom (DoF) analysis demonstrates that when the number of sensors, K, scales as ρα, the system can achieve a total of 2α DoF, where α0,1 is the user-scaling factor and ρ is the transmitted signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Third, for a three-UAV deployment scenario, the Gamma distribution is employed to approximate the uplink interference, thereby yielding a tractable expression for the average sum rate. Simulations confirm the accuracy of the performance analysis for both dual- and three-UAV deployments. The normalized error between theoretical and simulation results falls below 1% for K > 30. Furthermore, the impact of fading severity on the system’s sum rate and DoF performance is systematically evaluated via simulations under Nakagami-m fading channels. The results indicate that more severe fading (a smaller m) yields greater multiuser diversity gain. Both the theoretical and simulation results consistently show that within the medium-to-high SNR regime, the dual-UAV deployment outperforms both the single-UAV and three-UAV schemes in both Rayleigh and Nakagami-m channels. This study provides a theoretical foundation for the adaptive deployment and scheduling design of UAV-assisted IoT uplink systems under various fading environments. Full article
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23 pages, 5940 KB  
Article
Research on High-Precision DOA Estimation Method for UAV Platform in Strong Multipath Environment
by Yuxiao Yang, Junjie Li, Qirui Cai and Daisi Yang
Electronics 2026, 15(1), 134; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15010134 - 27 Dec 2025
Viewed by 145
Abstract
Utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to achieve accurate direction finding of radiation sources in hazardous and complex regions is an important means of information recon- naissance. However, the significant multipath effects of UAVs in complex environments cause serious signal coherence problems. Conventional signal [...] Read more.
Utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to achieve accurate direction finding of radiation sources in hazardous and complex regions is an important means of information recon- naissance. However, the significant multipath effects of UAVs in complex environments cause serious signal coherence problems. Conventional signal decoherence techniques such as spatial smoothing (SS) and matrix reconstruction suffer from array aperture loss, which makes it difficult to meet the requirements of UAVs for high-resolution direction finding in severe multipath environments. Therefore, resolving the signal coherence problem has become a key bottleneck for high-resolution direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation techniques in severe multipath environments. This paper proposes a joint high-precision DOA estimation method based on conjugate cross-correlation Toeplitz reconstruction and the Parallel Factor Analysis (PARAFAC) tensor model. First, we introduce the conjugate cross-correlation values of array element data collected by the UAV to conduct Toeplitz reconstruction without dimensionality-reduced reconstruction, achieving signal decoherence. Furthermore, we conduct cross-snapshot cross-correlation between the reconstruction matrix and the data of each array element collected by the UAV, which effectively suppresses noise accumulation and improves the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Finally, we stack the set of matrices into a three-dimensional tensor, employing PARAFAC tensor decomposition to enhance the UAV DOA estimation performance. Simulation results show that at low SNR, the proposed method can effectively improve estimation accuracy and solve the problem of signal correlation in strong multipath scenarios that limits traditional UAV lateral methods. Full article
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24 pages, 4921 KB  
Article
A Non-Reconstruction Multi-Coset Sampling-Based Algorithm for Frequency Estimation with FMCW Lidar
by Jianxin Gai, Bo Liu and Zhongle Gao
Electronics 2026, 15(1), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15010122 - 26 Dec 2025
Viewed by 227
Abstract
Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) lidar for long-distance measurements face challenges in signal acquisition and frequency estimation due to the high sampling rates required, leading to increased processing load, cost, and power consumption. Although sub-Nyquist sampling can alleviate the burden of high sampling rates, [...] Read more.
Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) lidar for long-distance measurements face challenges in signal acquisition and frequency estimation due to the high sampling rates required, leading to increased processing load, cost, and power consumption. Although sub-Nyquist sampling can alleviate the burden of high sampling rates, it requires a complex reconstruction process that degrades real-time performance. In this study, we propose a frequency estimation algorithm based on multi-coset sampling (MCS) that not only reduces the sampling rate but also avoids reconstructing the original signal. This algorithm performs a preliminary frequency estimation by exploiting the relationship among the signal support set, the measured sequences by sampling spectrum, and the original signal spectrum, and then refines the spectrum to obtain an accurate frequency estimate. Since the algorithm relies solely on the sampled sequences for estimation, frequency ambiguity may occur during the calculation. We analyze the causes of ambiguity and propose a support set determination method to eliminate this issue. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm attains the Cramér–Rao lower bound (CRLB) at low signal-to-noise ratios. It achieves a 10-fold improvement over Nyquist method and a 35 dB SNR reduction compared with the original MCS, while maintaining stable performance down to −20 dB. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Circuit and Signal Processing)
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