pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Dual-Use Commercial and Military Communications on a Single Platform using RAN Domain Specific Language
Authors: Alan Gatherer, Chaitali Sengupta, Sudipta Sen, Jeffery H. Reed
Date: 2024-12-01 00:00:00

Despite the success of the O-RAN Alliance in developing a set of interoperable interfaces, development of unique Radio Access Network (RAN) deployments remains challenging. This is especially true for military communications, where deployments are highly specialized with limited volume. The construction and maintenance of the RAN, which is a real time embedded system, is an ill-defined NP problem requiring teams of specialized system engineers, with specialized knowledge of the hardware platform. In this paper, we introduce a RAN Domain Specific Language (RDSL(TM)) to formally describe use cases, constraints, and multi-vendor hardware/software abstraction to allow automation of RAN construction. In this DSL, system requirements are declarative, and performance constraints are guaranteed by construction using an automated system solver. Using our RAN system solver platform, Gabriel(TM) we show how a system engineer can confidently modify RAN functionality without knowledge of the underlying hardware. We show benefits for specific system requirements when compared to the manually optimized, default configuration of the Intel FlexRAN(TM), and conclude that DSL/automation driven construction of the RAN can lead to significant power and latency benefits when the deployment constraints are tuned for a specific case. We give examples of how constraints and requirements can be formatted in a "Kubernetes style" YAML format which allows the use of other tools, such as Ansible, to integrate the generation of these requirements into higher level automation flows such as Service Management and Orchestration (SMO).
Mixture of Cache-Conditional Experts for Efficient Mobile Device Inference
Authors: Andrii Skliar, Ties van Rozendaal, Romain Lepert, Todor Boinovski, Mart van Baalen, Markus Nagel, Paul Whatmough, Babak Ehteshami Bejnordi
Date: 2024-11-27 00:00:00
Tasks: GSM8K, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Mixture-of-Experts, MMLU

Mixture of Experts (MoE) LLMs have recently gained attention for their ability to enhance performance by selectively engaging specialized subnetworks or "experts" for each input. However, deploying MoEs on memory-constrained devices remains challenging, particularly when generating tokens sequentially with a batch size of one, as opposed to typical high-throughput settings involving long sequences or large batches. In this work, we optimize MoE on memory-constrained devices where only a subset of expert weights fit in DRAM. We introduce a novel cache-aware routing strategy that leverages expert reuse during token generation to improve cache locality. We evaluate our approach on language modeling, MMLU, and GSM8K benchmarks and present on-device results demonstrating 2$\times$ speedups on mobile devices, offering a flexible, training-free solution to extend MoE's applicability across real-world applications.
Fine-Tuning Pre-trained Large Time Series Models for Prediction of Wind Turbine SCADA Data
Authors: Yuwei Fan, Tao Song, Chenlong Feng, Keyu Song, Chao Liu, Dongxiang Jiang
Date: 2024-11-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Prediction, Time Series, Time Series Forecasting

The remarkable achievements of large models in the fields of natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision (CV) have sparked interest in their application to time series forecasting within industrial contexts. This paper explores the application of a pre-trained large time series model, Timer, which was initially trained on a wide range of time series data from multiple domains, in the prediction of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) data collected from wind turbines. The model was fine-tuned on SCADA datasets sourced from two wind farms, which exhibited differing characteristics, and its accuracy was subsequently evaluated. Additionally, the impact of data volume was studied to evaluate the few-shot ability of the Timer. Finally, an application study on one-turbine fine-tuning for whole-plant prediction was implemented where both few-shot and cross-turbine generalization capacity is required. The results reveal that the pre-trained large model does not consistently outperform other baseline models in terms of prediction accuracy whenever the data is abundant or not, but demonstrates superior performance in the application study. This result underscores the distinctive advantages of the pre-trained large time series model in facilitating swift deployment.
Boundary-Decoder network for inverse prediction of capacitor electrostatic analysis
Authors: Kart-Leong Lim, Rahul Dutta, Mihai Rotaru
Date: 2024-11-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Decoder, Deep Learning

Traditional electrostatic simulation are meshed-based methods which convert partial differential equations into an algebraic system of equations and their solutions are approximated through numerical methods. These methods are time consuming and any changes in their initial or boundary conditions will require solving the numerical problem again. Newer computational methods such as the physics informed neural net (PINN) similarly require re-training when boundary conditions changes. In this work, we propose an end-to-end deep learning approach to model parameter changes to the boundary conditions. The proposed method is demonstrated on the test problem of a long air-filled capacitor structure. The proposed approach is compared to plain vanilla deep learning (NN) and PINN. It is shown that our method can significantly outperform both NN and PINN under dynamic boundary condition as well as retaining its full capability as a forward model.
Predicting Extubation Failure in Intensive Care: The Development of a Novel, End-to-End Actionable and Interpretable Prediction System
Authors: Akram Yoosoofsah
Date: 2024-11-27 00:00:00
Tasks: feature selection

Predicting extubation failure in intensive care is challenging due to complex data and the severe consequences of inaccurate predictions. Machine learning shows promise in improving clinical decision-making but often fails to account for temporal patient trajectories and model interpretability, highlighting the need for innovative solutions. This study aimed to develop an actionable, interpretable prediction system for extubation failure using temporal modelling approaches such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCN). A retrospective cohort study of 4,701 mechanically ventilated patients from the MIMIC-IV database was conducted. Data from the 6 hours before extubation, including static and dynamic features, were processed through novel techniques addressing data inconsistency and synthetic data challenges. Feature selection was guided by clinical relevance and literature benchmarks. Iterative experimentation involved training LSTM, TCN, and LightGBM models. Initial results showed a strong bias toward predicting extubation success, despite advanced hyperparameter tuning and static data inclusion. Data was stratified by sampling frequency to reduce synthetic data impacts, leading to a fused decision system with improved performance. However, all architectures yielded modest predictive power (AUC-ROC ~0.6; F1 <0.5) with no clear advantage in incorporating static data or additional features. Ablation analysis indicated minimal impact of individual features on model performance. This thesis highlights the challenges of synthetic data in extubation failure prediction and introduces strategies to mitigate bias, including clinician-informed preprocessing and novel feature subsetting. While performance was limited, the study provides a foundation for future work, emphasising the need for reliable, interpretable models to optimise ICU outcomes.
Physics-Informed Deep Learning Model for Line-integral Diagnostics Across Fusion Devices
Authors: Cong Wang, Weizhe Yang, Haiping Wang, Renjie Yang, Jing Li, Zhijun Wang, Yixiong Wei, Xianli Huang, Chenshu Hu, Zhaoyang Liu, Xinyao Yu, Changqing Zou, Zhifeng Zhao
Date: 2024-11-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Diagnostic

Rapid reconstruction of 2D plasma profiles from line-integral measurements is important in nuclear fusion. This paper introduces a physics-informed model architecture called Onion, that can enhance the performance of models and be adapted to various backbone networks. The model under Onion incorporates physical information by a multiplication process and applies the physics-informed loss function according to the principle of line integration. Prediction results demonstrate that the additional input of physical information improves the deep learning model's ability, leading to a reduction in the average relative error E_1 between the reconstruction profiles and the target profiles by approximately 0.84x10^(-2) on synthetic datasets and about 0.06x10^(-2) on experimental datasets. Furthermore, the implementation of the Softplus activation function in the final two fully connected layers improves model performance. This enhancement results in a reduction in the E_1 by approximately 1.06x10^(-2) on synthetic datasets and about 0.11x10^(-2) on experimental datasets. The incorporation of the physics-informed loss function has been shown to correct the model's predictions, bringing the back-projections closer to the actual inputs and reducing the errors associated with inversion algorithms. Besides, we have developed a synthetic data model to generate customized line-integral diagnostic datasets and have also collected soft x-ray diagnostic datasets from EAST and HL-2A. This study achieves reductions in reconstruction errors, and accelerates the development of surrogate models in fusion research.
The Muon Space GNSS-R Surface Soil Moisture Product
Authors: Max Roberts, Ian Colwell, Clara Chew, Dallas Masters, Karl Nordstrom
Date: 2024-11-26 00:00:00

Muon Space (Muon) is building a constellation of small satellites, many of which will carry global navigation satellite system-reflectometry (GNSS-R) receivers. In preparation for the launch of this constellation, we have developed a generalized deep learning retrieval pipeline, which now produces operational GNSS-R near-surface soil moisture retrievals using data from NASA's Cyclone GNSS (CYGNSS) mission. In this article, we describe the input datasets, preprocessing methods, model architecture, development methods, and detail the soil moisture products generated from these retrievals. The performance of this product is quantified against in situ measurements and compared to both the target dataset (retrievals from the Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) satellite) and the v1.0 soil moisture product from the CYGNSS mission. The Muon Space product achieves improvements in spatial resolution over SMAP with comparable performance in many regions. An ubRMSE of 0.032 cm$^3$ cm$^{-3}$ for in situ soil moisture observations from SMAP core validation sites is shown, though performance is lower than SMAP's when comparing in forests and/or mountainous terrain. The Muon Space product outperforms the v1.0 CYGNSS soil moisture product in almost all aspects. This initial release serves as the foundation of our operational soil moisture product, which soon will additionally include data from Muon Space satellites.
Beyond Monte Carlo: Harnessing Diffusion Models to Simulate Financial Market Dynamics
Authors: Andrew Lesniewski, Giulio Trigila
Date: 2024-11-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Numerical Integration

We propose a highly efficient and accurate methodology for generating synthetic financial market data using a diffusion model approach. The synthetic data produced by our methodology align closely with observed market data in several key aspects: (i) they pass the two-sample Cramer - von Mises test for portfolios of assets, and (ii) Q - Q plots demonstrate consistency across quantiles, including in the tails, between observed and generated market data. Moreover, the covariance matrices derived from a large set of synthetic market data exhibit significantly lower condition numbers compared to the estimated covariance matrices of the observed data. This property makes them suitable for use as regularized versions of the latter. For model training, we develop an efficient and fast algorithm based on numerical integration rather than Monte Carlo simulations. The methodology is tested on a large set of equity data.
Towards Privacy-Preserving Medical Imaging: Federated Learning with Differential Privacy and Secure Aggregation Using a Modified ResNet Architecture
Authors: Mohamad Haj Fares, Ahmed Mohamed Saad Emam Saad
Date: 2024-12-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Federated Learning, image-classification, Image Classification, Management, Medical Image Classification, Privacy Preserving

With increasing concerns over privacy in healthcare, especially for sensitive medical data, this research introduces a federated learning framework that combines local differential privacy and secure aggregation using Secure Multi-Party Computation for medical image classification. Further, we propose DPResNet, a modified ResNet architecture optimized for differential privacy. Leveraging the BloodMNIST benchmark dataset, we simulate a realistic data-sharing environment across different hospitals, addressing the distinct privacy challenges posed by federated healthcare data. Experimental results indicate that our privacy-preserving federated model achieves accuracy levels close to non-private models, surpassing traditional approaches while maintaining strict data confidentiality. By enhancing the privacy, efficiency, and reliability of healthcare data management, our approach offers substantial benefits to patients, healthcare providers, and the broader healthcare ecosystem.
MQFL-FHE: Multimodal Quantum Federated Learning Framework with Fully Homomorphic Encryption
Authors: Siddhant Dutta, Nouhaila Innan, Sadok Ben Yahia, Muhammad Shafique, David Esteban Bernal Neira
Date: 2024-11-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Federated Learning, Mixture-of-Experts

The integration of fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) in federated learning (FL) has led to significant advances in data privacy. However, during the aggregation phase, it often results in performance degradation of the aggregated model, hindering the development of robust representational generalization. In this work, we propose a novel multimodal quantum federated learning framework that utilizes quantum computing to counteract the performance drop resulting from FHE. For the first time in FL, our framework combines a multimodal quantum mixture of experts (MQMoE) model with FHE, incorporating multimodal datasets for enriched representation and task-specific learning. Our MQMoE framework enhances performance on multimodal datasets and combined genomics and brain MRI scans, especially for underrepresented categories. Our results also demonstrate that the quantum-enhanced approach mitigates the performance degradation associated with FHE and improves classification accuracy across diverse datasets, validating the potential of quantum interventions in enhancing privacy in FL.
Exact Certification of (Graph) Neural Networks Against Label Poisoning
Authors: Mahalakshmi Sabanayagam, Lukas Gosch, Stephan Günnemann, Debarghya Ghoshdastidar
Date: 2024-11-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Bilevel Optimization, Node Classification

Machine learning models are highly vulnerable to label flipping, i.e., the adversarial modification (poisoning) of training labels to compromise performance. Thus, deriving robustness certificates is important to guarantee that test predictions remain unaffected and to understand worst-case robustness behavior. However, for Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), the problem of certifying label flipping has so far been unsolved. We change this by introducing an exact certification method, deriving both sample-wise and collective certificates. Our method leverages the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) to capture the training dynamics of wide networks enabling us to reformulate the bilevel optimization problem representing label flipping into a Mixed-Integer Linear Program (MILP). We apply our method to certify a broad range of GNN architectures in node classification tasks. Thereby, concerning the worst-case robustness to label flipping: $(i)$ we establish hierarchies of GNNs on different benchmark graphs; $(ii)$ quantify the effect of architectural choices such as activations, depth and skip-connections; and surprisingly, $(iii)$ uncover a novel phenomenon of the robustness plateauing for intermediate perturbation budgets across all investigated datasets and architectures. While we focus on GNNs, our certificates are applicable to sufficiently wide NNs in general through their NTK. Thus, our work presents the first exact certificate to a poisoning attack ever derived for neural networks, which could be of independent interest. The code is available at https://github.com/saper0/qpcert.
Distributed Differentially Private Data Analytics via Secure Sketching
Authors: Jakob Burkhardt, Hannah Keller, Claudio Orlandi, Chris Schwiegelshohn
Date: 2024-11-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency

We introduce the linear-transformation model, a distributed model of differentially private data analysis. Clients have access to a trusted platform capable of applying a public matrix to their inputs. Such computations can be securely distributed across multiple servers using simple and efficient secure multiparty computation techniques. The linear-transformation model serves as an intermediate model between the highly expressive central model and the minimal local model. In the central model, clients have access to a trusted platform capable of applying any function to their inputs. However, this expressiveness comes at a cost, as it is often prohibitively expensive to distribute such computations, leading to the central model typically being implemented by a single trusted server. In contrast, the local model assumes no trusted platform, which forces clients to add significant noise to their data. The linear-transformation model avoids the single point of failure for privacy present in the central model, while also mitigating the high noise required in the local model. We demonstrate that linear transformations are very useful for differential privacy, allowing for the computation of linear sketches of input data. These sketches largely preserve utility for tasks such as private low-rank approximation and private ridge regression, while introducing only minimal error, critically independent of the number of clients.
A Novel Approach to Image Steganography Using Generative Adversarial Networks
Authors: Waheed Rehman
Date: 2024-11-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Steganography, SSIM, Steganalysis

The field of steganography has long been focused on developing methods to securely embed information within various digital media while ensuring imperceptibility and robustness. However, the growing sophistication of detection tools and the demand for increased data hiding capacity have revealed limitations in traditional techniques. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to image steganography that leverages the power of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to address these challenges. By employing a carefully designed GAN architecture, our method ensures the creation of stego-images that are visually indistinguishable from their original counterparts, effectively thwarting detection by advanced steganalysis tools. Additionally, the adversarial training paradigm optimizes the balance between embedding capacity, imperceptibility, and robustness, enabling more efficient and secure data hiding. We evaluate our proposed method through a series of experiments on benchmark datasets and compare its performance against baseline techniques, including least significant bit (LSB) substitution and discrete cosine transform (DCT)-based methods. Our results demonstrate significant improvements in metrics such as Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM), and robustness against detection. This work not only contributes to the advancement of image steganography but also provides a foundation for exploring GAN-based approaches for secure digital communication.
Evaluating the Impact of Data Augmentation on Predictive Model Performance
Authors: Valdemar Švábenský, Conrad Borchers, Elizabeth B. Cloude, Atsushi Shimada
Date: 2024-12-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Data Augmentation

In supervised machine learning (SML) research, large training datasets are essential for valid results. However, obtaining primary data in learning analytics (LA) is challenging. Data augmentation can address this by expanding and diversifying data, though its use in LA remains underexplored. This paper systematically compares data augmentation techniques and their impact on prediction performance in a typical LA task: prediction of academic outcomes. Augmentation is demonstrated on four SML models, which we successfully replicated from a previous LAK study based on AUC values. Among 21 augmentation techniques, SMOTE-ENN sampling performed the best, improving the average AUC by 0.01 and approximately halving the training time compared to the baseline models. In addition, we compared 99 combinations of chaining 21 techniques, and found minor, although statistically significant, improvements across models when adding noise to SMOTE-ENN (+0.014). Notably, some augmentation techniques significantly lowered predictive performance or increased performance fluctuation related to random chance. This paper's contribution is twofold. Primarily, our empirical findings show that sampling techniques provide the most statistically reliable performance improvements for LA applications of SML, and are computationally more efficient than deep generation methods with complex hyperparameter settings. Second, the LA community may benefit from validating a recent study through independent replication.
Crash Severity Risk Modeling Strategies under Data Imbalance
Authors: Abdullah Al Mamun, Abyad Enan, Debbie A. Indah, Judith Mwakalonge, Gurcan Comert, Mashrur Chowdhury
Date: 2024-12-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Feature Importance, feature selection, Prediction, severity prediction

This study investigates crash severity risk modeling strategies for work zones involving large vehicles (i.e., trucks, buses, and vans) under crash data imbalance between low-severity (LS) and high-severity (HS) crashes. We utilized crash data involving large vehicles in South Carolina work zones from 2014 to 2018, which included four times more LS crashes than HS crashes. The objective of this study is to evaluate the crash severity prediction performance of various statistical, machine learning, and deep learning models under different feature selection and data balancing techniques. Findings highlight a disparity in LS and HS predictions, with lower accuracy for HS crashes due to class imbalance and feature overlap. Discriminative Mutual Information (DMI) yields the most effective feature set for predicting HS crashes without requiring data balancing, particularly when paired with gradient boosting models and deep neural networks such as CatBoost, NeuralNetTorch, XGBoost, and LightGBM. Data balancing techniques such as NearMiss-1 maximize HS recall when combined with DMI-selected features and certain models such as LightGBM, making them well-suited for HS crash prediction. Conversely, RandomUnderSampler, HS Class Weighting, and RandomOverSampler achieve more balanced performance, which is defined as an equitable trade-off between LS and HS metrics, especially when applied to NeuralNetTorch, NeuralNetFastAI, CatBoost, LightGBM, and Bayesian Mixed Logit (BML) using merged feature sets or models without feature selection. The insights from this study offer safety analysts guidance on selecting models, feature selection, and data balancing techniques aligned with specific safety goals, providing a robust foundation for enhancing work-zone crash severity prediction.