Time-varying rPPG signal separation via block-sparse signal model

Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) enables non-contact measurement of cardiac pulse signals by analyzing subtle color changes in facial videos. Nevertheless, extracting rPPG signals remains challenging because of their extremely weak signal strength and susceptibility to illumination noise. In this paper, we propose an rPPG signal extraction method that exploits the quasi-periodic characteristics of rPPG signals. Our approach models quasi-periodicity of the rPPG signal, which arises from the stable cardiac cycle, as a block-sparse structure in the time-frequency domain. To incorporate a block-sparse model and enable adaptive signal separation under illumination fluctuations, we construct a time-varying signal separation framework. Experiments using a public dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

Network-Density-Controlled Decentralized Parallel Stochastic Gradient Descent in Wireless Systems

This paper proposes a communication strategy for decentralized learning on wireless systems. Our discussion is based on the decentralized parallel stochastic gradient descent (D-PSGD), which is one of the state-of-the-art algorithms for decentralized learning. The main contribution of this paper is to raise a novel open question for decentralized learning on wireless systems: there is a possibility that the density of a network topology significantly influences the runtime performance of D-PSGD. In general, it is difficult to guarantee delay-free communications without any communication deterioration in real wireless network systems because of path loss and multi-path fading. These factors significantly degrade the runtime performance of D-PSGD. To alleviate such problems, we first analyze the runtime performance of D-PSGD by considering real wireless systems. This analysis yields the key insights that dense network topology (1) does not significantly gain the training accuracy of D-PSGD compared to sparse one, and (2) strongly degrades the runtime performance because this setting generally requires to utilize a low-rate transmission. Based on these findings, we propose a novel communication strategy, in which each node estimates optimal transmission rates such that communication time during the D-PSGD optimization is minimized under the constraint of network density, which is characterized by radio propagation property. The proposed strategy enables to improve the runtime performance of D-PSGD in wireless systems. Numerical simulations reveal that the proposed strategy is capable of enhancing the runtime performance of D-PSGD.