Importance-Aware Semantic Communication in MIMO-OFDM Systems Using Vision Transformer

This paper presents a novel importance-aware quantization, subcarrier mapping, and power allocation (IA-QSMPA) framework for semantic communication in multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems, empowered by a pretrained Vision Transformer (ViT). The proposed framework exploits attention-based importance extracted from a pretrained ViT to jointly optimize quantization levels, subcarrier mapping, and power allocation. Specifically, IA-QSMPA maps semantically important features to high-quality subchannels and allocates resources in accordance with their contribution to task performance and communication latency. To efficiently solve the resulting nonconvex optimization problem, a block coordinate descent algorithm is employed. The framework is further extended to operate under finite blocklength transmission, where communication errors may occur. In this setting, a segment-wise linear approximation of the channel dispersion penalty is introduced to enable efficient joint optimization under practical constraints. Simulation results on a multi-view image classification task using the MVP-N dataset demonstrate that IA-QSMPA significantly outperforms conventional methods in both ideal and finite blocklength transmission scenarios, achieving superior task performance and communication efficiency.

Bridging Geometric and Semantic Foundation Models for Generalized Monocular Depth Estimation

We present Bridging Geometric and Semantic (BriGeS), an effective method that fuses geometric and semantic information within foundation models to enhance Monocular Depth Estimation (MDE). Central to BriGeS is the Bridging Gate, which integrates the complementary strengths of depth and segmentation foundation models. This integration is further refined by our Attention Temperature Scaling technique. It finely adjusts the focus of the attention mechanisms to prevent over-concentration on specific features, thus ensuring balanced performance across diverse inputs. BriGeS capitalizes on pre-trained foundation models and adopts a strategy that focuses on training only the Bridging Gate. This method significantly reduces resource demands and training time while maintaining the model's ability to generalize effectively. Extensive experiments across multiple challenging datasets demonstrate that BriGeS outperforms state-of-the-art methods in MDE for complex scenes, effectively handling intricate structures and overlapping objects.

A Training-Free Style-aligned Image Generation with Scale-wise Autoregressive Model

We present a training-free style-aligned image generation method that leverages a scale-wise autoregressive model. While large-scale text-to-image (T2I) models, particularly diffusion-based methods, have demonstrated impressive generation quality, they often suffer from style misalignment across generated image sets and slow inference speeds, limiting their practical usability. To address these issues, we propose three key components: initial feature replacement to ensure consistent background appearance, pivotal feature interpolation to align object placement, and dynamic style injection, which reinforces style consistency using a schedule function. Unlike previous methods requiring fine-tuning or additional training, our approach maintains fast inference while preserving individual content details. Extensive experiments show that our method achieves generation quality comparable to competing approaches, significantly improves style alignment, and delivers inference speeds over six times faster than the fastest model.

TEXTOC: Text-driven Object-Centric Style Transfer

We present Text-driven Object-Centric Style Transfer (TEXTOC), a novel method that guides style transfer at an object-centric level using textual inputs. The core of TEXTOC is our Patch-wise Co-Directional (PCD) loss, meticulously designed for precise object-centric transformations that are closely aligned with the input text. This loss combines a patch directional loss for text-guided style direction and a patch distribution consistency loss for even CLIP embedding distribution across object regions. It ensures a seamless and harmonious style transfer across object regions. Key to our method are the Text-Matched Patch Selection (TMPS) and Pre-fixed Region Selection (PRS) modules for identifying object locations via text, eliminating the need for segmentation masks. Lastly, we introduce an Adaptive Background Preservation (ABP) loss to maintain the original style and structural essence of the image's background. This loss is applied to dynamically identified background areas. Extensive experiments underline the effectiveness of our approach in creating visually coherent and textually aligned style transfers.

Prior-Aware Robust Beam Alignment for Low-SNR Millimeter-Wave Communications

This paper presents a robust beam alignment technique for millimeter-wave communications in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments. The core strategy of our technique is to repeatedly transmit the most probable beam candidates to reduce beam misalignment probability induced by noise. Specifically, for a given beam training overhead, both the selection of candidates and the number of repetitions for each beam candidate are optimized based on channel prior information. To achieve this, a deep neural network is employed to learn the prior probability of the optimal beam at each location. The beam misalignment probability is then analyzed based on the channel prior, forming the basis for an optimization problem aimed at minimizing the analyzed beam misalignment probability. A closed-form solution is derived for a special case with two beam candidates, and an efficient algorithm is developed for general cases with multiple beam candidates. Simulation results using the DeepMIMO dataset demonstrate the superior performance of our technique in dynamic low-SNR communication environments when compared to existing beam alignment techniques.