arXiv Machine Learning

Radio-Frequency Convolutional Neural Networks

The paper introduces Radio‑Frequency Convolutional Neural Networks (RF‑CNNs), which repurpose the frequency mixer in wireless radios to perform convolutional neural network inference directly on edge devices. By mapping multi‑channel convolutions onto frequency tones, the passive mixer can execute the entire operation in a single pass, enabling deep CNNs with up to 26.4 million parameters and nine layers to run on smartphones, wearables, and drones. Experimental results show near full‑precision performance while reducing energy consumption to 0.72 fJ per multiply‑accumulate—two orders of magnitude lower than adding a digital processor. "whyItMatters":"The approach leverages existing radio hardware to deliver efficient, state‑of‑the‑art AI inference on billions of devices without increasing size, weight, power, or cost."

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 28

On-Device Inference versus Wireless Streaming: Energy-Efficient Multi-Modal Deep Learning for Wearable Cardiovascular Patches

arXiv:2510. 18668v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Wearable cardiovascular sensor patches promise continuous, unobtrusive monitoring, but their tight energy, memory, and compute budgets make it unclear whether physiological signals should be analyzed on the device or streamed to the cloud for processing.

By Mustafa Fuad Rifet Ibrahim, Tunc Alkanat, Felix Manthey, Maurice Meijer, Alexander Schlaefer, Peer Stelldinger
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 14

Adaptive AI: Energy Efficient Multi-exit TinyML on Intelligent Vision Systems at the Edge

The paper presents a novel multi‑exit computational scheme for TinyML on an ultra‑low‑power GAP9 SoC, adding confidence‑based gating points to a MobileNetV2 CNN for ImageNet‑100. By allowing inference to stop early, the approach cuts average MAC operations by 41 % (from 313 MMAC to 185 MMAC), reduces inference time by 29 % (49 ms to 35 ms), and saves 24 % in energy (2.1 mJ to 1.6 mJ per frame) with only a ~1 % drop in accuracy. Compared to a state‑of‑the‑art adaptive CNN on the same hardware, the method more than doubles computational efficiency, raising MAC/cycle from 8.1 to 17.2.

By Luca Crupi, Lorenzo Lamberti, Alessandro Giusti, Daniele Palossi
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 5

16-bit Precision of Convolutional Neural Networks on Microcontroller Units for 8-bit Costs

The paper introduces W16A16, a 16‑bit precision quantization method for convolutional neural networks aimed at microcontroller units. On the Armv7E‑M architecture, W16A16 delivers faster inference speeds and lower energy consumption than existing quantization schemes while reducing quantization errors by roughly tenfold compared to 8‑bit approaches. The authors analyze the MCU architecture, explain why 16‑bit operations yield performance gains, and evaluate empirical errors and resource usage across regression and classification tasks.

By Rui Liu, Benjamin Paa{\ss}en
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 3

GaLe: memory-efficient Global Approximate and Local Exact features

GaLe is a memory‑efficient technique that allows pretrained neural networks to run on resource‑constrained devices without retraining. It splits feature maps into a local exact component that keeps fine details and a global approximate component that preserves long‑range dependencies, enabling global operations and attention mechanisms typical of hybrid CNN‑transformer models. On ImageNet, GaLe matches exact‑inference accuracy while delivering up to 65% speedup and 90% RAM reduction on a Cortex‑M33, and it works across classification, detection, and generation tasks.

By Alberto Ancilotto, Elisabetta Farella
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 19

Energy Overhead in Sensor Nodes: Embedded Machine Learning and Data Offloading via Low Power Wide Area Networks

The paper evaluates the energy consumption of sensor nodes in IoT applications, examining the entire pipeline from data acquisition to optional on-device CNN classification and LPWAN transmission using an ESP32‑S3 microcontroller. It compares on‑device inference followed by result transmission with raw data transmission across three environmental monitoring scenarios, varying model architecture and LPWAN technologies (LTE‑M, NB‑IoT, LoRaWAN). Results show that on‑device inference can reduce energy consumption by 1.7× to 6.9× compared to raw data transmission, with a tolerable loss in accuracy, and identify developer‑controllable variables that influence the energy trade‑off.

By Benjamin Karic, Nina Herrmann, Jan Stenkamp, Paula Scharf, Fabian Gieseke, Angela Schwering