Research

Research Articles

A chronological list of my publications and preprints. For the most up-to-date record, see my Google Scholar profile. My name is highlighted in author lists.

2025

K. Kaza, R. Anantharaman and R. Meshram. Hierarchical Decentralized Stochastic Control for Cyber-Physical Systems . IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2025.
K. Kaza, J. Le Ny and A. Mahajan. Task load dependent decision referrals for joint binary classification in human–automation teams . IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, 2025. under revision

Preprints / Under Review

K. Kaza, V. Mehta, H. Azad, M. Bolic and I. Mantegh. An Intent Modeling and Inference Framework for Autonomous and Remotely Piloted Aerial Systems . IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. under revision
R. Meshram and K. Kaza. Simulation Based Algorithms for Markov Decision Processes and Multi-Action Restless Bandits . under revision

2024

K. Kaza, R. Meshram, V. Mehta and S. N. Merchant. Constrained Restless Bandits for Dynamic Scheduling in Cyber-Physical Systems . IEEE Access, 2024.

2023

V. Mehta, K. Kaza, F. Dadboud, M. Bolic and I. Mantegh. Enhancing Counter Drone Operations Through Human–AI Collaboration: A Hierarchical Decision-Making Framework. 42nd Digital Avionic Systems Conference (DASC), Barcelona, Spain, 2023.

2022

R. Meshram, K. Kaza, V. Mehta and S. N. Merchant. Restless Bandits for Scheduling in Energy Constrained Networks. 8th IEEE Indian Control Conference (ICC), Chennai, India, 2022.

2021

K. Kaza, J. Le Ny and A. Mahajan. Decision Referrals in Human–Automation Teams. 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 2021.
R. Meshram and K. Kaza. Indexability and Rollout Policy for Multi-State Partially Observable Restless Bandits. 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 2021.
R. Meshram and K. Kaza. Monte Carlo Rollout Policy for Recommendation Systems with Dynamic User Behavior. IEEE International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), 2021.

2019

K. Kaza, R. Meshram, V. Mehta and S. N. Merchant. Sequential Decision Making with Limited Observation Capability: Application to Wireless Networks . IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, 2019.
R. Meshram and K. Kaza. Online Repeated Posted Price Auctions with a Demand Side Platform . Preprint, 2019.

2018

K. Kaza, V. Mehta, R. Meshram and S. N. Merchant. Restless Bandits with Cumulative Feedback: Applications in Wireless Networks. IEEE Wireless Communication and Networking Conference (WCNC), Barcelona, Spain, 2018.
V. Mehta, R. Meshram, K. Kaza, S. N. Merchant and U. B. Desai. Rested and Restless Bandits with Constrained Arms and Hidden States: Applications in Social Networks and 5G Networks. IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 56782–56799, 2018.
V. Mehta, K. Kaza, R. Meshram and S. N. Merchant. Restless Bandits with Constrained Arms: Application to 5G Small Cell Selection. IEEE WCNC — Poster Session, Barcelona, Spain, 2018.

2017

K. Kaza, R. Meshram and S. N. Merchant. Relay Employment Problem for Unacknowledged Transmissions: Myopic Policy and Structure. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Paris, France, 2017.

2016

V. Mehta, Z. Shaikh, K. Kaza, H. D. Mustafa and S. N. Merchant. A Crowd-Cloud Architecture for Big Data Analytics. 22nd National Conference on Communication (NCC), Guwahati, India, 2016.

2012

K. Kaza, K. Kshirsagar and K. S. Rajan. A Bi-objective Algorithm for Dynamic Reconfiguration of Mobile Networks. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Ottawa, Canada, 2012.

2011

K. Kshirsagar, K. Kaza and K. S. Rajan. Design of 2-level Hierarchical Ring Networks. 3rd International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems (ICUMT), Budapest, Hungary, 2011.

Research Work

Detailed descriptions of past and ongoing research work.

Hierarchical Decentralized Stochastic Control for Cyber-Physical Systems

Proposes a two-timescale hierarchical decentralized control architecture for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), with a Global Controller (GC) operating at a slower timescale and imposing budget constraints on N Local Controllers (LCs) that function at a faster timescale.
Analyzes two optimization frameworks — central (COpt) and federal (FOpt). FOpt grants greater autonomy to LCs by letting their policies be determined by local shorter-term objectives, unlike COpt, where local policies aim to maximize cumulative long-term rewards.
Establishes existence of optimal policies, convergence guarantees, and bounds on the gap between values achieved under COpt and FOpt; identifies structural conditions under which the two frameworks are equivalent.
Applicable to multi-agent decision-making in smart grids, communication networks, autonomous systems, and UAV applications. Future work targets implementation in some of these domains.

Key paper K. Kaza, R. Anantharaman, R. Meshram. Hierarchical Decentralized Stochastic Control for Cyber-Physical Systems. IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2025.

Counter Drone Surveillance in 5G Networks

Postdoctoral project, funded by the National Research Council Canada.

Focus on detection, tracking, and intent inference of drones using cellular network infrastructure.
Developed mission-planning-based trajectory generation models for various intents (direct attack, surveillance, etc.) and kinematics/trajectory-based intent inference models to predict drone behavior.
Uses micro-Doppler radar signatures for reliable drone detection and classification.
Integrated multi-sensor fusion with human-in-the-loop feedback for robust operational decision-making.

Key papers

V. Mehta, K. Kaza, F. Dadboud, M. Bolic, I. Mantegh. Enhancing Counter Drone Operations Through Human–AI Collaboration. DASC, Barcelona, 2023.

K. Kaza, V. Mehta, H. Azad, M. Bolic, I. Mantegh. An Intent Modeling and Inference Framework for Autonomous and Remotely Piloted Aerial Systems. Under revision, IEEE RA-L.

Decision Referrals in Human–Automation Teams

Postdoctoral project, funded by the Canadian Department of National Defence under the Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program.

Studies how human factors such as cognitive workload, fatigue, and trust in automation affect collaborative human–automation performance.
Considers a setting where a team performs potentially risky time-constrained classification (e.g., Hostile vs Non-Hostile). The automation observes a batch of independent tasks and may refer a subset to a human expert, whose performance depends on workload. We provide algorithms that rank tasks by risk/uncertainty and select the optimal subset for referral.
An experimental study with 43 voluntary human participants validated the effectiveness of the proposed referral schemes.

Key papers

K. Kaza, J. Le Ny, A. Mahajan. Task load dependent decision referrals for joint binary classification in human–automation teams. Under revision, IEEE THMS, 2025.

K. Kaza, J. Le Ny, A. Mahajan. Decision Referrals in Human–Automation Teams. IEEE CDC, 2021.

Sequential Decision Making with Limited Observation Capability

PhD work, funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, via Teaching Assistantships.

Sequential decision problems where a decision maker interacts with an environment that responds with rewards and state transitions. The goal is to maximize long-term cumulative reward. Restless multi-armed bandits are a class of such problems with seemingly independent (weakly coupled) Markovian arms.
Studies two variants where environment states are only partially observable: (1) lazy restless bandits, where decision instants are sparse relative to state evolution, and (2) constrained restless bandits, with dynamic availability constraints.
Applications include relay selection, opportunistic access in wireless networks, cyber-physical systems, and social networks.

Key papers

K. Kaza, R. Meshram, V. Mehta, S. N. Merchant. Constrained Restless Bandits for Dynamic Scheduling in Cyber-Physical Systems. IEEE Access, 2024.

K. Kaza, R. Meshram, V. Mehta, S. N. Merchant. Sequential Decision Making with Limited Observation Capability: Application to Wireless Networks. IEEE TCCN, 2019.

Research Areas

Stochastic & Decentralized Control

Sequential Decision Making

Human–Automation Collaboration

Communication & Networked Systems

Research Articles

2025

Preprints / Under Review

2024

2023

2022

2021

2019

2018

2017

2016

2012

2011

Research Work

Hierarchical Decentralized Stochastic Control for Cyber-Physical Systems

Counter Drone Surveillance in 5G Networks

Decision Referrals in Human–Automation Teams

Sequential Decision Making with Limited Observation Capability