Handover Analysis for Vehicular Communication with Explainability on the Fly

Handover (HO) management in vehicular networks requires fast and reliable decision-making under highly dynamic conditions. While machine learning (ML) approaches can improve HO detection by capturing complex relationships among various key performance indicators (KPIs), their black-box nature limits interpretability and operator trust. To address this, this paper investigates HO detection from an explainability-on-the-fly perspective using inherently interpretable models based on the functional analysis of variance (fANOVA) framework. The proposed models are evaluated using two real-world operator datasets and compared against a Long Short-Term Memory baseline augmented with post-hoc SHAP explanations. Unlike post-hoc approaches, the proposed framework enables immediate interpretation of model decisions without incurring additional computational overhead. This capability is particularly critical for latency-sensitive vehicular networks. The results show that fANOVA-based models achieve competitive detection performance while providing significantly reduced explanation latency compared to conventional post-hoc methods. Furthermore, feature ranking and visualization analyses reveal physically meaningful relationships between KPIs and HO occurrences that align with standardized HO mechanisms. These results demonstrate that inherently interpretable models provide an efficient and transparent solution for HO detection in next-generation vehicular networks.

Structured Neural Chaos: An Adaptive Surrogate Modeling Framework for Functional Uncertainty Quantification and Global Sensitivity Analysis

Variance-based global sensitivity analysis (GSA) plays a key role in uncertainty quantification by identifying the contributions of uncertain inputs to the variability of the model response. The repeated model evaluations required for these tasks are often prohibitively expensive; surrogate models provide an efficient alternative by constructing inexpensive approximations of the underlying system response. Constructing surrogate models that combine scalability and interpretability for systems with high-dimensional stochastic inputs and functional responses remains challenging, particularly when sensitivity estimates are required across spatial or temporal domains. Polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) provides an effective framework for uncertainty propagation and sensitivity analysis due to its orthogonal structure and direct relationship with variance-based sensitivity measures. However, PCE suffers from the curse of dimensionality, whose computational burden is amplified for problems with functional responses. In this work, we introduce the Structured Neural Chaos (sNC) expansion as a surrogate modeling framework for variance-based GSA, inspired by the interpretability and orthogonal structure of PCE. The proposed framework retains the interpretability of structured decompositions while leveraging the expressive power of neural networks. The sNC expansion mirrors a truncated functional ANOVA decomposition, where each interaction component admits a separable low-rank approximation whose basis functions and coefficients are parameterized by neural networks. The expansion is constructed sequentially, adaptively identifying the dominant modes within each ANOVA subspace and determining the effective complexity of the representation. The resulting structure enables the extraction of statistical and sensitivity quantities directly from the coefficients of the sNC expansion at negligible cost.