Generalized Zero-Shot Learning for Evolving Network Device Identification

The rapid expansion of the Ubiquitous Electric Internet of Things (UEIoT) has introduced a vast array of heterogeneous devices into smart grids, rendering traditional identification methods inadequate. The continuous emergence of new terminal models and frequent firmware updates create a dynamic environment where training data cannot realistically cover all evolving device types. To bridge this gap, we propose HALO (Hierarchical Attribute-guided Learning with Offset Calibration), a generalized zero-shot learning (GZSL) framework specifically designed for IoT device identification. First, a lightweight Transformer-based architecture, NetFormer, is utilized to extract discriminative features by capturing fine-grained temporal behaviors with minimal computational overhead. Second, a Weighted Conditional Variational Autoencoder (W-CVAE) is developed to synthesize high-quality pseudo-samples for unseen classes. To ensure semantic fidelity, the W-CVAE incorporates multi-scale Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) to prevent mode collapse and employs attribute-feature contrastive learning to align semantic and feature spaces. Finally, a hybrid prototype construction strategy and an adaptive bias calibration mechanism are introduced to dynamically adjust decision boundaries, effectively mitigating the seen-class bias inherent in GZSL. Experimental results demonstrate that HALO significantly outperforms existing baseline methods across multiple evaluation metrics, validating the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed framework.