ST-BernT: A Spatiotemporal λ-Bernstein Graph Convolutional Network With Transformer for Multisite Air Quality Prediction in Distributed Unmanned Agent Systems

With the rapid development of ubiquitous networks and unmanned devices, air quality monitoring data is increasingly collected via wireless networks from sensors at multiple monitoring stations. However, the complexity of these data introduces significant challenges. Existing spatiotemporal methods for air quality prediction often struggle with issues such as inadequate handling of spatial relationships, difficulties in modeling long-term temporal dependencies, and limited generalization capabilities. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel spatiotemporal modeling approach—Spatiotemporal λ-Bernstein Graph Convolutional Network with Transformer for Multi-Site Air Quality Prediction (ST-BernT). This method constructs a graph structure based on spatiotemporal correlations, integrating a Gaussian-weighted adjacency matrix derived from geographic distances with an adjacency matrix capturing the temporal correlations of pollutant concentration time series, thereby precisely modeling spatial dependencies. Subsequently, a dynamic filter adjusted by λ-Bernstein polynomials is proposed to adaptively process spatiotemporal data characterized by the coexistence of low- and high-frequency components on the graph. Furthermore, a hierarchical generative transformer (GPHT) is introduced to enhance the model’s ability to capture long-term temporal patterns, such as periodicity and seasonality, while supporting parallel prediction across multiple sites, significantly improving computational efficiency and accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that ST-BernT exhibits strong accuracy, adaptability, and generalization capability in multi-site air quality prediction tasks, particularly showing enhanced robustness in large-scale long-term forecasting scenarios.