Accurate channel state information (CSI) underpins reliable and efficient wireless communication. However, acquiring CSI via pilot estimation incurs substantial overhead, especially in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating in high-Doppler environments. By leveraging the growing availability of environmental sensing data, this treatise investigates pilot-free channel inference that estimates complete CSI directly from multimodal observations, including camera images, LiDAR point clouds, and GPS coordinates. In contrast to prior studies that rely on predefined channel models, we develop a data-driven framework that formulates the sensing-to-channel mapping as a cross-modal flow matching problem. The framework fuses multimodal features into a latent distribution within the channel domain, and learns a velocity field that continuously transforms the latent distribution toward the channel distribution. To make this formulation tractable and efficient, we reformulate the problem as an equivalent conditional flow matching objective and incorporate a modality alignment loss, while adopting low-latency inference mechanisms to enable real-time CSI estimation. In experiments, we build a procedural data generator based on Sionna and Blender to support realistic modeling of sensing scenes and wireless propagation. System-level evaluations demonstrate significant improvements over pilot- and sensing-based benchmarks in both channel estimation accuracy and spectral efficiency for the downstream beamforming task.

With the development of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, implementing AI-based techniques to improve wireless transceivers becomes an emerging research topic. Within this context, AI-based channel characterization and estimation become the focus since these methods have not been solved by traditional methods very well and have become the bottleneck of transceiver efficiency in large-scale orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Specifically, by formulating channel estimation as a generative AI problem, generative AI methods such as diffusion models (DMs) can efficiently deal with rough initial estimations and have great potential to cooperate with traditional signal processing methods. This paper focuses on the transceiver design of OFDM systems based on DMs, provides an illustration of the potential of DMs in wireless transceivers, and points out the related research directions brought by DMs. We also provide a proof-of-concept case study of further adapting DMs for better wireless receiver performance.

Abstract--We present AttDet, a Transformer-inspired MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) detection method that treats each transmit layer as a token and learns inter-stream interference via a lightweight self-attention mechanism. Queries and keys are derived directly from the estimated channel matrix, so attention scores quantify channel correlation. V alues are initialized by matched-filter outputs and iteratively refined. The AttDet design combines model-based interpretability with data-driven flexibility. We demonstrate through link-level simulations under realistic 5G channel models and high-order, mixed QAM modulation and coding schemes, that AttDet can approach near-optimal BER/BLER (Bit Error Rate/Block Error Rate) performance while maintaining predictable, polynomial complexity.

In this paper, we propose Capacity-Net, a novel unsupervised learning approach aimed at maximizing the achievable rate in reflecting intelligent surface (RIS)-aided millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems. To combat severe channel fading of the mmWave spectrum, we optimize the phase-shifting factors of the reflective elements in the RIS to enhance the achievable rate. However, most optimization algorithms rely heavily on complete and accurate channel state information (CSI), which is often challenging to acquire since the RIS is mostly composed of passive components. To circumvent this challenge, we leverage unsupervised learning techniques with implicit CSI provided by the received pilot signals. Specifically, it usually requires perfect CSI to evaluate the achievable rate as a performance metric of the current optimization result of the unsupervised learning method. Instead of channel estimation, the Capacity-Net is proposed to establish a mapping among the received pilot signals, optimized RIS phase shifts, and the resultant achievable rates. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed Capacity-Net-based unsupervised learning approach over learning methods based on traditional channel estimation.

ISAC is regarded as a promising technology for next-generation communication systems, enabling simultaneous data transmission and target sensing. Among various tasks in ISAC, scatter sensing plays a crucial role in exploiting the full potential of ISAC and supporting applications such as autonomous driving and low-altitude economy. However, most existing methods rely on either waveform and hardware modifications or traditional signal processing schemes, leading to poor compatibility with current communication systems and limited sensing accuracy. To address these challenges, we propose CSIYOLO, a framework that performs scatter localization only using estimated CSI from a single base station-user equipment pair. This framework comprises two main components: anchor-based scatter parameter detection and CSI-based scatter localization. First, by formulating scatter parameter extraction as an image detection problem, we propose an anchor-based scatter parameter detection method inspired by You Only Look Once architectures. After that, a CSI-based localization algorithm is derived to determine scatter locations with extracted parameters. Moreover, to improve localization accuracy and implementation efficiency, we design an extendable network structure with task-oriented optimizations, enabling multi-scale anchor detection and better adaptation to CSI characteristics. A noise injection training strategy is further designed to enhance robustness against channel estimation errors. Since the proposed framework operates solely on estimated CSI without modifying waveforms or signal processing pipelines, it can be seamlessly integrated into existing communication systems as a plugin. Experiments show that our proposed method can significantly outperform existing methods in scatter localization accuracy with relatively low complexities under varying numbers of scatters and estimation errors.

Reliable channel estimation (CE) is fundamental for robust communication in dynamic wireless environments, where models must generalize across varying conditions such as signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), the number of resource blocks (RBs), and channel profiles. Traditional deep learning (DL)-based methods struggle to generalize effectively across such diverse settings, particularly under multitask and zero-shot scenarios. In this work, we propose MoE-CE, a flexible mixture-of-experts (MoE) framework designed to enhance the generalization capability of DL-based CE methods. MoE-CE provides an appropriate inductive bias by leveraging multiple expert subnetworks, each specialized in distinct channel characteristics, and a learned router that dynamically selects the most relevant experts per input. This architecture enhances model capacity and adaptability without a proportional rise in computational cost while being agnostic to the choice of the backbone model and the learning algorithm. Through extensive experiments on synthetic datasets generated under diverse SNRs, RB numbers, and channel profiles, including multitask and zero-shot evaluations, we demonstrate that MoE-CE consistently outperforms conventional DL approaches, achieving significant performance gains while maintaining efficiency.

Channel estimation is crucial in wireless communications. However, in many papers neural networks are frequently tested by training and testing on one example channel or similar channels. This is because data-driven methods often degrade on new data which they are not trained on, as they cannot extrapolate their training knowledge. This is despite the fact physical channels are often assumed to be time-variant. However, due to the low latency requirements and limited computing resources, neural networks may not have enough time and computing resources to execute online training to fine-tune the parameters. This motivates us to design offline-trained neural networks that can perform robustly over wireless channels, but without any actual channel information being known at design time. In this paper, we propose design criteria to generate synthetic training datasets for neural networks, which guarantee that after training the resulting networks achieve a certain mean squared error (MSE) on new and previously unseen channels. Therefore, trained neural networks require no prior channel information or parameters update for real-world implementations. Based on the proposed design criteria, we further propose a benchmark design which ensures intelligent operation for different channel profiles. To demonstrate general applicability, we use neural networks with different levels of complexity to show that the generalization achieved appears to be independent of neural network architecture. From simulations, neural networks achieve robust generalization to wireless channels with both fixed channel profiles and variable delay spreads.

In frequency division duplex (FDD) massive MIMO systems, a major challenge lies in acquiring the downlink channel state information}\ (CSI) at the base station (BS) from limited feedback sent by the user equipment (UE). To tackle this fundamental task, our contribution is twofold: First, a simple feedback framework is proposed, where a compression and Gaussian dithering-based quantization strategy is adopted at the UE side, and then a maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is formulated at the BS side. Recoverability of the MIMO channel under the widely used double directional model is established. Specifically, analyses are presented for two compression schemes -- showing one being more overhead-economical and the other computationally lighter at the UE side. Second, to realize the MLE, an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm is proposed. The algorithm is carefully designed to integrate a sophisticated harmonic retrieval (HR) solver as subroutine, which turns out to be the key of effectively tackling this hard MLE problem.Extensive numerical experiments are conducted to validate the efficacy of our approach.

Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (massive MIMO) technology stands as a cornerstone in 5G and beyonds. Despite the remarkable advancements offered by massive MIMO technology, the extreme number of antennas introduces challenges during the channel estimation (CE) phase. In this paper, we propose a single-step Deep Neural Network (DNN) for CE, termed Iterative Sequential DNN (ISDNN), inspired by recent developments in data detection algorithms. ISDNN is a DNN based on the projected gradient descent algorithm for CE problems, with the iterative iterations transforming into a DNN using the deep unfolding method. Furthermore, we introduce the structured channel ISDNN (S-ISDNN), extending ISDNN to incorporate side information such as directions of signals and antenna array configurations for enhanced CE. Simulation results highlight that ISDNN significantly outperforms another DNN-based CE (DetNet), in terms of training time (13%), running time (4.6%), and accuracy (0.43 dB). Furthermore, the S-ISDNN demonstrates even faster than ISDNN in terms of training time, though its overall performance still requires further improvement.

Deep neural network (DNN)-based algorithms are emerging as an important tool for many physical and MAC layer functions in future wireless communication systems, including for large multi-antenna channels. However, training such models typically requires a large dataset of high-dimensional channel measurements, which are very difficult and expensive to obtain. This paper introduces a novel method for generating synthetic wireless channel data using diffusion-based models to produce user-specific channels that accurately reflect real-world wireless environments. Our approach employs a conditional denoising diffusion implicit models (cDDIM) framework, effectively capturing the relationship between user location and multi-antenna channel characteristics. We generate synthetic high fidelity channel samples using user positions as conditional inputs, creating larger augmented datasets to overcome measurement scarcity. The utility of this method is demonstrated through its efficacy in training various downstream tasks such as channel compression and beam alignment. Our approach significantly improves over prior methods, such as adding noise or using generative adversarial networks (GANs), especially in scenarios with limited initial measurements.