World Model for Energy Efficiency Maximization in Dynamic Metasurface Antennas

Abstract

Dynamic metasurface antennas (DMAs) have emerged as a promising technology for realizing large-scale antenna arrays in next-generation wireless networks owing to their ability to enable dense and energy-efficient antenna architectures. However, jointly optimizing digital beamforming and DMA element weights under time-varying channel conditions remains challenging due to their coupled effects on the received signal and interference powers. We formulate this problem to maximize time-averaged energy efficiency (EE) under time-varying channel conditions, subject to transmit power constraints, Lorentzian phase limitations, and minimum rate requirements. To enable long-term planning and improve sample efficiency compared with model-free reinforcement learning, we develop a world model framework that learns latent system dynamics from interactions with the environment and jointly optimizes digital beamforming and DMA element weights through imagined trajectories. Furthermore, we incorporate feasibility-preserving action mappings and safety cost signals to ensure constraint satisfaction during policy learning. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework improves the time-averaged EE by approximately 20% compared with the deep Q-network baseline, while achieving higher sample efficiency and more reliable constraint satisfaction.