Structured Time-Frequency Representation for Channel Prediction

Abstract

Accurate CSI forecasting is essential for mitigating channel aging and supporting reliable downlink transmission in high-mobility wireless systems. In FDD systems, forecasting future DL CSI from historical UL observations requires joint temporal extrapolation and cross-band inference. However, defining historical UL as the input and future DL as the target does not specify how elapsed time and UL-to-DL band separation should be represented in a pretrained predictor's positional space. FAR-CSI establishes an FDD-aware representation of channel forecasting within a joint temporal and operating-band positional field. Within this field, historical UL observations and future DL targets occupy segregated regions according to their temporal and operating-band roles, preserving the distinction between observed UL context and unobserved DL prediction targets. This representation is instantiated through a unified structured routing rule that governs encoder positional assignment, decoder-field reconstruction, and future-DL target selection, ensuring the same FDD geometry is preserved from contextual encoding to prediction readout. Under matched backbone, initialization, and training conditions, FDD-aware routing reduces NMSE by 21.44\% relative to generic routing. Across the evaluated FDD baselines, FAR-CSI achieves higher CSI prediction accuracy and MRT-based spectral efficiency, while retaining its predictive advantage across mobility conditions, prediction horizons, reduced training-data regimes, and noisy historical observations.