arXiv subjects

Jianbo Du

Publications and source records attributed to Jianbo Du.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

AI/ML for Mobile Networks: Release 19 Status and Future Challenges

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have become essential drivers of sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks. Unlike earlier surveys that mainly review high-level standardization progress, this paper focuses on the practical deployment barriers that remain after Release 19. We identify three open problems: dataset construction under 3GPP guidelines, cross-scenario and cross-simulator generalization, and baseline selection under joint performance-cost KPIs. These problems are examined through a CSI-feedback case study that uses both DeepMIMO (outdoor/indoor, ray-tracing) and QuaDRiGa (indoor-factory/highway, geometry-based stochastic) channel models. It reveals pronounced generalization challenges in zero-shot transfer, especially when models move across different simulators. A clear mismatch exists between deterministic ray-tracing and stochastic geometry-based modeling paradigms and leads to dramatic performance degradation. In contrast, pre-training on a source simulator followed by targeted fine-tuning on the target domain substantially mitigates these cross-simulator difficulties, and markedly outperforms zero-shot transfer. Attention-based models generalize better across the two physics regimes while keeping computational cost moderate. These results explain why the fine-tuning and LCM procedures already partially standardized in Release 19 are necessary, and they point to concrete next steps for scalable LCM, wider use cases, and multi-task learning.

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arXiv2026

JEPA-CFM: A Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture-based Channel Foundation Model for Robust Fluid Antenna Systems

Fluid antenna systems (FAS) have emerged as a promising technology for sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks. By allowing antenna elements to move freely within a compact region, FAS can exploit rich spatial diversity without additional hardware. However, acquiring real-time channel state information (CSI), extrapolating channel values to unmeasured antenna ports, and determining accurate user positions remain major obstacles. These challenges stem mainly from strong spatial correlations within the limited aperture and the scarcity of observable data. To overcome these limitations, this paper introduces joint embedding predictive architecture (JEPA)-based channel foundation model (CFM) specifically designed for FAS. The model adopts JEPA to learn versatile representations by extracting high-level latent embeddings of masked or unobserved channel segments. Unlike conventional approaches that attempt pixel-by-pixel reconstruction of raw CSI coefficients, JEPA-CFM focuses on predicting abstract structures in a compact feature space. The pre-training objective combines three complementary loss terms: the standard masked autoencoder reconstruction loss, the JEPA latent prediction loss, and a sliced isotropic Gaussian regularization (SIGReg) term. Together, these components prevent representation collapse and significantly enhance robustness under severe spatial correlation and highly sparse observations. After pre-training, the encoder is frozen, and lightweight task-specific heads are attached: a decoder for channel extrapolation and a global average pooling layer followed by a multi-layer perceptron regression head for wireless positioning. Extensive simulations in the realistic DeepMIMO urban scenario demonstrate that JEPA-CFM substantially outperforms the conventional masked autoencoder baseline in channel extrapolation and wireless positioning.

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arXiv2026

Joint Trajectory, RIS, and Computation Offloading Optimization via Decentralized Model-Based PPO in Urban Multi-UAV Mobile Edge Computing

Efficient computation offloading in multi-UAV edge networks becomes particularly challenging in dense urban areas, where line-of-sight (LoS) links are frequently blocked and user demand varies rapidly. Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) can mitigate blockage by creating controllable reflected links, but realizing their potential requires tightly coupled decisions on UAV trajectories, offloading schedules, and RIS phase configurations. This joint optimization is hard to solve in practice because multiple UAVs must coordinate under limited information exchange, and purely model-free multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) often learns too slowly in highly dynamic environments. To address these challenges, we propose a decentralized model-based MARL framework. Each UAV optimizes mobility and offloading using observations from several hop neighbors, and submits an RIS phase proposal that is aggregated by a lightweight RIS controller. To boost sample efficiency and stability, agents learn local dynamics models and perform short horizon branched rollouts for proximal policy optimization (PPO) updates. Simulations show near centralized performance with improved throughput and energy efficiency at scale.

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arXiv2026

Generalizable and Robust Beam Prediction for 6G Networks: An Deep-Learning Framework with Positioning Feature Fusion

Beamforming (BF) is essential for enhancing system capacity in fifth generation (5G) and beyond wireless networks, yet exhaustive beam training in ultra-massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems incurs substantial overhead. To address this challenge, we propose a deep learning based framework that leverages position-aware features to improve beam prediction accuracy while reducing training costs. The proposed approach uses spatial coordinate labels to supervise a position extraction branch and integrates the resulting representations with beam-domain features through a feature fusion module. A dual-branch RegNet architecture is adopted to jointly learn location related and communication features for beam prediction. Two fusion strategies, namely adaptive fusion and adversarial fusion, are introduced to enable efficient feature integration. The proposed framework is evaluated on datasets generated by the DeepMIMO simulator across four urban scenarios at 3.5 GHz following 3GPP specifications, where both reference signal received power and user equipment location information are available. Simulation results under both in-distribution and out-of-distribution settings demonstrate that the proposed approach consistently outperforms traditional baselines and achieves more accurate and robust beam prediction by effectively incorporating positioning information.

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arXiv2026

Dynamic Channel Charting: An LSTM-AE-based Approach

With the development of the sixth-generation (6G) communication system, Channel State Information (CSI) plays a crucial role in improving network performance. Traditional Channel Charting (CC) methods map high-dimensional CSI data to low-dimensional spaces to help reveal the geometric structure of wireless channels. However, most existing CC methods focus on learning static geometric structures and ignore the dynamic nature of the channel over time, leading to instability and poor topological consistency of the channel charting in complex environments. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel time-series channel charting approach based on the integration of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks and Auto encoders (AE) (LSTM-AE-CC). This method incorporates a temporal modeling mechanism into the traditional CC framework, capturing temporal dependencies in CSI using LSTM and learning continuous latent representations with AE. The proposed method ensures both geometric consistency of the channel and explicit modeling of the time-varying properties. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms traditional CC methods in various real-world communication scenarios, particularly in terms of channel charting stability, trajectory continuity, and long-term predictability.

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arXiv2026

Near-Field Positioning for XL-MIMO Uniform Circular Arrays: An Attention-Enhanced Deep Learning Approach

In the evolving landscape of sixth-generation (6G) mobile communication, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are incorporating an unprecedented number of antenna elements, advancing towards Extremely large-scale multiple-input-multiple-output (XL-MIMO) systems. This enhancement significantly increases the spatial degrees of freedom, offering substantial benefits for wireless positioning. However, the expansion of the near-field range in XL-MIMO challenges the traditional far-field assumptions used in previous MIMO models. Among various configurations, uniform circular arrays (UCAs) demonstrate superior performance by maintaining constant angular resolution, unlike linear planar arrays. Addressing how to leverage the expanded aperture and harness the near-field effects in XL-MIMO systems remains an area requiring further investigation. In this paper, we introduce an attention-enhanced deep learning approach for precise positioning. We employ a dual-path channel attention mechanism and a spatial attention mechanism to effectively integrate channel-level and spatial-level features. Our comprehensive simulations show that this model surpasses existing benchmarks such as attention-based positioning networks (ABPN), near-field positioning networks (NFLnet), convolutional neural networks (CNN), and multilayer perceptrons (MLP). The proposed model achieves superior positioning accuracy by utilizing covariance metrics of the input signal. Also, simulation results reveal that covariance metric is advantageous for positioning over channel state information (CSI) in terms of positioning accuracy and model efficiency.

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arXiv2026

Effective outdoor pathloss prediction: A multi-layer segmentation approach with weighting map

Predicting pathloss by considering the physical environment is crucial for effective wireless network planning. Traditional methods, such as ray tracing and model-based approaches, often face challenges due to high computational complexity and discrepancies between models and real-world environments. In contrast, deep learning has emerged as a promising alternative, offering accurate path loss predictions with reduced computational complexity. In our research, we introduce a ResNet-based model designed to enhance path loss prediction. We employ innovative techniques to capture key features of the environment by generating transmission (Tx) and reception (Rx) depth maps, as well as a distance map from the geographic data. Recognizing the significant attenuation caused by signal reflection and diffraction, particularly at high frequencies, we have developed a weighting map that emphasizes the areas adjacent to the direct path between Tx and Rx for path loss prediction. {Extensive simulations demonstrate that our model outperforms PPNet, RPNet, and Vision Transformer (ViT) by 1.2-3.0 dB using dataset of ITU challenge 2024 and ICASSP 2023. In addition, the floating point operations (FLOPs) of the proposed model is 60\% less than those of benchmarks.} Additionally, ablation studies confirm that the inclusion of the weighting map significantly enhances prediction performance.

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arXiv2026

AI-Driven Channel State Information (CSI) Extrapolation for 6G: Current Situations, Challenges and Future Research

CSI extrapolation is an effective method for acquiring channel state information (CSI), essential for optimizing performance of sixth-generation (6G) communication systems. Traditional channel estimation methods face scalability challenges due to the surging overhead in emerging high-mobility, extremely large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (EL-MIMO), and multi-band systems. CSI extrapolation techniques mitigate these challenges by using partial CSI to infer complete CSI, significantly reducing overhead. Despite growing interest, a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art (SOTA) CSI extrapolation techniques is lacking. This paper addresses this gap by comprehensively reviewing the current status, challenges, and future directions of CSI extrapolation for the first time. Firstly, we analyze the performance metrics specific to CSI extrapolation in 6G, including extrapolation accuracy, adaption to dynamic scenarios and algorithm costs. We then review both model-driven and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven approaches for time, frequency, antenna, and multi-domain CSI extrapolation. Key insights and takeaways from these methods are summarized. Given the promise of AI-driven methods in meeting performance requirements, we also examine the open-source channel datasets and simulators that could be used to train high-performance AI-driven CSI extrapolation models. Finally, we discuss the critical challenges of the existing research and propose perspective research opportunities.

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arXiv2024

Optimizing Information Propagation for Blockchain-empowered Mobile AIGC: A Graph Attention Network Approach

Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content (AIGC) is a rapidly evolving field that utilizes advanced AI algorithms to generate content. Through integration with mobile edge networks, mobile AIGC networks have gained significant attention, which can provide real-time customized and personalized AIGC services and products. Since blockchains can facilitate decentralized and transparent data management, AIGC products can be securely managed by blockchain to avoid tampering and plagiarization. However, the evolution of blockchain-empowered mobile AIGC is still in its nascent phase, grappling with challenges such as improving information propagation efficiency to enable blockchain-empowered mobile AIGC. In this paper, we design a Graph Attention Network (GAT)-based information propagation optimization framework for blockchain-empowered mobile AIGC. We first innovatively apply age of information as a data-freshness metric to measure information propagation efficiency in public blockchains. Considering that GATs possess the excellent ability to process graph-structured data, we utilize the GAT to obtain the optimal information propagation trajectory. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme exhibits the most outstanding information propagation efficiency compared with traditional routing mechanisms.

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