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Franz Weißer

Publications and source records attributed to Franz Weißer.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

OTFS Channel Estimation Utilizing Sparse Bayesian Generative Modelling

One of the key challenges of future wireless communication systems is ensuring reliability in high-speed mobile scenarios, where accurate recovery of channel state information (CSI) is essential. Many recent studies have concluded that orthogonal time-frequency space (OTFS) modulation is a promising technology for addressing this challenge. Additionally, machine learning (ML)-based methods have the potential to improve channel estimation performance by leveraging ambient information more effectively than classical estimation techniques. This paper particularly addresses channel estimation for OTFS by employing a compressive sensing (CS)-based sparse Bayesian generative model (SBGM), namely the recently introduced compressive sensing Gaussian mixture model (CSGMM). We show that our proposed approach yields significant improvement in normalized mean squared error (NMSE) over the next-best-performing baseline. We additionally provide insights into the theoretical potential of the model to optimally approximate complex channel distributions with arbitrary precision within the Doppler-delay (DD) domain. To summarize, this work establishes the OTFS-CSGMM framework as a promising solution for high mobility wireless channel estimation.

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Lightweight Beam Index Map Using Coupled Gaussian Mixture Models

This paper addresses the beam alignment problem in MIMO systems from a decentralized, mobile terminal (MT)-centric perspective. We propose a lightweight machine learning approach that leverages position information to perform beam selection without relying on exhaustive search or strong base station coordination. Specifically, we model the joint distribution of MT positions and channel observations using a coupled Gaussian mixture model (GMM), enabling the construction of a beam index map (BIM) that directly associates spatial locations with codebook entries. To account for practical hardware constraints, we introduce a refinement procedure that adapts the learned statistical model to fixed codebooks. The resulting method is computationally efficient and suitable for deployment on resource-constrained devices. Simulation results on the DeepMIMO and QuaDRiGa datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms clustering-based fingerprinting methods and achieves competitive performance compared to exhaustive search, while significantly reducing complexity and overhead.

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Joint Access Point Selection and Precoder Design under Statistical CSI

This work addresses joint access point (AP) selection and precoding for sum-rate maximization under statistical channel state information (CSI) in multi-AP multi-user systems. To this end, we propose two approaches. The first method is an iterative alternating optimization algorithm that updates the precoding vectors via the stochastic WMMSE (SWMMSE) algorithm and the assignment variables via a projected gradient descent step. The second method is a graph neural network (GNN)-based framework that solves the same problem in a single forward pass during inference. Building on an attention-based Edge-GNN architecture, we extend it to a multi-AP scenario, enabling the joint learning of assignment variables and precoding vectors from statistical CSI alone. Results show that the GNN outperforms the iterative algorithm across the tested signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) range and generalizes to varying numbers of users with comparable performance. Both approaches are also compared to various baseline techniques.

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Context-Aware CSI Prediction for Access Point Selection Utilizing Conditional VAEs

Indoor wireless communication environments are strongly influenced by dynamic conditions, which affect channel state information (CSI) and, consequently, the precoding strategy and the selection of the access point (AP). Device-free sensing and localization functionalities can provide information about these conditions, including, for example, the user's position and the position of mobile blocking objects. To model the statistical relationship between the CSI and the provided conditions, we employ a conditional variational autoencoder (cVAE). We treat the user and object positions - referred to as context information - as conditional inputs to the cVAE. The proposed model does not rely on ground-truth CSI and is trained directly on noisy data. Once trained, the framework can infer channel statistics solely from user and blocking object positions, enabling proactive AP selection based on inferred statistical CSI without requiring continuous CSI estimation. Extensive simulations with the state-of-the-art ray-tracing tool Sionna validate the proposed method.

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On the Asymptotic MSE-Optimality of Parametric Bayesian Channel Estimation in mmWave Systems

The mean square error (MSE)-optimal estimator is known to be the conditional mean estimator (CME). This paper introduces a parametric channel estimation technique based on Bayesian estimation. This technique uses the estimated channel parameters to parameterize the well-known LMMSE channel estimator. We first derive an asymptotic CME formulation that holds for a wide range of priors on the channel parameters. Based on this, we show that parametric Bayesian channel estimation is MSE-optimal for high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and/or long coherence intervals, i.e., many noisy observations provided within one coherence interval. Numerical simulations validate the derived formulations.

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Semi-Blind Strategies for MMSE Channel Estimation Utilizing Generative Priors

This paper investigates semi-blind channel estimation for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. To this end, we first estimate a subspace based on all received symbols (pilot and payload) to provide additional information for subsequent channel estimation. This additional information enhances minimum mean square error (MMSE) channel estimation. Two variants of the linear MMSE (LMMSE) estimator are formulated, where the first one solves the estimation within the subspace, and the second one uses a subspace projection as a preprocessing step. Theoretical derivations show the latter method's superior estimation performance in terms of mean square error for uncorrelated Rayleigh fading. Further, we provide asymptotic insights on how the proposed MMSE-based channel estimation strategy outperforms the unbiased Cramer-Rao bound. Subsequently, we introduce parameterizations of these semi-blind LMMSE estimators based on two different conditional Gaussian latent models, i.e., the Gaussian mixture model and the variational autoencoder. Both models learn the propagation environment's underlying channel distribution based on training data and serve as generative priors for our semi-blind channel estimation. Extensive simulations for real-world measurement data and spatial channel models show the proposed methods' superior performance compared to state-of-the-art semi-blind channel estimators in terms of MSE.

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Sparse Bayesian Generative Modeling for Joint Parameter and Channel Estimation

Leveraging the inherent connection between sensing systems and wireless communications can improve their overall performance and is the core objective of joint communications and sensing. For effective communications, one has to frequently estimate the channel. Sensing, on the other hand, infers properties of the environment mostly based on estimated physical channel parameters, such as directions of arrival or delays. This work presents a low-complexity generative modeling approach that simultaneously estimates the wireless channel and its physical parameters without additional computational overhead. To this end, we leverage a recently proposed physics-informed generative model for wireless channels based on sparse Bayesian generative modeling and exploit the feature of conditionally Gaussian generative models to approximate the conditional mean estimator.

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DoA-Aided MMSE Channel Estimation for Wireless Communication Systems

This paper investigates the combination of parametric channel estimation with minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation. We propose a direction-of-arrival (DoA)-aided two-stage channel estimation technique that utilizes the decomposition of wireless communication channels into a line-of-sight (LoS) path and its orthogonal subspace. After estimating the channel along the dominant direction, we utilize a Gaussian mixture model to estimate the conditionally Gaussian distributed random vector, which represents the multipath propagation. The proposed two-stage estimator allows pre-computing the respective estimation filters, tremendously reducing the computational complexity. Numerical simulations with typical channel models depict the superior performance of our proposed two-stage estimation approach compared to state-of-the-art methods.

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Unsupervised Parameter Estimation using Model-based Decoder

In this work, we consider the use of a model-based decoder in combination with an unsupervised learning strategy for direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation. Relying only on unlabeled training data we show in our analysis that we can outperform existing unsupervised machine learning methods and classical methods. The proposed approach consists of introducing a model-based decoder in an autoencoder architecture which leads to a meaningful representation of the statistical model in the latent space of the autoencoder. Our numerical simulations show that the performance of the presented approach is not affected by correlated signals and performs well for both, uncorrelated and correlated, scenarios. This is a result of the fact, that, in the proposed framework, the signal covariance matrix and the DOAs are estimated simultaneously.

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Data-Aided Channel Estimation Utilizing Gaussian Mixture Models

In this work, we propose two methods that utilize data symbols in addition to pilot symbols for improved channel estimation quality in a multi-user system, so-called semi-blind channel estimation. To this end, a subspace is estimated based on all received symbols and utilized to improve the estimation quality of a Gaussian mixture model-based channel estimator, which solely uses pilot symbols for channel estimation. Both of the proposed approaches allow for parallelization. Even the precomputation of estimation filters, which is beneficial in terms of computational complexity, is enabled by one of the proposed methods. Numerical simulations for real channel measurement data available to us show that the proposed methods outperform the studied state-of-the-art channel estimators.

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Model Order Selection with Variational Autoencoding

Classical methods for model order selection often fail in scenarios with low SNR or few snapshots. Deep learning-based methods are promising alternatives for such challenging situations as they compensate lack of information in the available observations with training on large datasets. This manuscript proposes an approach that uses a variational autoencoder (VAE) for model order selection. The idea is to learn a parameterized conditional covariance matrix at the VAE decoder that approximates the true signal covariance matrix. The method is unsupervised and only requires a small representative dataset for calibration after training the VAE. Numerical simulations show that the proposed method outperforms classical methods and even reaches or beats a supervised approach depending on the considered snapshots.

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