skip to main content


Title: Improving Channel Charting with Representation-Constrained Autoencoders
Channel charting (CC) has been proposed recently to enable logical positioning of user equipments (UEs) in the neighborhood of a multi-antenna base-station solely from channel-state information (CSI). CC relies on dimensionality reduction of high-dimensional CSI features in order to construct a channel chart that captures spatial and radio geometries so that UEs close in space are close in the channel chart. In this paper, we demonstrate that autoencoder (AE)-based CC can be augmented with side information that is obtained during the CSI acquisition process. More specifically, we propose to include pairwise representation constraints into AEs with the goal of improving the quality of the learned channel charts. We show that such representation-constrained AEs recover the global geometry of the learned channel charts, which enables CC to perform approximate positioning without global navigation satellite systems or supervised learning methods that rely on extensive and expensive measurement campaigns.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1408006 1535897 1652065 1717559 1824379
NSF-PAR ID:
10113483
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IEEE 20th International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 5
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. null (Ed.)
    Channel state information (CSI)-based fingerprinting via neural networks (NNs) is a promising approach to enable accurate indoor and outdoor positioning of user equipments (UEs), even under challenging propagation conditions. In this paper, we propose a positioning pipeline for wireless LAN MIMO-OFDM systems which uses uplink CSI measurements obtained from one or more unsynchronized access points (APs). For each AP receiver, novel features are first extracted from the CSI that are robust to system impairments arising in real-world transceivers. These features are the inputs to a NN that extracts a probability map indicating the likelihood of a UE being at a given grid point. The NN output is then fused across multiple APs to provide a final position estimate. We provide experimental results with real-world indoor measurements under line-of-sight (LoS) and non-LoS propagation conditions for an 80 MHz bandwidth IEEE 802.11ac system using a two-antenna transmit UE and two AP receivers each with four antennas. Our approach is shown to achieve centimeter-level median distance error, an order of magnitude improvement over a conventional baseline. 
    more » « less
  2. Channel charting is an emerging technology that enables self-supervised pseudo-localization of user equipments by performing dimensionality reduction on large channel-state information (CSI) databases that are passively collected at infrastructure base stations or access points. In this paper, we introduce a new dimensionality reduction method specifically designed for channel charting using a novel split triplet loss, which utilizes physical information available during the CSI acquisition process. In addition, we propose a novel regularizer that exploits the physical concept of inertia, which significantly improves the quality of the learned channel charts. We provide an experimental verification of our methods using synthetic and real-world measured CSI datasets, and we demonstrate that our methods are able to outperform the state-of-the-art in channel charting based on the triplet loss. 
    more » « less
  3. Recent channel state information (CSI)-based positioning pipelines rely on deep neural networks (DNNs) in order to learn a mapping from estimated CSI to position. Since real-world communication transceivers suffer from hardware impairments, CSI-based positioning systems typically rely on features that are designed by hand. In this paper, we propose a CSI-based positioning pipeline that directly takes raw CSI measurements and learns features using a structured DNN in order to generate probability maps describing the likelihood of the transmitter being at pre-defined grid points. To further improve the positioning accuracy of moving user equipments, we propose to fuse a time-series of learned CSI features or a time-series of probability maps. To demonstrate the efficacy of our methods, we perform experiments with real-world indoor line-of-sight (LoS) and nonLoS channel measurements. We show that CSI feature learning and time-series fusion can reduce the mean distance error by up to 2.5× compared to the state-of-the-art. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract

    Graph databases capture richly linked domain knowledge by integrating heterogeneous data and metadata into a unified representation. Here, we present the use of bespoke, interactive data graphics (bar charts, scatter plots, etc.) for visual exploration of a knowledge graph. By modeling a chart as a set of metadata that describes semantic context (SPARQL query) separately from visual context (Vega-Lite specification), we leverage the high-level, declarative nature of the SPARQL and Vega-Lite grammars to concisely specify web-based, interactive data graphics synchronized to a knowledge graph. Resources with dereferenceable URIs (uniform resource identifiers) can employ the hyperlink encoding channel or image marks in Vega-Lite to amplify the information content of a given data graphic, and published charts populate a browsable gallery of the database. We discuss design considerations that arise in relation to portability, persistence, and performance. Altogether, this pairing of SPARQL and Vega-Lite—demonstrated here in the domain of polymer nanocomposite materials science—offers an extensible approach to FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) scientific data visualization within a knowledge graph framework.

     
    more » « less
  5. Massive MIMO systems can achieve high spectrum and energy efficiency in downlink (DL) based on accurate estimate of channel state information (CSI). Existing works have developed learning-based DL CSI estimation that lowers uplink feedback overhead. One often overlooked problem is the limited number of DL pilots available for CSI estimation. One proposed solution leverages temporal CSI coherence by utilizing past CSI estimates and only sending CSI-reference symbols (CSIRS) for partial arrays to preserve CSI recovery performance. Exploiting CSI correlations, FDD channel reciprocity is helpful to base stations with direct access to uplink CSI. In this work, we propose a new learning-based feedback architecture and a reconfigurable CSI-RS placement scheme to reduce DL CSI training overhead and to improve encoding efficiency of CSI feedback. Our results demonstrate superior performance in both indoor and outdoor scenarios by the proposed framework for CSI recovery at substantial reduction of computation power and storage requirements at UEs. 
    more » « less