A Statistical Characterization of Wireless Channels Conditioned on Side Information

TL;DR

This paper develops a framework to categorize side information in wireless channels based on its impact on statistical properties, aiding in improved modeling, estimation, and ML-based applications.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework for classifying side information's effect on wireless channel statistics, integrating probabilistic graph models with traditional channel models.

Findings

Framework effectively categorizes side information impacts.

Enhances channel modeling, estimation, and clustering techniques.

Supports ML applications in wireless communication.

Abstract

Statistical prior channel knowledge, such as the wide-sense-stationary-uncorrelated-scattering (WSSUS) property, and additional side information both can be used to enhance physical layer applications in wireless communication. Generally, the wireless channel's strongly fluctuating path phases and WSSUS property characterize the channel by a zero mean and Toeplitz-structured covariance matrices in different domains. In this work, we derive a framework to comprehensively categorize side information based on whether it preserves or abandons these statistical features conditioned on the given side information. To accomplish this, we combine insights from a generic channel model with the representation of wireless channels as probabilistic graphs. Additionally, we exemplify several applications, ranging from channel modeling to estimation and clustering, which demonstrate how the proposed framework can practically enhance physical layer methods utilizing machine learning (ML).