WiFo-MUD: Wireless Foundation Model for Heterogeneous Multi-User Demodulator

TL;DR

WiFo-MUD is a novel diffusion-based foundation model designed for multi-user wireless signal demodulation, offering improved accuracy, adaptability, and efficiency in heterogeneous environments.

Contribution

It introduces a universal diffusion model with specialized denoising, distillation, and grouping strategies for robust multi-user demodulation in diverse wireless settings.

Findings

Achieves state-of-the-art performance on large-scale heterogeneous datasets.

Demonstrates strong generalization across various system configurations.

Provides efficient inference suitable for practical deployment.

Abstract

Multi-user signal demodulation is critical to wireless communications, directly impacting transmission reliability and efficiency. However, existing demodulators underperform in generic multi-user environments: classical demodulators struggle to balance accuracy and complexity, while deep learning-based methods lack adaptability under heterogeneous configurations. Although diffusion models have been introduced for demodulation, their flexibility remains limited for practical use. To address these issues, this work proposes WiFo-MUD, a universal diffusion-based foundation model for multi-user demodulation. The model aligns inter-user signal-to-noise ratio imbalance and performs conditional denoising via a customized backbone. Furthermore, a communication-aware consistency distillation method and a dynamic user-grouping strategy are devised to enhance inference. WiFo-MUD achieves state-of-the-art results on large-scale heterogeneous datasets, demonstrating efficient inference and strong generalization across varying system configurations.