Explainable Task-Oriented Token Communication for AI-Native 6G Networks

The integration of Foundation Models (FMs) and wireless communications is driving the evolution of image communication from bit-accurate transmission toward task-oriented transmission. However, existing task-oriented image communication methods still face three major challenges: insufficient task-oriented Token representation, inadequate collaboration between Visual Tokens and Task Tokens, and limited interpretability of task decisions. To address these challenges, we propose an Explainable Task-Oriented Token Communication (ET-TokenCom) framework. By treating Tokens as unified units for information representation and transmission, the proposed framework constructs an end-to-end communication link that spans visual perception, wireless transmission, and task reasoning. At the transmitter, the ET-TokenCom framework extracts Visual Tokens from images to preserve low-level visual information. Meanwhile, Task Tokens generated by the FM are introduced to represent the target information and decision intent required by the current task. A Cross-Modal Attention (CMA) fusion mechanism is further designed, enabling Task Tokens to explicitly guide the selection, weighting, and transmission of Visual Tokens. At the receiver, the framework integrates Token decoding with an explainable output mechanism, where attention heatmaps are generated to highlight critical perceptual regions under different task objectives and reveal the influence of Task Tokens on the outputs. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed ET-TokenCom framework.

A Hybrid Near-field Indoor Channel Model for THz Bands Based on Surface Scattering Characteristics

Terahertz (THz) communication and extremely large-scale MIMO (XL-MIMO) are essential for achieving ultra-high data rates in future 6G systems. However, at sub-millimeter wavelengths, typical indoor materials exhibit significant roughness that invalidates conventional ideal smooth surface assumptions, while massive array apertures introduce pronounced near-field effects and spatial non-stationarity. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a hybrid near-field channel model utilizing surface scattering characteristics based on distinct measurement campaigns. First, based on typical indoor materials scattering measurements across the 260-400 GHz band, an improved Beckmann-Kirchhoff (B-K) model is developed to accurately characterize surface roughness and diffuse scattering behavior. The model independently analyzes single-bounce (SB) and multi-bounce (MB) clusters by applying deterministic rough surface scattering theory and geometry-statistical approach, respectively. Then, using near-field spatial non-stationarity measurements from a 630-element virtual array in the 330-360 GHz band, a Dual-Gaussian Mixture Model (DMM) and a Negative Binomial (NB) distribution are adopted to describe the lengths and the number of spatial visibility regions (VRs), respectively. Additionally, a Weibull distribution is employed to model the intra-region power fluctuations. Finally, comprehensive XL-MIMO channel evaluations within the same band demonstrate that the proposed model aligns closely with measured results in terms of the spatial cross-correlation function (SCCF), frequency cross-correlation function (FCF), and channel capacity. By reproducing the spatial sparsity of THz band, the proposed model overcomes the limitation of conventional standard models, such as 3GPP 38.901 and WINNER II, in significantly overestimating channel capacity.

Beyond the RF Paradigm: Rydberg Atomic Receivers for Next-Generation IoT

Next-generation Internet-of-Things (IoT) is evolving toward a ubiquitous, ultra-low-power, and multi-band heterogeneous networking paradigm that seamlessly integrates terrestrial, non-terrestrial, and ambient devices. This vision places unprecedented demands on conventional radio frequency (RF) receivers, whose fundamental bottlenecks in sensitivity, power consumption, coverage, and multi-band operation are rooted in the RF antenna. To tackle these issues, we show that the quantum properties of Rydberg atomic quantum receivers (RAQRs), including ultra-high sensitivity, broad frequency agility, and diverse reception modalities, provide a physically distinct receiver-side path that replaces the conventional antenna-and-low-noise-amplifier chain. Using LoRa, narrowband IoT, and ambient IoT as case studies, this article shows that RAQRs deliver significant gains in weak-uplink, low-power, and battery-free regimes. A stochastic-geometry analysis in cellular and cell-free architectures then maps these device-level gains onto network coverage, where the RAQR retains roughly a 4 dB half-coverage advantage over the RF receiver in sparse deployments at \(λ\sim 10^{-5}~{\mathrm m}^{-2}\), with the gain eroded as device density grows. The open challenges are presented to stand between current RAQR prototypes and deployable IoT infrastructure.

RFDT-Channel: RGB-LiDAR-Based RF Digital Twin Scene Construction for 28 GHz Indoor Ray-Tracing Channel Simulation

Real-scene indoor millimeter-wave simulation requires efficient modeling of radio frequency (RF)-computable geometry and electromagnetic material properties. To address the low efficiency of manual scene modeling, the limited RF adaptability of visually reconstructed meshes, and the lack of material binding in 28 GHz ray-tracing simulation, RFDT-Channel is developed as an RF digital twin scene construction workflow based on red-green-blue (RGB) images and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point clouds. Indoor videos and point clouds are collected by a Jetson Orin platform with LiDAR and GMSL cameras. An initial triangular mesh is generated through COLMAP, 3D Gaussian Splatting, and SuGaR. The LiDAR point cloud then provides geometric and scale references for RF-oriented regularization in Blender, including alignment, wall solidification, door/window opening construction, and topology repair. OpenScene semantic segmentation maps major indoor structures to concrete, glass, wood, and metal materials, and Sionna RT performs 28 GHz ray tracing. Under a fixed transmitter-receiver deployment, the generated channel impulse response (CIR), channel frequency response (CFR), and Radio Map results show that material binding mainly changes weak reflection, transmission, and scattering paths, reducing the number of effective paths from about 742 to about 52 while keeping the dominant path amplitude nearly unchanged.

Channel Measurements and Characterization with Phase Drift Compensation for Outdoor 330-360 GHz MIMO Communications

In this paper, an outdoor channel measurement campaign at 330-360 GHz employing a 128 * 4 virtual antenna array (VAA)-based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configuration is conducted. The transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) location pairs are classified into line-of-sight (LoS) and obstructed-LoS (OLoS) scenarios to enable a detailed investigation of outdoor terahertz (THz) band channel characteristics. During the measurement process, the stationarity of the outdoor environment is carefully verified, and a linear phase drift (PD) effect is identified. Then, we propose a PD-aware Space-Alternating Generalized Expectation-Maximization (SAGE) algorithm, which significantly improves both delay resolution and channel parameter estimation accuracy. Based on the processed measurement data, we characterize key channel properties, including the power delay profile, path loss, shadow fading, delay spread, angular spread, Rician K-factor, as well as their cumulative distribution functions and correlation characteristics. In addition, near-field effects and MIMO-specific properties, including the spatial non-stationarity and the cluster birth-death property, are analyzed.

A Measurement-Based Parameterization of Physics Reflection Models for Terahertz Communication

The accurate modeling of reflection coefficients is pivotal for developing reliable channel models in emerging terahertz (THz) communications. This study establishes a 300$\sim$400 GHz channel measurement platform to measure the reflection coefficients of various materials. Based on the analysis of measured data, we propose the single-layer interference with an extended-parameterized Lorentz/Drude (SLI-EPLD) reflection coefficient model. In this model, a sub-band modeling strategy is adopted to characterize the variation of reflection coefficients with frequency, while a parameterized mapping approach is employed to ensure the stability of model parameters. Furthermore, the weighted sub-band fitting for trend regression (WF-TREND) algorithm is introduced to achieve precise sub-band parameter fitting. Validation results demonstrate superior performance to existing models across multiple materials. The reflection coefficient model established in this work serves as a critical foundation for channel modeling in 300$\sim$400 GHz for high-THz communication.

CAT-MoEformer: Context-Aware Temporal MoE Transformer for Beam Prediction

This paper proposes CAT-MoEformer, a context-aware transformer with scene-conditioned mixture-of-experts (MoE) feed-forward networks, for proactive mmWave beam prediction from compressed uplink pilot observations. The spatial encoder comprises a three-layer asymmetric convolutional network followed by a squeeze-and-excitation recalibration block, which extracts frequency-beam correlation features from pilot tensors without explicit channel reconstruction. A truncated pretrained GPT-2 backbone models the temporal evolution of beam sequences, with the feed-forward networks in the upper three transformer layers replaced by scene-conditioned MoE-FFN modules. A lightweight gating network maps the scenario label and normalized user equipment speed to expert mixing weights, conditioning the routing decision on physical propagation descriptors rather than on latent hidden states. This design yields interpretable expert assignments and eliminates the load imbalance associated with token-level routing. To prevent expert collapse under soft routing, a three-stage training strategy is introduced: hard expert assignment in the first stage establishes scene-specific specialization, isolated gating network training in the second stage aligns the soft routing distribution with the hard partition, and top-1 hard inference in the third stage fine-tunes the model under deterministic single-expert activation to maximize scene-specific precision. Simulation results on 3GPP TR 38.901 Urban Macro channel simulations with $64{,}000$ user samples demonstrate that CAT-MoEformer achieves a Top-1 beam prediction accuracy of $94.88\%$ and a beam switching instant accuracy of $80.62\%$, representing gains of $2.33\%$ and $9.55\%$ respectively over a CNN+GPT-2 baseline, with an inference latency of $0.52$~ms.

Signal-Dependent Shot Noise Modeling of Rydberg Atomic Quantum Receivers: A Design Perspective

In this paper, we develop a communication-oriented complex baseband equivalent model for superheterodyne Rydberg atomic quantum receivers (RAQRs). The model explicitly captures photodetection-induced signal-dependent shot noise and its coupling with the optical operating point. By leveraging an atomic superheterodyne architecture and a strong local oscillator, we construct a complex baseband representation for both the received signal and the signal-dependent shot noise under both direct incoherent optical detection and balanced coherent optical detection. The derived model reveals that the optical operating point jointly determines the normalized effective receive gain and the equivalent noise background, thereby establishing a traceable gain-noise tradeoff governed by system design. More importantly, the proposed model shows that neglecting signal-dependent shot noise may lead to inaccurate operating-point design. Finally, by extending to the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) case, we derive a lower bound on the achievable rate while considering the signal-dependent shot noise. Our analysis \textcolor{black}{reveals} that the non-zero asymptotic rate of RAQ-MIMO and its superiority over conventional RF-MIMO hinge on the normalized noise floor of the RAQ receive chain falling below that of RF MIMO. Simulation results validate our analysis and yield practical, closed-form design guidelines for RAQR front ends, revealing parameter regimes in which RAQ-MIMO outperforms conventional MIMO systems.

Selective Depthwise Separable Convolution for Lightweight Joint Source-Channel Coding in Wireless Image Transmission

Depthwise separable convolutional (DSConv) layers have been successfully applied to deep learning (DL)-based joint source-channel coding (JSCC) schemes to reduce computational complexity. However, a systematic investigation of the layerwise and ratio-wise replacement of standard convolutional (Conv) layers with DSConv layers in JSCC systems for wireless image transmission remains largely unexplored. In this letter, we propose a configurable lightweight JSCC framework that incorporates a selective replacement strategy, enabling flexible substitution of standard Conv layers with DSConv layers at various layer positions and replacement ratios. By adjusting the proportion of layers replaced, we achieve different model compression levels and analyze their impact on reconstruction performance. Furthermore, we investigate how replacements at different encoder and decoder depths influence reconstruction quality under a fixed replacement ratio. Our results show that Conv-to-DSConv replacement at intermediate layers achieves a favorable complexity-performance trade-off, revealing layer-wise redundancy in DL-based JSCC systems. Extensive experiments further demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves substantial parameter reduction with only slight performance degradation, enabling flexible complexity-performance trade-offs for resource-constrained edge devices.

Spherical Antenna Arrays for Future Communications: Principles, Applications, and Research Directions

With the development of 6G technologies, traditional uniform linear arrays (ULAs) and uniform planar arrays (UPAs) can hardly meet the demands of three-dimensional (3D) full-space coverage and high angular resolution. Spherical antenna arrays (SAAs), with elements uniformly distributed on a spherical surface, provide an effective solution. This article analyzes the issues of traditional arrays, summarizes the advantages and typical structures of SAAs, discusses their potential application scenarios, and verifies their superiority over UPAs via a case study. Finally, key technical challenges and corresponding research directions of SAAs are identified, providing a reference for their research and application in future wireless communications.