Bedrock Models in Communication and Sensing: Advancing Generalization, Transferability, and Performance

Deep learning (DL) has emerged as a powerful tool for addressing the intricate challenges inherent in communication and sensing systems, significantly enhancing the intelligence of future sixth-generation (6G) networks. A substantial body of research has highlighted the promise of DL-based techniques in these domains. However, in addition to improving accuracy, new challenges must be addressed regarding the generalization and transferability of DL-based systems. To tackle these issues, this paper introduces a series of mathematically grounded and modularized models, referred to as bedrock models, specifically designed for integration into both communication and sensing systems. Due to their modular architecture, these models can be seamlessly incorporated into existing communication and sensing frameworks. For communication systems, the proposed models demonstrate substantial performance improvements while also exhibit strong transferability, enabling direct parameter sharing across different tasks, which greatly facilitates practical deployment. In sensing applications, the integration of the bedrock models into existing systems results in superior performance, reducing delay and Doppler estimation errors by an order of magnitude compared to traditional methods. Additionally, a pre-equalization strategy based on the bedrock models is proposed for the transmitter. By leveraging sensing information, the transmitted communication signal is dynamically adjusted without altering the communication model pre-trained in AWGN channels. This adaptation enables the system to effectively cope with doubly dispersive channels, restoring the received signal to an AWGN-like condition and achieving near-optimal performance. Simulation results substantiate the effectiveness and transferability of the proposed bedrock models, underscoring their potential to advance both communication and sensing systems.