Synergizing Global Pattern Learning and Time Order Characterization in Mobile Channel Prediction: An RWKV-Based Approach

Owing to the potential to reduce pilot overhead and mitigate channel aging, channel prediction is emerging as an important research topic in wireless communications. Meanwhile, deep neural networks are becoming a foundational technology for high-precision prediction thanks to their excellent non-linear representation capabilities. In this paper, we conceive a task-driven prediction network, which aims to deeply synergize the following two functions: learning global patterns for shareable features across adjacent time slots and structurally encoding time order to characterize the inherent causality within the channel dynamics. To implement channel prediction accuracy, we employ RWKV (receptance weighted key value) as network backbone and adapt it to the task's specific characteristics, utilizing its deep interleaved learning architecture to extract global patterns across multiple channel samples and leveraging its unique exponential decay to characterize temporal order. These task-driven unique designs significantly improve the learning efficiency of prediction network. Comprehensive experimental evaluations demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over current data-driven methods, such as long short-term memory and Transformer, in the channel prediction task, including 1.84~4.29 dB gains in normalized mean squared error and 2.6~10.5 percentage point gains in cosine correlation.