Adaptive and Flexible Model-Based AI for Deep Receivers in Dynamic Channels

Artificial intelligence (AI) is envisioned to play a key role in future wireless technologies, with deep neural networks (DNNs) enabling digital receivers to learn how to operate in challenging communication scenarios. However, wireless receiver design poses unique challenges that fundamentally differ from those encountered in traditional deep learning domains. The main challenges arise from the limited power and computational resources of wireless devices as well as from the dynamic nature of wireless communications which causes continual changes to the data distribution. These challenges impair conventional AI based on highly-parameterized DNNs, motivating the development of adaptive, flexible, and light-weight AI for wireless communications, which is the focus of this article. We consider how AI-based design of wireless receivers requires rethinking of three main pillars of AI: architecture, data, and training algorithms. In terms of architecture, we review how to design compact DNNs via model-based deep learning. Then, we discuss how to acquire training data for deep receivers without compromising spectral efficiency. Finally, we review efficient, reliable, and robust training algorithms via meta-learning and generalized Bayesian learning. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the complementary effectiveness of each of the surveyed methods. We conclude by presenting opportunities for future research on the development of practical deep receivers.