A Very Brief Introduction to Machine Learning With Applications to Communication Systems

Given the unprecedented availability of data and computing resources, there is widespread renewed interest in applying data-driven machine learning methods to problems for which the development of conventional engineering solutions is challenged by modelling or algorithmic deficiencies. This tutorial-style paper starts by addressing the questions of why and when such techniques can be useful. It then provides a high-level introduction to the basics of supervised and unsupervised learning. For both supervised and unsupervised learning, exemplifying applications to communication networks are discussed by distinguishing tasks carried out at the edge and at the cloud segments of the network at different layers of the protocol stack

Semi-supervised MIMO Detection Using Cycle-consistent Generative Adversarial Network

In this paper, a new semi-supervised deep multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detection approach using a cycle-consistent generative adversarial network (CycleGAN) is proposed for communication systems without any prior knowledge of underlying channel distributions. Specifically, we propose the CycleGAN detector by constructing a bidirectional loop of two modified least squares generative adversarial networks (LS-GAN). The forward LS-GAN learns to model the transmission process, while the backward LS-GAN learns to detect the received signals. By optimizing the cycle-consistency of the transmitted and received signals through this loop, the proposed method is trained online and semi-supervisedly using both the pilots and the received payload data. As such, the demand on labelled training dataset is considerably controlled, and thus the overhead is effectively reduced. Numerical results show that the proposed CycleGAN detector achieves better performance in terms of both bit error-rate (BER) and achievable rate than existing semi-blind deep learning (DL) detection methods as well as conventional linear detectors, especially when considering signal distortion due to the nonlinearity of power amplifiers (PA) at the transmitter