Reading Radio from Camera: Visually-Grounded, Lightweight, and Interpretable RSSI Prediction

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yan, Sen, Hu, Tianyu, Mefgouda, Brahim, Lasaulce, Samson, Debbah, Merouane
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866914595548954624
author Yan, Sen
Hu, Tianyu
Mefgouda, Brahim
Lasaulce, Samson
Debbah, Merouane
author_facet Yan, Sen
Hu, Tianyu
Mefgouda, Brahim
Lasaulce, Samson
Debbah, Merouane
contents Accurate, real-time wireless signal prediction is essential for next-generation networks. However, existing vision-based frameworks often rely on computationally intensive models and are also sensitive to environmental interference. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel, physics-guided and light-weighted framework that predicts the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) from camera images. By decomposing RSSI into its physically interpretable components, path loss and shadow fading, we significantly reduce the model's learning difficulty and exhibit interpretability. Our approach establishes a new state-of-the-art by demonstrating exceptional robustness to environmental interference, a critical flaw in prior work. Quantitatively, our model reduces the prediction root mean squared error (RMSE) by 50.3% under conventional conditions and still achieves an 11.5% lower RMSE than the previous benchmark's interference-eliminated results. This superior performance is achieved with a remarkably lightweight framework, utilizing a MobileNet-based model up to 19 times smaller than competing solutions. The combination of high accuracy, robustness to interference, and computational efficiency makes our framework highly suitable for real-time, on-device deployment in edge devices, paving the way for more intelligent and reliable wireless communication systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_25936
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reading Radio from Camera: Visually-Grounded, Lightweight, and Interpretable RSSI Prediction
Yan, Sen
Hu, Tianyu
Mefgouda, Brahim
Lasaulce, Samson
Debbah, Merouane
Signal Processing
Accurate, real-time wireless signal prediction is essential for next-generation networks. However, existing vision-based frameworks often rely on computationally intensive models and are also sensitive to environmental interference. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel, physics-guided and light-weighted framework that predicts the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) from camera images. By decomposing RSSI into its physically interpretable components, path loss and shadow fading, we significantly reduce the model's learning difficulty and exhibit interpretability. Our approach establishes a new state-of-the-art by demonstrating exceptional robustness to environmental interference, a critical flaw in prior work. Quantitatively, our model reduces the prediction root mean squared error (RMSE) by 50.3% under conventional conditions and still achieves an 11.5% lower RMSE than the previous benchmark's interference-eliminated results. This superior performance is achieved with a remarkably lightweight framework, utilizing a MobileNet-based model up to 19 times smaller than competing solutions. The combination of high accuracy, robustness to interference, and computational efficiency makes our framework highly suitable for real-time, on-device deployment in edge devices, paving the way for more intelligent and reliable wireless communication systems.
title Reading Radio from Camera: Visually-Grounded, Lightweight, and Interpretable RSSI Prediction
topic Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25936