JSSAnet: Theory-Guided Subchannel Partitioning and Joint Spatial Attention for Near-Field Channel Estimation

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Main Authors: Zhu, Zhiming, Xu, Shu, Li, Chunguo, Huang, Yongming, Yang, Luxi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhu, Zhiming
Xu, Shu
Li, Chunguo
Huang, Yongming
Yang, Luxi
author_facet Zhu, Zhiming
Xu, Shu
Li, Chunguo
Huang, Yongming
Yang, Luxi
contents The deployment of extremely large-scale antenna array (ELAA) in sixth-generation (6G) communication systems introduces unique challenges for efficient near-field channel estimation. To tackle these issues, this paper presents a theory-guided approach that incorporates angular information into an attention-based estimation framework. A piecewise Fourier representation is proposed to implicitly encode the near-field channel's inherent nonlinearity, enabling the entire channel to be segmented into multiple subchannels, each mapped to the angular domain via the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). Then, we develop a joint subchannel-spatial-attention network (JSSAnet) to extract the spatial features of both intra- and inter-subchannels. To guide theoretically the design of the joint attention mechanism, we derive upper and lower bounds based on approximation criteria and DFT quantization loss mitigation, respectively. Following by both bounds, a JSSA layer of an attention block is constructed to assign independent and adaptive spatial attention weights to each subchannel in parallel. Subsequently, a feed-forward network (FFN) of an attention block further captures and refines the residual nonlinear dependencies across subchannels. Moreover, the proposed JSSA map is linearly computed via element-wise product combining large-kernel convolutions (DLKC), maintaining strong contextual learning capability. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of embedding sparsity information into the attention network and demonstrate JSSAnet achieves superior estimation performance compared with existing methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_24505
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle JSSAnet: Theory-Guided Subchannel Partitioning and Joint Spatial Attention for Near-Field Channel Estimation
Zhu, Zhiming
Xu, Shu
Li, Chunguo
Huang, Yongming
Yang, Luxi
Signal Processing
The deployment of extremely large-scale antenna array (ELAA) in sixth-generation (6G) communication systems introduces unique challenges for efficient near-field channel estimation. To tackle these issues, this paper presents a theory-guided approach that incorporates angular information into an attention-based estimation framework. A piecewise Fourier representation is proposed to implicitly encode the near-field channel's inherent nonlinearity, enabling the entire channel to be segmented into multiple subchannels, each mapped to the angular domain via the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). Then, we develop a joint subchannel-spatial-attention network (JSSAnet) to extract the spatial features of both intra- and inter-subchannels. To guide theoretically the design of the joint attention mechanism, we derive upper and lower bounds based on approximation criteria and DFT quantization loss mitigation, respectively. Following by both bounds, a JSSA layer of an attention block is constructed to assign independent and adaptive spatial attention weights to each subchannel in parallel. Subsequently, a feed-forward network (FFN) of an attention block further captures and refines the residual nonlinear dependencies across subchannels. Moreover, the proposed JSSA map is linearly computed via element-wise product combining large-kernel convolutions (DLKC), maintaining strong contextual learning capability. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of embedding sparsity information into the attention network and demonstrate JSSAnet achieves superior estimation performance compared with existing methods.
title JSSAnet: Theory-Guided Subchannel Partitioning and Joint Spatial Attention for Near-Field Channel Estimation
topic Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24505