Enhancing Reliability in AI-Based CSI Prediction: A Proxy-Based Performance Monitoring Approach

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based channel state information (CSI) prediction, aimed at enhancing CSI accuracy and reducing overhead, has shown significant advancements over traditional model-based prediction methods. Despite these advantages, its practical deployment has been hindered by unreliable prediction performance due to AI instability. This study introduces a reliable AI-based CSI prediction framework by implementing a proxy-based performance monitoring mechanism. Specifically, we deploy a lightweight proxy at the user equipment (UE), trained via knowledge distillation to accommodate the UE’s limited capacities. This proxy mimics the output of the CSI prediction network at the base station (BS) side, enabling the UE to monitor the accuracy of the predicted CSI and prevent undesirable outcomes. To overcome the deployment challenges in operational systems, we detail the practical implementation procedures of our proposed method, covering both offline training and online operation phases. Simulation results show that our proxy-based monitor can achieve over 90% consistency with the CSI prediction network at the BS side and avoid over 85% of unsatisfactory prediction outcomes under various practical considerations, demonstrating remarkable generalization capabilities across different configurations.