Impact of Time-Varying Channels on MIMO DeepJSCC

This paper investigates the impact of time-varying channels on deep joint) source-channel coding (Deep JSCC over multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. While Deep JSCC is known for its robustness to noise, its resilience to time variations in mobile environments remains underexplored. In this paper, we first train the autoencoder using a single-input single-output (SISO) transmission under an AWGN channel on the premise that MIMO channel is equalized separately. During testing, images are transmitted over time-varying MIMO channels with various precoding techniques. The received signals are processed through a MIMO precoder before decoding. We evaluate image quality using PSNR and SSIM under various MIMO configurations. The results reveal that time variations significantly degrade Deep JSCC performance, particularly at higher mobility speeds. Its coutermeasure is increasing the number of receiving antennas that can effectively mitigates impact of channel aging.