Conference Paper August 2026

Geometry-Aware Regularization for Deep-Unfolded MIMO-OTFS Detection

Ntavanelos, N., Vlachos, E.
2026 Next Generation Communications Conference (NextGCom 2026)

Abstract

We study symbol detection in Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (MIMO-OTFS) systems over geometry-based, time-varying multipath channels, where multipath propagation induces spatial and fractional Doppler–Delay (DD) coupling and leads to non-uniform scaling across symbol components. We analytically characterize this non-uniform diagonal structure of the MIMO-OTFS Gram matrix, showing that all diagonal variation arises exclusively from inter-path coupling. Motivated by this result, we adopt a deep-unfolded Conjugate Gradient (CG) framework and introduce a geometry-aware coordinate-wise regularizer directly into the underlying linear system, with weights learned in a data-driven manner. Simulation results under both low- and high-mobility scenarios show that, for moderately separated propagation paths, the proposed detector outperforms low-complexity baselines and approaches the performance of more complex neural architectures at medium and high Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR).

Type Conference Paper
Publication 2026 Next Generation Communications Conference (NextGCom 2026)
Date August 2026

Key Contributions

  • Gram matrix analysis: Analytical characterization of the non-uniform diagonal structure of the MIMO-OTFS Gram matrix, proving that all diagonal variation arises exclusively from inter-path coupling.
  • Geometry-aware regularizer: A coordinate-wise regularizer embedded into a deep-unfolded Conjugate Gradient detector, with per-component weights learned in a data-driven manner.
  • Performance gains: The proposed detector outperforms low-complexity baselines and approaches heavier neural architectures at medium-to-high SNR, with improved robustness in high-mobility scenarios.