Continual Learning-Based Fast Beamforming Adaptation in Downlink MISO Systems

Beamforming is an effective way to improve spectrum efficiency in multi-antenna systems. However, conventional iterative algorithms suffering from high computational delay renders beamforming solutions outdated and deep learning (DL) based realtime solutions suffer from the “task mismatch” problem, leading to severe performance deterioration. To resolve these issues, this letter proposes a beamforming adaptation scheme, named continual learning based beamforming neural network (CL-BNN), which can continuously learn and optimize the downlink beamforming in dynamic environment. The proposed CL-BNN scheme is model-driven and uses domain/expert knowledge to reduce training complexity. By combining our customized selection criteria into the structure of the CL-BNN, which selects the appropriate samples from the existing data and newly received data into a memory set for model training, taking into account the objective function, such that the tradeoff between maintaining performance of the trained task and adapting to the new task is achieved. Simulation results show that the proposed CL-BNN scheme achieves good adaptability in dynamic environments with low complexity.