# Diffusion-based Surrogate Model for Time-varying Underwater Acoustic Channels

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.18078 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18078/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [An Introduction to Variational Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02691/) (2019)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07035/) (2017)
- [LSTM: A Search Space Odyssey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.04069/) (2015)
- [A Survey on Generative Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.02646/) (2022)
- [On the Importance of Noise Scheduling for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10972/) (2023)
- [Variational Autoencoders for Learning Nonlinear Dynamics of Physical Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03448/) (2020)
- [Improved Noise Schedule for Diffusion Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03297/) (2024)
- [A Comprehensive Review on Noise Control of Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.04669/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate modeling of time-varying underwater acoustic channels is essential for the design, evaluation, and deployment of reliable underwater communication systems. Conventional physics models require detailed environmental knowledge, while stochastic replay methods are constrained by the limited diversity of measured channels and often fail to generalize to unseen scenarios, reducing their practical applicability. To address these challenges, we propose StableUASim, a pre-trained conditional latent diffusion surrogate model that captures the stochastic dynamics of underwater acoustic communication channels. Leveraging generative modeling, StableUASim produces diverse and statistically realistic channel realizations, while supporting conditional generation from specific measurement samples. Pre-training enables rapid adaptation to new environments using minimal additional data, and the autoencoder latent representation facilitates efficient channel analysis and compression. Experimental results demonstrate that StableUASim accurately reproduces key channel characteristics and communication performance, providing a scalable, data-efficient, and physically consistent surrogate model for both system design and machine learning-driven underwater applications.