# Towards CSI-Native Foundation Models: A Channel-Adaptive Roadmap for 6G

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.20670 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20670/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 15 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [LLM4CP: Adapting Large Language Models for Channel Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14440/) (2024)
- [Large Wireless Model (LWM): A Foundation Model for Wireless Channels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08872/) (2024)
- [WiFo: Wireless Foundation Model for Channel Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08908/) (2024)
- [Overview of AI and Communication for 6G Network: Fundamentals, Challenges, and Future Research Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14538/) (2024)
- [LVM4CSI: Enabling Direct Application of Pre-Trained Large Vision Models for Wireless Channel Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05121/) (2025)
- [WiFo-2: a generalist foundation model unifies heterogeneous wireless system design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22222/) (2025)
- [HeterCSI: Channel-Adaptive Heterogeneous CSI Pretraining Framework for Generalized Wireless Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.18200/) (2026)
- [LLM4PG: Adapting Large Language Model for Pathloss Map Generation via Synesthesia of Machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02423/) (2025)
- [AirFM-DDA: Air-Interface Foundation Model in the Delay-Doppler-Angle Domain for AI-Native 6G](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00020/) (2026)
- [Adaptive 3D-RoPE: Physics-Aligned Rotary Positional Encoding for Wireless Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00968/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Wireless foundation models offer a path toward reusable channel state information (CSI) intelligence for sixth-generation (6G) systems. However, existing generic-backbone adaptation and CSI pretraining methods often treat CSI as task tensors rather than propagation-conditioned channel responses, thereby failing to capture the intrinsic time-frequency-spatial geometry of wireless environments. This paper presents a channel-adaptive roadmap toward CSI-native foundation models, proposing a unified framework that aligns pretraining, positional modeling, and attention control with three channel requirements: scale-aware heterogeneous exposure, physical time-frequency-antenna coordinates, and correlation-bounded token interaction. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework across three dimensions: zero-shot generalization, reducing NMSE by more than 4 dB across spatial-temporal-frequency tasks; scale extrapolation, yielding up to a 5.4 dB gain under 8 times unseen antenna scaling; and inference efficiency, accelerating mobility-aware processing by up to 18.8%. A system-level evaluation with Sionna SYS further shows that the proposed framework uses only 7.01% of dense-pilot overhead, reaches -18.64 dB average NMSE, and improves average net spectral efficiency by 36.6% over dense LMMSE and 15.5% over WiFo, indicating that CSI-native representation learning can support pilot-efficient radio access.