# RadioTrace: Transmitter-Aware Diffusion for Radio Map Estimation without Deployment-Time Fine-Tuning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20909 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.20909/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion for compression and wireless, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 16 of its 25 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion for compression and wireless](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-for-compression-and-wireless/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [Estimating or Propagating Gradients Through Stochastic Neurons for Conditional Computation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1308.3432/) (2013)
- [RadioUNet: Fast Radio Map Estimation with Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09002/) (2019)
- [A Tutorial on Environment-Aware Communications via Channel Knowledge Map for 6G](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07460/) (2023)
- [RadioDiff: An Effective Generative Diffusion Model for Sampling-Free Dynamic Radio Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08593/) (2024)
- [RME-GAN: A Learning Framework for Radio Map Estimation based on Conditional Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.12817/) (2022)
- [Deep Completion Autoencoders for Radio Map Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.05964/) (2020)
- [Radio Map Estimation: A Data-Driven Approach to Spectrum Cartography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03269/) (2022)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model for Radio Map Estimation in Generative Wireless Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06604/) (2025)
- [RadioDiff-Inverse: Diffusion Enhanced Bayesian Inverse Estimation for ISAC Radio Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14298/) (2025)
- [Fast and Accurate Cooperative Radio Map Estimation Enabled by GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02729/) (2024)
- [CKMDiff: A Generative Diffusion Model for CKM Construction via Inverse Problems with Learned Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17323/) (2025)
- [IMNet: Interference-Aware Channel Knowledge Map Construction and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01279/) (2024)
- [Radio Map Estimation via Latent Domain Plug-and-Play Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13472/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Radio map (RM) estimation aims to reconstruct the spatial distribution of wireless signal characteristics, such as received signal strength (RSS), from sparse measurements, a task that is critical for spectrum management, interference mitigation, and localization in modern wireless networks. Traditional approaches, including interpolation and deep learning, either struggle to capture complex propagation effects or require large-scale retraining for each new sampling pattern, which limits their generalization. More recently, prior-based methods have combined pre-trained generative models with measurements to reduce the need for deployment-time model fine-tuning, but they typically treat the prior as a simple regularizer and lack explicit transmitter-aware integration. In this paper, we propose RadioTrace, a novel RM estimation framework without deployment-time fine-tuning that tightly integrates sparse RSS measurements with a frozen pre-trained diffusion prior. RadioTrace incorporates transmitter (Tx) location estimation directly into the denoising loop, iteratively refining Tx coordinates based on reconstruction quality to guide the generative process. To further enhance robustness, we introduce a propagation-guided K-means initialization that mitigates poor local minima in the Tx update and provides a geometry-consistent starting point. Moreover, we provide a stochastic stability analysis for the Tx-coordinate refinement component, showing that the Tx update remains stable under perturbations induced by diffusion sampling and Tx-map relaxation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RadioTrace achieves competitive performance with state-of-the-art learning-based methods under random sampling, and maintains strong reconstruction quality under restricted-area sampling, highlighting its adaptability, robustness, and practical relevance.