Channel charting is a recently proposed framework that applies dimensionality reduction to channel state information (CSI) in wireless systems with the goal of associating a pseudo-position to each mobile user in a low-dimensional space: the channel chart. Channel charting summarizes the entire CSI dataset in a self-supervised manner, which opens up a range of applications that are tied to user location. In this article, we introduce the theoretical underpinnings of channel charting and present an overview of recent algorithmic developments and experimental results obtained in the field. We furthermore discuss concrete application examples of channel charting to network- and user-related applications, and we provide a perspective on future developments and challenges as well as the role of channel charting in next-generation wireless networks.

翻译：信道图谱构建是近年来提出的一种框架，其将降维技术应用于无线系统中的信道状态信息（CSI），旨在为低维空间中的每个移动用户关联一个伪位置：即信道图谱。该技术以自监督方式对整个CSI数据集进行摘要，从而催生出一系列与用户位置相关的应用。本文介绍了信道图谱构建的理论基础，概述了该领域的最新算法进展与实验结果，并进一步讨论了信道图谱在面向网络和用户的应用中的具体实例。此外，我们展望了未来发展方向与挑战，以及信道图谱构建在下一代无线网络中的作用。