How Big Should a Wireless Foundation Model Be?
Wireless foundation models are rapidly emerging as a key enabler of AI-native communication systems, yet a fundamental question remains unanswered: how large should these models be? We present a principled, physics-grounded answer, showing that the intrinsic dimensionality (dNL, the nonlinear manifold dimension of the channel) acts as the fundamental bottleneck, defining the scaling ceiling once a data-sufficient regime is reached. This dimensionality is not a design choice but a physical constraint: Maxwell's equations, finite scatterers, and antenna aperture inherently constrain wireless propagation environments to a limited number of degrees of freedom -- spanning 5-35 across both real...
| Authors | Wei-Lun Cheng, Wanjiun Liao |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.IT |
| Published | 8 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 8 May 2026 |
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