Deep Learning-Based Multi-User Communication Design for Dense IoT Networks: Interference-Aware Finite-Blocklength Communication and Preliminary MIMO Extensions

Abstract

Dense IoT networks require reliable communication despite limited spectrum and substantial multi-user interference while maintaining manageable receiver complexity. This work introduces a deep-learning-based end-to-end multi-user communication design for interference-limited finite-blocklength IoT scenarios, focusing on short and medium blocklengths. We extend a prior 2-user SiameseNet transceiver framework to accommodate 2, 4, and 8 users, leveraging learned redundancy for interference suppression and noise robustness. Compared to conventional non-orthogonal access baselines, our method demonstrates strong Block Error Rate (BLER) performance across various scenarios without resorting to joint detection; the per-user decoder scales roughly linearly with the number of users. Further, we examine the robustness under interference mismatch and unequal interference strengths, critical for practical deployments with heterogeneous devices. The Latent-space analysis reveals that the learned codeword distance increases as the effective per-user rate decreases, corroborating with the observed BLER improvements. In addition, we also present preliminary results for a 2X2 MIMO setup under fixed-channel CSIT and CSIR, indicating potential for extending the framework to IoT gateways with multiple antennas.

Accepted for publication at IEEE ICSCST 2026