Machine Learning for LiDAR-Based Indoor Surface Classification in Intelligent Wireless Environments

Reliable connectivity in millimeter-wave (mmWave) and sub-terahertz (sub-THz) networks depends on reflections from surrounding surfaces, as high-frequency signals are highly vulnerable to blockage. The scattering behavior of a surface is determined not only by material permittivity but also by roughness, which governs whether energy remains in the specular direction or is diffusely scattered. This paper presents a LiDAR-driven machine learning framework for classifying indoor surfaces into semi-specular and low-specular categories, using optical reflectivity as a proxy for electromagnetic scattering behavior. A dataset of over 78,000 points from 15 representative indoor materials was collected and partitioned into 3 cm x 3 cm patches to enable classification from partial views. Patch-level features capturing geometry and intensity, including elevation angle, natural-log-scaled intensity, and max-to-mean ratio, were extracted and used to train Random Forest, XGBoost, and neural network classifiers. Results show that ensemble tree-based models consistently provide the best trade-off between accuracy and robustness, confirming that LiDAR-derived features capture roughness-induced scattering effects. The proposed framework enables the generation of scatter aware environment maps and digital twins, supporting adaptive beam management, blockage recovery, and environment-aware connectivity in next-generation networks.

Compressive Beam Alignment for Indoor Millimeter-Wave Systems

The dynamic nature of indoor environments poses unique challenges for next-generation millimeter-wave (mmwave) connectivity. These challenges arise from blockages due to mobile obstacles, mm-wave signal scattering caused by indoor surfaces, and imperfections in phased antenna arrays. Consequently, traditional compressed sensing (CS) techniques for beam alignment become ineffective in practice under such settings. This paper proposes a novel beam alignment technique suited for mm-wave systems operating in indoor environments. The proposed technique exploits the energy compaction property of the discrete cosine transform to compressively sense and identify the strongest cluster locations in the transform domain for robust beamforming. Experimental results at 60 GHz demonstrate successful beam alignment with limited measurements even in the presence of partial blockages during the beam training phase.