CityDeploy-Bench: Benchmarking Physics-Grounded Spatial Set Planning for Multi-Transmitter Network Deployment
Organizations: University of Sheffield · University College London
Abstract
Automating city-scale wireless deployment remains challenging under complex urban propagation and network-wide interference. We introduce \textbf{CityDeploy-Bench}, a benchmark that reframes multi-transmitter deployment as \emph{physics-grounded spatial set planning} under a unified ray-tracing verifier. The benchmark separates utility representation from planning dynamics, enabling controlled comparison between direct scalar rewards, relational models, and higher-order interaction structures across diverse planners. Our experiments reveal a clear transition in planning behavior as physical coupling grows. Deployment quality becomes increasingly dependent on whether the learned utility captures collective transmitter interactions, whereas stronger search alone cannot compensate for missing relational structure. This establishes multi-transmitter deployment as a coordination problem over physically interacting sets rather than a collection of independent spatial decisions. We release CityDeploy-Data and the benchmark framework as a reproducible testbed for research linking decision learning with physically grounded wireless network design.
Figures & tables
| Utility | Setting | RT (s) | JM (%) | PL (%) | TP (%) | SINR (%) | RSRP (%) |
| Regressor | Zero-shot | 64.82 1.06 | 34.76 3.31 | 43.28 4.48 | 55.62 4.37 | 41.54 3.72 | 47.31 4.16 |
| Few-shot | 66.31 1.42 | 38.21 2.76 | 46.78 3.71 | 59.08 3.56 | 45.02 3.08 | 50.82 3.43 | |
| Full-pool | 66.76 1.15 | 39.47 2.28 | 48.06 3.12 | 60.31 2.98 | 46.34 2.58 | 52.11 2.87 | |
| Pairwise | Zero-shot | 70.18 1.11 | 37.64 2.91 | 46.21 4.02 | 58.46 3.89 | 44.37 3.31 | 50.18 3.72 |
| Few-shot | 71.82 1.53 | 41.03 2.38 | 49.66 3.31 | 61.84 3.17 | 47.86 2.74 | 53.64 3.03 | |
| Full-pool | 72.31 1.22 | 42.36 1.94 | 50.94 2.76 | 63.08 2.63 | 49.21 2.28 | 54.91 2.52 |
Appendix figures & tables30 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Scene side | Scenes | Master size | Masters/scene | Subsets per master |
| 12 | 2 | 180 | ||
| 18 | 4 | 90 | ||
| 30 | 9 | 60 | ||
| Total | 60 | 5,580 families | 54,900 memberships |
| Split | Groups | Scenes | Deployments | |||
| Training | 36 | 42 | 8 | 12 | 22 | 38,162 |
| Validation | 9 | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 8,019 |
| Test | 9 | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 8,012 |
| Total | 54 | 60 | 12 | 18 | 30 | 54,193 |
| Quantity | Value |
| Carrier frequency; system bandwidth | ; |
| TX power ; TX/RX heights | ; |
| TX/RX antenna | Single element, isotropic, vertical polarization |
| Receiver noise figure | |
| Subcarrier spacing; resource blocks | ; 51 |
| Subcarriers per block; SSB power offset | 12; |
| Service map | Condition | Interpretation |
| Path loss | Serving-link attenuation | |
| SS-RSRP | Reference-signal power proxy | |
| SINR | Interference and noise tolerance | |
| Effective throughput | Rate under the fixed resource share |
| Component | Reward | IN | NRI | HPEM |
| Convolution channels | 32/64/96 | 32/64/48 | 32/64/48 | 32/64/48 |
| Kernel sizes | 5/3/3 | 5/3/3 | 5/3/3 | 5/3/3 |
| Strides | 2/2/2 | 2/2/1 | 2/2/1 | 2/2/1 |
| GroupNorm groups | 4/8/8 | 8/8/8 | 8/8/8 | 8/8/8 |
| Local / global scene width | 96/96 | 48/96 | 48/96 | 48/128 |
| TX embedding width | 128 | 128 | 128 | 192 |
| Setting | HPEM | Reward / IN / NRI |
| Learning rate | ||
| Weight decay | ||
| Learning-rate schedule | Cosine, period 100, minimum 0 | Plateau, factor 0.5, patience 5, minimum |
| Early-stopping patience | Disabled | 15 epochs |
| Checkpoint criterion | Strictly lower total validation loss | Validation MSE improvement |
| Sampling unit | Family membership | Unique deployment |
| Planner | Default configuration |
| Diffusion | 100 steps; ; ; ; antithetic noise; reflection; deterministic final step |
| SMC | 100 temperatures; ; ; ; one mutation per temperature; |
| NUTS | 50 warmup and 50 retained iterations per chain; ; initial step size 0.15; target acceptance 0.8; maximum depth 7; divergence threshold 1,000 |
| BR-SNIS | 100 rounds; 32 new uniform proposals per chain and round; |
| Greedy | 256 candidate locations; one coordinate-replacement round; scoring batches of at most 4,096 deployments |
| PSO | 100 steps; inertia ; cognitive/social coefficients 1.49618; velocity limit 0.2; global topology |
| Method | Setting | RT (s) | JM (%) | PL (%) | TP (%) | SINR (%) | RSRP (%) |
| Diffusion | Zero-shot | 21.84 0.46 | 54.82 2.71 | 63.48 3.84 | 72.16 3.62 | 60.74 3.05 | 66.31 3.51 |
| Few-shot | 22.67 0.71 | 58.06 2.18 | 66.82 3.13 | 75.41 2.94 | 64.11 2.56 | 69.72 2.88 | |
| In-distribution | 22.91 0.53 | 59.42 1.82 | 68.15 2.67 | 76.58 2.46 | 65.47 2.17 | 71.03 2.39 | |
| Pairwise | Zero-shot | 24.16 0.51 | 57.31 2.32 | 65.92 3.31 | 74.86 3.08 | 63.41 2.73 | 68.87 3.02 |
| Few-shot | 24.88 0.76 | 60.68 1.86 | 69.28 2.72 | 78.12 2.53 | 66.82 2.21 | 72.16 2.48 | |
| In-distribution | 25.14 0.57 | 61.96 1.54 | 70.46 2.28 | 79.26 2.08 | 68.13 1.88 | 73.42 2.05 |
| Method | Setting | RT (s) | JM (%) | PL (%) | TP (%) | SINR (%) | RSRP (%) |
| Diffusion | Zero-shot | 32.46 0.68 | 46.24 3.08 | 56.31 4.22 | 65.42 4.01 | 52.18 3.47 | 58.76 3.91 |
| Few-shot | 33.52 0.94 | 49.76 2.51 | 59.87 3.48 | 68.91 3.27 | 55.72 2.91 | 62.28 3.21 | |
| In-distribution | 33.86 0.72 | 51.04 2.08 | 61.16 2.94 | 70.13 2.76 | 57.08 2.46 | 63.61 2.72 | |
| Pairwise | Zero-shot | 35.74 0.73 | 49.38 2.67 | 59.42 3.76 | 68.71 3.51 | 55.26 3.08 | 61.84 3.42 |
| Few-shot | 36.81 1.02 | 52.63 2.16 | 62.73 3.07 | 71.86 2.84 | 58.61 2.54 | 65.16 2.86 | |
| In-distribution | 37.18 0.78 | 53.84 1.79 | 63.96 2.58 | 72.98 2.37 | 59.87 2.13 | 66.42 2.39 |
| Method | Setting | RT (s) | JM (%) | PL (%) | TP (%) | SINR (%) | RSRP (%) |
| Diffusion | Zero-shot | 64.82 1.06 | 34.76 3.31 | 43.28 4.48 | 55.62 4.37 | 41.54 3.72 | 47.31 4.16 |
| Few-shot | 66.31 1.42 | 38.21 2.76 | 46.78 3.71 | 59.08 3.56 | 45.02 3.08 | 50.82 3.43 | |
| In-distribution | 66.76 1.15 | 39.47 2.28 | 48.06 3.12 | 60.31 2.98 | 46.34 2.58 | 52.11 2.87 | |
| Pairwise | Zero-shot | 70.18 1.11 | 37.64 2.91 | 46.21 4.02 | 58.46 3.89 | 44.37 3.31 | 50.18 3.72 |
| Few-shot | 71.82 1.53 | 41.03 2.38 | 49.66 3.31 | 61.84 3.17 | 47.86 2.74 | 53.64 3.03 | |
| In-distribution | 72.31 1.22 | 42.36 1.94 | 50.94 2.76 | 63.08 2.63 | 49.21 2.28 | 54.91 2.52 |
| Target JM (%) | Method | Setting | Req. TXs | SR (%) | Best JM (%) | RT (s) |
| 45 | Diffusion | Zero-shot | 6.42 0.79 | 83.33 | 46.58 1.72 | 61.84 7.48 |
| Few-shot | 5.58 0.67 | 91.67 | 48.31 1.36 | 63.12 7.86 | ||
| In-distribution | 5.17 0.58 | 100.00 | 49.26 1.12 | 63.76 7.31 | ||
| Pairwise | Zero-shot | 5.83 0.72 | 91.67 | 48.02 1.49 | 68.31 8.12 | |
| Few-shot | 5.00 0.60 | 100.00 | 49.86 1.21 | 69.74 8.46 | ||
| In-distribution | 4.67 0.49 | 100.00 | 50.78 0.98 | 70.28 7.92 |
| Target JM (%) | Method | Setting | Req. TXs | SR (%) | Best JM (%) | RT (s) |
| 35 | Diffusion | Zero-shot | 7.17 0.72 | 75.00 | 35.92 1.69 | 72.16 8.84 |
| Few-shot | 6.25 0.62 | 91.67 | 37.68 1.38 | 73.72 9.18 | ||
| In-distribution | 5.83 0.58 | 100.00 | 38.62 1.15 | 74.35 8.57 | ||
| Pairwise | Zero-shot | 6.50 0.67 | 83.33 | 37.21 1.51 | 79.64 9.36 | |
| Few-shot | 5.58 0.51 | 100.00 | 39.17 1.22 | 81.26 9.74 | ||
| In-distribution | 5.17 0.39 | 100.00 | 40.08 1.01 | 81.91 9.02 |
| Target JM (%) | Method | Setting | Req. TXs | SR (%) | Best JM (%) | RT (s) |
| 25 | Diffusion | Zero-shot | 7.92 0.79 | 66.67 | 25.84 1.78 | 89.73 10.86 |
| Few-shot | 6.92 0.67 | 83.33 | 27.62 1.43 | 91.64 11.24 | ||
| In-distribution | 6.42 0.51 | 91.67 | 28.51 1.19 | 92.48 10.52 | ||
| Pairwise | Zero-shot | 7.25 0.75 | 75.00 | 27.14 1.59 | 98.16 11.73 | |
| Few-shot | 6.25 0.62 | 91.67 | 29.04 1.23 | 100.27 12.14 | ||
| In-distribution | 5.83 0.58 | 100.00 | 30.02 1.01 | 101.14 11.32 |
| Hidden | Hyper | Runtime (s) | Joint (%) | Pathloss (%) | Throughput (%) | SINR (%) | RSRP (%) |
| 64 | 128 | ||||||
| 128 | 128 | ||||||
| 256 | 64 | ||||||
| 256 | 128 | ||||||
| 256 | 256 |
| Inference Budget | Maximum Interaction Order | ||||
| Particles | Steps | Unary | Pairwise | 3rd-Order | 4th-Order |
| 10 | 20 | 38.90 | 40.15 | 41.47 | 42.82 |
| 40 | 39.62 | 40.91 | 42.28 | 43.67 | |
| 60 | 40.18 | 41.52 | 42.94 | 44.40 | |
| 80 | 40.52 | 41.89 | 43.35 | 44.84 | |
| 100 | 40.68 | 42.08 | 43.55 | 45.06 | |