arXiv subjects

Changyuan Zhao

Publications and source records attributed to Changyuan Zhao.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Toward Edge General Intelligence with Agentic AI and Agentification: Concepts, Technologies, and Future Directions

The rapid expansion of sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks and the Internet of Things (IoT) has catalyzed the evolution from centralized cloud intelligence towards decentralized edge general intelligence. However, traditional edge intelligence methods, characterized by static models and limited cognitive autonomy, fail to address the dynamic, heterogeneous, and resource-constrained scenarios inherent to emerging edge networks. Agentic artificial intelligence (Agentic AI) emerges as a transformative solution, enabling edge systems to autonomously perceive multimodal environments, reason contextually, and adapt proactively through continuous perception-reasoning-action loops. In this context, the agentification of edge intelligence serves as a key paradigm shift, where distributed entities evolve into autonomous agents capable of collaboration and continual adaptation. This paper presents a comprehensive survey dedicated to Agentic AI and agentification frameworks tailored explicitly for edge general intelligence. First, we systematically introduce foundational concepts and clarify distinctions from traditional edge intelligence paradigms. Second, we analyze important enabling technologies, including compact model compression, energy-aware computing strategies, robust connectivity frameworks, and advanced knowledge representation and reasoning mechanisms. Third, we provide representative case studies demonstrating Agentic AI's capabilities in low-altitude economy networks, intent-driven networking, vehicular networks, and human-centric service provisioning, supported by numerical evaluations. Furthermore, we identify current research challenges, review emerging open-source platforms, and highlight promising future research directions to guide robust, scalable, and trustworthy Agentic AI deployments for next-generation edge environments.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

Edge General Intelligence Through World Models and Agentic AI: Fundamentals, Solutions, and Challenges

Edge General Intelligence (EGI) represents a transformative evolution of edge computing, where distributed agents possess the capability to perceive, reason, and act autonomously across diverse, dynamic environments. Central to this vision are world models, which act as proactive internal simulators that not only predict but also actively imagine future trajectories, reason under uncertainty, and plan multi-step actions with foresight. This proactive nature allows agents to anticipate potential outcomes and optimize decisions ahead of real-world interactions. While prior works in robotics and gaming have showcased the potential of world models, their integration into the wireless edge for EGI remains underexplored. This survey bridges this gap by offering a comprehensive analysis of how world models can empower agentic artificial intelligence (AI) systems at the edge. We first examine the architectural foundations of world models, including latent representation learning, dynamics modeling, and imagination-based planning. Building on these core capabilities, we illustrate their proactive applications across EGI scenarios such as vehicular networks, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks, the Internet of Things (IoT) systems, and network functions virtualization, thereby highlighting how they can enhance optimization under latency, energy, and privacy constraints. We then explore their synergy with foundation models and digital twins, positioning world models as the cognitive backbone of EGI. Finally, we highlight open challenges, such as safety guarantees, efficient training, and constrained deployment, and outline future research directions. This survey provides both a conceptual foundation and a practical roadmap for realizing the next generation of intelligent, autonomous edge systems.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Energy Efficient Trajectory Control and Resource Allocation in Multi-UAV-assisted MEC via Deep Reinforcement Learning

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a promising technique to improve the computational capacity of smart devices (SDs) in Internet of Things (IoT). However, the performance of MEC is restricted due to its fixed location and limited service scope. Hence, we investigate an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted MEC system, where multiple UAVs are dispatched and each UAV can simultaneously provide computing service for multiple SDs. To improve the performance of system, we formulated a UAV-based trajectory control and resource allocation multi-objective optimization problem (TCRAMOP) to simultaneously maximize the offloading number of UAVs and minimize total offloading delay and total energy consumption of UAVs by optimizing the flight paths of UAVs as well as the computing resource allocated to served SDs. Then, consider that the solution of TCRAMOP requires continuous decision-making and the system is dynamic, we propose an enhanced deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm, namely, distributed proximal policy optimization with imitation learning (DPPOIL). This algorithm incorporates the generative adversarial imitation learning technique to improve the policy performance. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed DPPOIL and prove that the learned strategy of DPPOIL is better compared with other baseline methods.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

Generative AI-enabled Wireless Communications for Robust Low-Altitude Economy Networking

Low-Altitude Economy Networks (LAENets) have emerged as significant enablers of social activities, offering low-altitude services such as the transportation of packages, groceries, and medical supplies. Owing to their control mechanisms and ever-changing operational factors, LAENets are inherently more complex and vulnerable to security threats than traditional terrestrial networks. As applications of LAENet continue to expand, the robustness of these systems becomes crucial. In this paper, we propose a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) optimization framework that tackles robustness challenges in LAENets. We conduct a systematic analysis of robustness requirements for LAENets, complemented by a comprehensive review of robust Quality of Service (QoS) metrics from the wireless physical layer perspective. We then investigate existing GenAI-enabled approaches for robustness enhancement. This leads to our proposal of a novel diffusion-based optimization framework with a Mixture of Experts (MoE)-transformer actor network. In the robust beamforming case study, the proposed framework demonstrates its effectiveness by optimizing beamforming under uncertainties, achieving a more than 15% increase over four learning baselines in the worst-case achievable secrecy rate. These findings highlight the significant potential of GenAI in strengthening LAENet robustness.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2025

Feature Engineering for Wireless Communications and Networking: Concepts, Methodologies, and Applications

AI-enabled wireless communications have attracted tremendous research interest in recent years, particularly with the rise of novel paradigms such as low-altitude integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) networks. Within these systems, feature engineering plays a pivotal role by transforming raw wireless data into structured representations suitable for AI models. Hence, this paper offers a comprehensive investigation of feature engineering techniques in AI-driven wireless communications. Specifically, we begin with a detailed analysis of fundamental principles and methodologies of feature engineering. Next, we present its applications in wireless communication systems, with special emphasis on ISAC networks. Finally, we introduce a generative AI-based framework, which can reconstruct signal feature spectrum under malicious attacks in low-altitude ISAC networks. The case study shows that it can effectively reconstruct the signal spectrum, achieving an average structural similarity index improvement of 4%, thereby supporting downstream sensing and communication applications.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2025

Age of Information Optimization in Laser-charged UAV-assisted IoT Networks: A Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Method

The integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with Internet of Things (IoT) networks offers promising solutions for efficient data collection. However, the limited energy capacity of UAVs remains a significant challenge. In this case, laser beam directors (LBDs) have emerged as an effective technology for wireless charging of UAVs during operation, thereby enabling sustained data collection without frequent returns to charging stations (CSs). In this work, we investigate the age of information (AoI) optimization in LBD-powered UAV-assisted IoT networks, where multiple UAVs collect data from distributed IoTs while being recharged by laser beams. We formulate a joint optimization problem that aims to minimize the peak AoI while determining optimal UAV trajectories and laser charging strategies. This problem is particularly challenging due to its non-convex nature, complex temporal dependencies, and the need to balance data collection efficiency with energy consumption constraints. To address these challenges, we propose a novel multi-agent proximal policy optimization with temporal memory and multi-agent coordination (MAPPO-TM) framework. Specifically, MAPPO-TM incorporates temporal memory mechanisms to capture the dynamic nature of UAV operations and facilitates effective coordination among multiple UAVs through decentralized learning while considering global system objectives. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed MAPPO-TM algorithm outperforms conventional approaches in terms of peak AoI minimization and energy efficiency. Ideally, the proposed algorithm achieves up to 15.1% reduction in peak AoI compared to conventional multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) methods.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

Recovery of UAV Swarm-enabled Collaborative Beamforming in Low-altitude Wireless Networks under Wind Field Disturbances

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms utilizing collaborative beamforming (CB) in low-altitude wireless networks (LAWN) demonstrate significant potential for enhanced communication range, energy efficiency, and signal directivity through the formation of virtual antenna arrays (VAA). However, environmental disturbances, particularly wind fields, significantly degrade CB performance by introducing positional errors that disrupt beam patterns, thereby compromising transmission reliability. This paper investigates the critical challenge of maintaining CB performance in UAV-based VAAs operating in LAWN under wind field disturbances. We propose a comprehensive framework that models the impact of three distinct wind conditions (constant, shear, and turbulent) on UAV array performance, and formulate a long-term real-time optimization problem to maximize directivity while minimizing maximum sidelobe levels through adaptive excitation current weight adjustments. To address the inherent complexity of this problem, we propose a novel proximal policy optimization algorithm with long short-term memory (LSTM) structure and adaptive learning rate (PPO-LA), which effectively captures temporal patterns in wind field disturbances and enables real-time adaptation without requiring extensive prior training for specific wind conditions. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed PPO-LA algorithm successfully recovers degraded CB performance across various wind scenarios, and thus significantly outperforming benchmark algorithms.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

World Models for Cognitive Agents: Transforming Edge Intelligence in Future Networks

World models are emerging as a transformative paradigm in artificial intelligence, enabling agents to construct internal representations of their environments for predictive reasoning, planning, and decision-making. By learning latent dynamics, world models provide a sample-efficient framework that is especially valuable in data-constrained or safety-critical scenarios. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of world models, highlighting their architecture, training paradigms, and applications across prediction, generation, planning, and causal reasoning. We compare and distinguish world models from related concepts such as digital twins, the metaverse, and foundation models, clarifying their unique role as embedded cognitive engines for autonomous agents. We further propose Wireless Dreamer, a novel world model-based reinforcement learning framework tailored for wireless edge intelligence optimization, particularly in low-altitude wireless networks (LAWNs). Through a weather-aware UAV trajectory planning case study, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework in improving learning efficiency and decision quality.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Large Language Model-enhanced Reinforcement Learning for Low-Altitude Economy Networking

Low-Altitude Economic Networking (LAENet) aims to support diverse flying applications below 1,000 meters by deploying various aerial vehicles for flexible and cost-effective aerial networking. However, complex decision-making, resource constraints, and environmental uncertainty pose significant challenges to the development of the LAENet. Reinforcement learning (RL) offers a potential solution in response to these challenges but has limitations in generalization, reward design, and model stability. The emergence of large language models (LLMs) offers new opportunities for RL to mitigate these limitations. In this paper, we first present a tutorial about integrating LLMs into RL by using the capacities of generation, contextual understanding, and structured reasoning of LLMs. We then propose an LLM-enhanced RL framework for the LAENet in terms of serving the LLM as information processor, reward designer, decision-maker, and generator. Moreover, we conduct a case study by using LLMs to design a reward function to improve the learning performance of RL in the LAENet. Finally, we provide a conclusion and discuss future work.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Temporal Spectrum Cartography in Low-Altitude Economy Networks: A Generative AI Framework with Multi-Agent Learning

This paper introduces a two-stage generative AI (GenAI) framework tailored for temporal spectrum cartography in low-altitude economy networks (LAENets). LAENets, characterized by diverse aerial devices such as UAVs, rely heavily on wireless communication technologies while facing challenges, including spectrum congestion and dynamic environmental interference. Traditional spectrum cartography methods have limitations in handling the temporal and spatial complexities inherent to these networks. Addressing these challenges, the proposed framework first employs a Reconstructive Masked Autoencoder (RecMAE) capable of accurately reconstructing spectrum maps from sparse and temporally varying sensor data using a novel dual-mask mechanism. This approach significantly enhances the precision of reconstructed radio frequency (RF) power maps. In the second stage, the Multi-agent Diffusion Policy (MADP) method integrates diffusion-based reinforcement learning to optimize the trajectories of dynamic UAV sensors. By leveraging temporal-attention encoding, this method effectively manages spatial exploration and exploitation to minimize cumulative reconstruction errors. Extensive numerical experiments validate that this integrated GenAI framework outperforms traditional interpolation methods and deep learning baselines by achieving 57.35% and 88.68% reconstruction error reduction, respectively. The proposed trajectory planner substantially improves spectrum map accuracy, reconstruction stability, and sensor deployment efficiency in dynamically evolving low-altitude environments.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2025

Toward Realization of Low-Altitude Economy Networks: Core Architecture, Integrated Technologies, and Future Directions

The rise of the low-altitude economy (LAE) is propelling urban development and emerging industries by integrating advanced technologies to enhance efficiency, safety, and sustainability in low-altitude operations. The widespread adoption of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft plays a crucial role in enabling key applications within LAE, such as urban logistics, emergency rescue, and aerial mobility. However, unlike traditional UAV networks, LAE networks encounter increased airspace management demands due to dense flying nodes and potential interference with ground communication systems. In addition, there are heightened and extended security risks in real-time operations, particularly the vulnerability of low-altitude aircraft to cyberattacks from ground-based threats. To address these, this paper first explores related standards and core architecture that support the development of LAE networks. Subsequently, we highlight the integration of technologies such as communication, sensing, computing, positioning, navigation, surveillance, flight control, and airspace management. This synergy of multi-technology drives the advancement of real-world LAE applications, particularly in improving operational efficiency, optimizing airspace usage, and ensuring safety. Finally, we outline future research directions for LAE networks, such as intelligent and adaptive optimization, security and privacy protection, sustainable energy and power management, quantum-driven coordination, generative governance, and three-dimensional (3D) airspace coverage, which collectively underscore the potential of collaborative technologies to advance LAE networks.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

A Correlated Data-Driven Collaborative Beamforming Approach for Energy-efficient IoT Data Transmission

An expansion of Internet of Things (IoTs) has led to significant challenges in wireless data harvesting, dissemination, and energy management due to the massive volumes of data generated by IoT devices. These challenges are exacerbated by data redundancy arising from spatial and temporal correlations. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel data-driven collaborative beamforming (CB)-based communication framework for IoT networks. Specifically, the framework integrates CB with an overlap-based multi-hop routing protocol (OMRP) to enhance data transmission efficiency while mitigating energy consumption and addressing hot spot issues in remotely deployed IoT networks. Based on the data aggregation to a specific node by OMRP, we formulate a node selection problem for the CB stage, with the objective of optimizing uplink transmission energy consumption. Given the complexity of the problem, we introduce a softmax-based proximal policy optimization with long short-term memory (SoftPPO-LSTM) algorithm to intelligently select CB nodes for improving transmission efficiency. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed OMRP and SoftPPO-LSTM methods, demonstrating significant improvements over existing routing protocols and node selection strategies. The results also reveal that the combined OMRP with the SoftPPO-LSTM method effectively mitigates hot spot problems and offers superior performance compared to traditional strategies.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

Generative AI Enabled Robust Data Augmentation for Wireless Sensing in ISAC Networks

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) uses the same software and hardware resources to achieve both communication and sensing functionalities. Thus, it stands as one of the core technologies of 6G and has garnered significant attention in recent years. In ISAC systems, a variety of machine learning models are trained to analyze and identify signal patterns, thereby ensuring reliable sensing and communications. However, considering factors such as communication rates, costs, and privacy, collecting sufficient training data from various ISAC scenarios for these models is impractical. Hence, this paper introduces a generative AI (GenAI) enabled robust data augmentation scheme. The scheme first employs a conditioned diffusion model trained on a limited amount of collected CSI data to generate new samples, thereby expanding the sample quantity. Building on this, the scheme further utilizes another diffusion model to enhance the sample quality, thereby facilitating the data augmentation in scenarios where the original sensing data is insufficient and unevenly distributed. Moreover, we propose a novel algorithm to estimate the acceleration and jerk of signal propagation path length changes from CSI. We then use the proposed scheme to enhance the estimated parameters and detect the number of targets based on the enhanced data. The evaluation reveals that our scheme improves the detection performance by up to 70%, demonstrating reliability and robustness, which supports the deployment and practical use of the ISAC network.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2025

Embodied AI-Enhanced Vehicular Networks: An Integrated Large Language Models and Reinforcement Learning Method

This paper investigates adaptive transmission strategies in embodied AI-enhanced vehicular networks by integrating large language models (LLMs) for semantic information extraction and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) for decision-making. The proposed framework aims to optimize both data transmission efficiency and decision accuracy by formulating an optimization problem that incorporates the Weber-Fechner law, serving as a metric for balancing bandwidth utilization and quality of experience (QoE). Specifically, we employ the large language and vision assistant (LLAVA) model to extract critical semantic information from raw image data captured by embodied AI agents (i.e., vehicles), reducing transmission data size by approximately more than 90\% while retaining essential content for vehicular communication and decision-making. In the dynamic vehicular environment, we employ a generalized advantage estimation-based proximal policy optimization (GAE-PPO) method to stabilize decision-making under uncertainty. Simulation results show that attention maps from LLAVA highlight the model's focus on relevant image regions, enhancing semantic representation accuracy. Additionally, our proposed transmission strategy improves QoE by up to 36\% compared to DDPG and accelerates convergence by reducing required steps by up to 47\% compared to pure PPO. Further analysis indicates that adapting semantic symbol length provides an effective trade-off between transmission quality and bandwidth, achieving up to a 61.4\% improvement in QoE when scaling from 4 to 8 vehicles.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2024

Supervised Score-Based Modeling by Gradient Boosting

Score-based generative models can effectively learn the distribution of data by estimating the gradient of the distribution. Due to the multi-step denoising characteristic, researchers have recently considered combining score-based generative models with the gradient boosting algorithm, a multi-step supervised learning algorithm, to solve supervised learning tasks. However, existing generative model algorithms are often limited by the stochastic nature of the models and the long inference time, impacting prediction performances. Therefore, we propose a Supervised Score-based Model (SSM), which can be viewed as a gradient boosting algorithm combining score matching. We provide a theoretical analysis of learning and sampling for SSM to balance inference time and prediction accuracy. Via the ablation experiment in selected examples, we demonstrate the outstanding performances of the proposed techniques. Additionally, we compare our model with other probabilistic models, including Natural Gradient Boosting (NGboost), Classification and Regression Diffusion Models (CARD), Diffusion Boosted Trees (DBT), and non-probabilistic GBM models. The experimental results show that our model outperforms existing models in both accuracy and inference time.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

The Roles of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Internet of Electric Vehicles

With the advancements of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) models, their capabilities are expanding significantly beyond content generation and the models are increasingly being used across diverse applications. Particularly, GenAI shows great potential in addressing challenges in the electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem ranging from charging management to cyber-attack prevention. In this paper, we specifically consider Internet of electric vehicles (IoEV) and we categorize GenAI for IoEV into four different layers namely, EV's battery layer, individual EV layer, smart grid layer, and security layer. We introduce various GenAI techniques used in each layer of IoEV applications. Subsequently, public datasets available for training the GenAI models are summarized. Finally, we provide recommendations for future directions. This survey not only categorizes the applications of GenAI in IoEV across different layers but also serves as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners by highlighting the design and implementation challenges within each layer. Furthermore, it provides a roadmap for future research directions, enabling the development of more robust and efficient IoEV systems through the integration of advanced GenAI techniques.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Enhancing Physical Layer Communication Security through Generative AI with Mixture of Experts

AI technologies have become more widely adopted in wireless communications. As an emerging type of AI technologies, the generative artificial intelligence (GAI) gains lots of attention in communication security. Due to its powerful learning ability, GAI models have demonstrated superiority over conventional AI methods. However, GAI still has several limitations, including high computational complexity and limited adaptability. Mixture of Experts (MoE), which uses multiple expert models for prediction through a gate mechanism, proposes possible solutions. Firstly, we review GAI model's applications in physical layer communication security, discuss limitations, and explore how MoE can help GAI overcome these limitations. Furthermore, we propose an MoE-enabled GAI framework for network optimization problems for communication security. To demonstrate the framework's effectiveness, we provide a case study in a cooperative friendly jamming scenario. The experimental results show that the MoE-enabled framework effectively assists the GAI algorithm, solves its limitations, and enhances communication security.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

Generative AI for Secure Physical Layer Communications: A Survey

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) stands at the forefront of AI innovation, demonstrating rapid advancement and unparalleled proficiency in generating diverse content. Beyond content creation, GAI has significant analytical abilities to learn complex data distribution, offering numerous opportunities to resolve security issues. In the realm of security from physical layer perspectives, traditional AI approaches frequently struggle, primarily due to their limited capacity to dynamically adjust to the evolving physical attributes of transmission channels and the complexity of contemporary cyber threats. This adaptability and analytical depth are precisely where GAI excels. Therefore, in this paper, we offer an extensive survey on the various applications of GAI in enhancing security within the physical layer of communication networks. We first emphasize the importance of advanced GAI models in this area, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Autoencoders (AEs), Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), and Diffusion Models (DMs). We delve into the roles of GAI in addressing challenges of physical layer security, focusing on communication confidentiality, authentication, availability, resilience, and integrity. Furthermore, we also present future research directions focusing model improvements, multi-scenario deployment, resource-efficient optimization, and secure semantic communication, highlighting the multifaceted potential of GAI to address emerging challenges in secure physical layer communications and sensing.

cs.CR↗