Beyond Task Relevance: Interaction-Aware Semantic Communication for Wireless Agent Collaboration

Abstract

Semantic communication in multi-agent systems often assumes that task-relevant information benefits the team once delivered. Yet semantic sharing can alter the receiver's decision and increase inter-agent dependence, potentially reducing team utility. Motivated by this phenomenon, we develop an interaction-aware framework for wireless collaboration between heterogeneous agents. We analytically relate communication-induced dependence to expected best-of-team utility and define a team-level semantic value for candidate messages. We consider semantic units at different abstraction levels and formulate a deadline- and power-constrained problem that maximizes predicted team-level net surplus. We derive an interaction-aware policy that selects at most one unit and its transmit power, or chooses not to transmit. Experiments on two verifier-scored optimization tasks show that full-solution exchange induces stronger structural convergence and more adverse team-level effects, whereas method hints exhibit pronounced directionality. Across the evaluated power budgets, our policy achieves the highest net team-level surplus while consuming less energy than semantic-aware and full-solution baselines.