arXiv subjects

Mattia Merluzzi

Publications and source records attributed to Mattia Merluzzi.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Low-Latency Task-Oriented Image Transmission with Opportunistic Spectrum Access

Communication systems designed for reliable data reconstruction, rather than task-oriented communication, typically rely on separate source and channel coding and incur high latency under limited spectrum availability and fading channels. To address this, we propose a transmission framework with opportunistic spectrum access, in which the transmitter sends discrete latent representations learned via a vector-quantized variational autoencoder (VQ-VAE) over idle licensed channels using standard digital modulation. The AI-powered receiver is still able to reconstruct task-related information from the heavily compressed data. We develop a cross-layer latency model that accounts for compression, block errors, retransmissions, and stochastic channel access. Results on latency-accuracy trade-offs show that the proposed scheme achieves at least 79- and 3.3-fold latency reductions with only 5.7% and 2.4% drops in classification accuracy compared to benchmarks using conventional source and channel coding. The framework enables low-latency communication and reliable task execution even under limited spectrum availability and challenging channel conditions.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Game-Theoretic Latent Space Alignment for Multi-user Semantic MIMO Communications

Semantic communications enable AI-native wireless systems by mapping raw data into compressed task-oriented latent representations. However, independently trained agents often rely on heterogeneous latent spaces and background knowledge, leading to semantic mismatch that degrades mutual understanding and downstream task execution, especially in interferencelimited multi-user wireless networks. This paper investigates distributed latent-space alignment in multi-user semantic MIMO interference networks with cognitive radio constraints. We consider primary users and semantic-aware secondary users sharing the same wireless resources, where secondary agents must simultaneously mitigate interference and align heterogeneous semantic representations. To address this problem, we formulate semantic alignment as a non-cooperative game and derive a closed-form solution for the joint optimization of linear semantic MIMO transceivers under power and interference constraints. Exploiting the structure of the problem, we recast the original matrix valued optimization into a lower-dimensional power-allocation game, leading to an iterative semantic water-filling algorithm. We establish sufficient conditions for existence, uniqueness, and global convergence to a Nash equilibrium, explicitly relating semantic alignment properties and physical-channel interactions. Numerical results assess the performance of the proposed framework, revealing key trade-offs among semantic compression, task performance, and hierarchical spectrum access.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2026

Toward Integrated Sensing, Communications, and Edge Intelligence Networks

Wireless systems are expanding their purposes, from merely connecting humans and things to connecting intelligence and opportunistically sensing of the environment through radio-frequency signals. In this paper, we introduce the concept of triple-functional networks in which the same infrastructure and resources are shared for integrated sensing, communications, and (edge) Artificial Intelligence (AI) inference. This concept opens up several opportunities, such as devising non-orthogonal resource deployment and power consumption to concurrently update multiple services, but also challenges related to resource management and signaling cross-talk, among others. The core idea of this work is that computation-related aspects, including computing resources and AI models availability, should be explicitly considered when taking resource allocation decisions, to address the conflicting goals of the services coexistence. After showing the natural coupling between theoretical performance bounds of the three services, we formulate a service coexistence optimization problem that is solved optimally, and showcase the advantages against a disjoint allocation strategy.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2026

Distributed Semantic Alignment over Interference Channels: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Semantic communication acts as a key enabler for effective task execution in AI-driven systems, prioritizing the extraction of the underlying meaning before transmission. However, when devices rely on different logic and internal representations, semantic mismatches may arise, potentially hindering mutual understanding and effectiveness of communication. Furthermore, in interference channel environments, the coexistence of multiple devices introduce a significant degradation due to the presence of multi-user-interference. To address these challenges, in this paper we formulate the joint optimization of linear Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) transceivers as a distributed non-cooperative game, enabling a closed-form solution that effectively addresses semantic coexistence and latent space misalignment. We derive sufficient conditions for the existence of a Nash Equilibrium (NE), considering multiple point-to-point MIMO channels, with corresponding users modeled as selfish players optimizing their transmission and semantic alignment strategies. Numerical results substantiate the proposed approach in goal-oriented semantic communication by highlighting crucial trade-offs between information compression, interference mitigation, semantic alignment, and task performance.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Towards Sustainable 6G: A Holistic View of Trade-offs and Enablers

The sixth generation of mobile networks (6G) can play a central role in shaping a sustainable future, the most compelling contemporary challenge. Connecting the unconnected, reducing carbon emissions of vertical sectors, and allowing heterogeneous types of intelligence (including humans) to safely and constructively interact in complex environments, are only a few of the several challenges that can be supported by 6G. However, this requires a careful design that balances positive and negative impacts of 6G, towards a sustainable and sustainability-enabling technology. This paper presents a holistic view that translates the complex interplay between the 6G enabling effects and the sustainability of 6G by design, into concrete trade-offs and research questions. Starting from today's challenges for society and associated key values, we unfold the dilemma into a set of technical trade-offs, whose solutions span from technological innovations to standardization actions towards applicability.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2025

Collaborative Edge Inference via Semantic Grouping under Wireless Channel Constraints

In this paper, we study the framework of collaborative inference, or edge ensembles. This framework enables multiple edge devices to improve classification accuracy by exchanging intermediate features rather than raw observations. However, efficient communication strategies are essential to balance accuracy and bandwidth limitations. Building upon a key-query mechanism for selective information exchange, this work extends collaborative inference by studying the impact of channel noise in feature communication, the choice of intermediate collaboration points, and the communication-accuracy trade-off across tasks. By analyzing how different collaboration points affect performance and exploring communication pruning, we show that it is possible to optimize accuracy while minimizing resource usage. We show that the intermediate collaboration approach is robust to channel errors and that the query transmission needs a higher degree of reliability than the data transmission itself.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

Joint Channel and Semantic-aware Grouping for Effective Collaborative Edge Inference

We focus on collaborative edge inference over wireless, which enables multiple devices to cooperate to improve inference performance in the presence of corrupted data. Exploiting a key-query mechanism for selective information exchange (or, group formation for collaboration), we recall the effect of wireless channel impairments in feature communication. We argue and show that a disjoint approach, which only considers either the semantic relevance or channel state between devices, performs poorly, especially in harsh propagation conditions. Based on these findings, we propose a joint approach that takes into account semantic information relevance and channel states when grouping devices for collaboration, by making the general attention weights dependent of the channel information. Numerical simulations show the superiority of the joint approach against local inference on corrupted data, as well as compared to collaborative inference with disjoint decisions that either consider application or physical layer parameters when forming groups.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

Toward Energy and Location-Aware Resource Allocation in Next Generation Networks

Wireless networks are evolving from radio resource providers to complex systems that also involve computing, with the latter being distributed across edge and cloud facilities. Also, their optimization is shifting more and more from a performance to a value-oriented paradigm. The two aspects shall be balanced continuously, to maximize the utilities of Services Providers (SPs), users quality of experience and fairness, while meeting global constraints in terms of energy consumption and carbon footprint among others, with all these heterogeneous resources contributing. In this paper, we tackle the problem of communication and compute resource allocation under energy constraints, with multiple SPs competing to get their preferred resource bundle by spending a a fictitious currency budget. By modeling the network as a Fisher market, we propose a low complexity solution able to achieve high utilities and guarantee energy constraints, while also promoting fairness among SPs, as compared to a social optimal solution. The market equilibrium is proved mathematically, and numerical results show the multi-dimensional trade-off between utility and energy at different locations, with communication and computation-intensive services.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2025

Adaptive Semantic Token Communication for Transformer-based Edge Inference

This paper presents an adaptive framework for edge inference based on a dynamically configurable transformer-powered deep joint source channel coding (DJSCC) architecture. Motivated by a practical scenario where a resource constrained edge device engages in goal oriented semantic communication, such as selectively transmitting essential features for object detection to an edge server, our approach enables efficient task aware data transmission under varying bandwidth and channel conditions. To achieve this, input data is tokenized into compact high level semantic representations, refined by a transformer, and transmitted over noisy wireless channels. As part of the DJSCC pipeline, we employ a semantic token selection mechanism that adaptively compresses informative features into a user specified number of tokens per sample. These tokens are then further compressed through the JSCC module, enabling a flexible token communication strategy that adjusts both the number of transmitted tokens and their embedding dimensions. We incorporate a resource allocation algorithm based on Lyapunov stochastic optimization to enhance robustness under dynamic network conditions, effectively balancing compression efficiency and task performance. Experimental results demonstrate that our system consistently outperforms existing baselines, highlighting its potential as a strong foundation for AI native semantic communication in edge intelligence applications.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Balancing Costs and Utilities in Future Networks via Market Equilibrium with Externalities

We study the problem of market equilibrium (ME) in future wireless networks, with multiple actors competing and negotiating for a pool of heterogeneous resources (communication and computing) while meeting constraints in terms of global cost. The latter is defined in a general way but is associated with energy and/or carbon emissions. In this direction, service providers competing for network resources do not acquire the latter, but rather the right to consume, given externally defined policies and regulations. We propose to apply the Fisher market model, and prove its convergence towards an equilibrium between utilities, regulatory constraints, and individual budgets. The model is then applied to an exemplary use case of access network, edge computing, and cloud resources, and numerical results assess the theoretical findings of convergence, under different assumptions on the utility function and more or less stringent constraints.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2025

Goal-oriented Spectrum Sharing: Trading Edge Inference Power for Data Streaming Performance

We study the problem of spectrum sharing between goal-oriented (GO) and legacy data-oriented (DO) systems. For the former, data quality and representation is no longer optimized based on classical communication key performance indicators, but rather configured on the fly to achieve the goal of communication with the least resource overhead. This paradigm can be followed to flexibly adapt wireless and in-network artificial intelligence operations across different nodes (e.g., access points, users, sensors or actuators) to data traffic, channel conditions, energy availability and distributed computing capabilities. In this paper, we argue and demonstrate that computing and learning/inference operation performance strongly affect lower layers, calling for a real cross-layer optimization that encompasses physical and computation resource orchestration, up to the application level. Focusing on a communication channel shared among a GO and a DO user, we define a goal-effective achievable rate region (GEARR), to assess the maximum data rate attainable by the latter, subject to goal achievement guarantees for the former. Finally, we propose a cross-layer dynamic resource orchestration able to reach the boundaries of the GEARR, under different goal-effectiveness and compute resource consumption constraints.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2025

Semantic and Goal-oriented Wireless Network Coverage: The Area of Effectiveness

Assessing wireless coverage is a fundamental task for public network operators and private deployments, whose goal is to guarantee quality of service across the network while minimizing material waste and energy consumption. These maps are usually built through ray tracing techniques and/or channel measurements that can be consequently translated into network Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as capacity or throughput. However, next generation networks (e.g., 6G) typically involve beyond communication resources, towards services that require data transmission, but also processing (local and remote) to perform complex decision making in real time, with the best balance between performance, energy consumption, material waste, and privacy. In this paper, we introduce the novel concept of areas of effectiveness, which goes beyond the legacy notion of coverage, towards one that takes into account capability of the network of offering edge Artificial Intelligence (AI)-related computation. We will show that radio coverage is a poor indicator of real system performance, depending on the application and the computing capabilities of network and devices. This opens new challenges in network planning, but also resource orchestration during operation to achieve the specific goal of communication.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2024

Goal-oriented Communications based on Recursive Early Exit Neural Networks

This paper presents a novel framework for goal-oriented semantic communications leveraging recursive early exit models. The proposed approach is built on two key components. First, we introduce an innovative early exit strategy that dynamically partitions computations, enabling samples to be offloaded to a server based on layer-wise recursive prediction dynamics that detect samples for which the confidence is not increasing fast enough over layers. Second, we develop a Reinforcement Learning-based online optimization framework that jointly determines early exit points, computation splitting, and offloading strategies, while accounting for wireless conditions, inference accuracy, and resource costs. Numerical evaluations in an edge inference scenario demonstrate the method's adaptability and effectiveness in striking an excellent trade-off between performance, latency, and resource efficiency.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Optimizing RIS Impairments through Semantic Communication

This paper investigates how semantic communication can effectively influence and potentially redefine the limitations imposed by physical layer settings. Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) enable the intelligent configuration of the physical layer of communication systems. However, its practical implementation is hampered by several limitations. The Semantic Communication (SemCom) paradigm introduces additional degrees of freedom that can be exploited to improve the robustness of communication against physical layer impairments. In essence, SemCom ensures that the data representation remains robust even under adverse physical conditions by emphasizing the transmission of meaningful information in a manner that is less susceptible to degradation. Through the use of SemCom, potential RIS gains are demonstrated in terms of RIS area size and the phase shift precision of its active elements.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2024

Analyzing and Enhancing Queue Sampling for Energy-Efficient Remote Control of Bandits

In recent years, the integration of communication and control systems has gained significant traction in various domains, ranging from autonomous vehicles to industrial automation and beyond. Multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms have proven their effectiveness as a robust framework for solving control problems. In this work, we investigate the use of MAB algorithms to control remote devices, which faces considerable challenges primarily represented by latency and reliability. We analyze the effectiveness of MABs operating in environments where the action feedback from controlled devices is transmitted over an unreliable communication channel and stored in a Geo/Geo/1 queue. We investigate the impact of queue sampling strategies on the MAB performance, and introduce a new stochastic approach. Its performance in terms of regret is evaluated against established algorithms in the literature for both upper confidence bound (UCB) and Thompson Sampling (TS) algorithms. Additionally, we study the trade-off between maximizing rewards and minimizing energy consumption.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2024

Goal-Oriented and Semantic Communication in 6G AI-Native Networks: The 6G-GOALS Approach

Recent advances in AI technologies have notably expanded device intelligence, fostering federation and cooperation among distributed AI agents. These advancements impose new requirements on future 6G mobile network architectures. To meet these demands, it is essential to transcend classical boundaries and integrate communication, computation, control, and intelligence. This paper presents the 6G-GOALS approach to goal-oriented and semantic communications for AI-Native 6G Networks. The proposed approach incorporates semantic, pragmatic, and goal-oriented communication into AI-native technologies, aiming to facilitate information exchange between intelligent agents in a more relevant, effective, and timely manner, thereby optimizing bandwidth, latency, energy, and electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation. The focus is on distilling data to its most relevant form and terse representation, aligning with the source's intent or the destination's objectives and context, or serving a specific goal. 6G-GOALS builds on three fundamental pillars: i) AI-enhanced semantic data representation, sensing, compression, and communication, ii) foundational AI reasoning and causal semantic data representation, contextual relevance, and value for goal-oriented effectiveness, and iii) sustainability enabled by more efficient wireless services. Finally, we illustrate two proof-of-concepts implementing semantic, goal-oriented, and pragmatic communication principles in near-future use cases. Our study covers the project's vision, methodologies, and potential impact.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2023

Power Minimizing MEC Offloading with QoS Constraints over RIS-Empowered Communications

This work lies at the intersection of two cutting edge technologies envisioned to proliferate in future 6G wireless systems: Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs). While the former will bring a powerful information technology environment at the wireless edge, the latter will enhance communication performance, thanks to the possibility of adapting wireless propagation as per end users' convenience, according to specific service requirements. We propose a joint optimization of radio, computing, and wireless environment reconfiguration through an RIS, with the goal of enabling low power computation offloading services with reliability guarantees. Going beyond previous works on this topic, multi-carrier frequency selective RIS elements' responses and wireless channels are considered. This opens new challenges in RIS optimization, accounting for frequency dependent RIS response profiles, which strongly affect RIS-aided wireless links and, as a consequence, MEC service performance. We formulate an optimization problem accounting for short and long-term constraints involving device transmit power allocation across multiple subcarriers and local computing resources, as well as RIS reconfiguration parameters according to a recently developed Lorentzian model. Besides a theoretical optimization framework, numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed method in enabling low power reliable computation offloading over RIS-aided frequency selective channels.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2023

Enabling Edge Artificial Intelligence via Goal-oriented Deep Neural Network Splitting

Deep Neural Network (DNN) splitting is one of the key enablers of edge Artificial Intelligence (AI), as it allows end users to pre-process data and offload part of the computational burden to nearby Edge Cloud Servers (ECSs). This opens new opportunities and degrees of freedom in balancing energy consumption, delay, accuracy, privacy, and other trustworthiness metrics. In this work, we explore the opportunity of DNN splitting at the edge of 6G wireless networks to enable low energy cooperative inference with target delay and accuracy with a goal-oriented perspective. Going beyond the current literature, we explore new trade-offs that take into account the accuracy degradation as a function of the Splitting Point (SP) selection and wireless channel conditions. Then, we propose an algorithm that dynamically controls SP selection, local computing resources, uplink transmit power and bandwidth allocation, in a goal-oriented fashion, to meet a target goal-effectiveness. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work proposing adaptive SP selection on the basis of all learning performance (i.e., energy, delay, accuracy), with the aim of guaranteeing the accomplishment of a goal (e.g., minimize the energy consumption under latency and accuracy constraints). Numerical results show the advantages of the proposed SP selection and resource allocation, to enable energy frugal and effective edge AI.

eess.SP↗