Petar Popovski | Search arXiv

arXiv2026

Initialization and Rate-Quality Functions for Generative Network Layer Protocols

Generative AI (GenAI) creates full content based on compact encodings. While GenAI has been used for applications where the generated content is returned to the encoding sender, it can also extend the capacity of communication networks by transmitting compact encodings through capacity-limited links, then generating and forwarding approximations from the GenAI node to the destination. This poses the challenge of evaluating approximation quality as a function of the rate between the source and GenAI node, while accounting for the communication overhead of learning. We present a method- and modality-agnostic initialization protocol for learning rate-quality functions in GenAI-aided networks, defining three variants: source-, node-, and destination-oriented, each with different messaging flows based on where quality is measured. The protocol augments node discovery protocols (e.g., MCP, A2A) when sources lack confidence in advertised model performance. We illustrate operation via a minimum estimation budget calculated using a distribution-free tolerance limit , and validate using a case study on image transmission under quality constraints. Results confirm the calculated budget meets the target quality requirement, with positive gains over JPEG after around 20 post-learning transmissions for a perceptual metric and more than 100 for a goal-oriented metric, providing a practical foundation for GenAI-based network compression.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2026

Should I Use This Synthetic Dataset for Training? How to Test with Minimal Real Data

Digital twins (DTs) and learned world models are increasingly used to generate synthetic data that augment the scarce real datasets available for training artificial intelligence (AI) models in engineering systems. Owing to the inevitable simulation-to-reality (sim-to-real) gap, however, augmentation may fail to improve the performance of the trained model on the real data distribution. This paper addresses the resulting decision problem: Given a real dataset, a candidate synthetic dataset, and a fixed learning algorithm, decide whether training on the augmented dataset improves the true, population-level performance, while consuming as few real test data points as possible. Two formulations are considered: a direct test on the mean loss difference between the two trained models, and a symmetry-based test on the paired loss difference, which trades a stronger null assumption for faster evidence accumulation. For the latter, we introduce the {adaptive e-process sign-flip test} (aeSFT), a doubly adaptive procedure that adapts both the number of Monte Carlo sign-flip rounds, and hence the computational cost, and the amount of real test data consumed. aeSFT yields anytime-valid Type-I error control, with no need to pre-specify the test-set size. Experiments on a synthetic-data classification task, a DT-aided wireless packet-scheduling task, and a radio-map prediction task show that aeSFT identifies useful synthetic data using substantially fewer real test samples than mean-based sequential testing, matches the power of fixed-sample sign-flip testing and the paired $t$-test, while keeping the false-positive rate below the target level.

cs.AI↗