6G Networks

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4 papers in the last four weeks, down 33% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

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Latest papers 44

Sep 22, 2026eess.SP

Unlocking Cross-Scenario Physical Layer Security: A Mixture-of-Experts Framework with Generative Diffusion Models

The future 6G networks are expected to incorporate a proliferation of wireless services in diverse environments, which presents a significant challenge for information security. Conventionally optimization always requires recalculation and learning strategy often suffers poor generalization, which are thus incapable for the security provisioning with wide scenario coverage. In this paper, we propose an adaptive and robust learning framework that leverages a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture to achieve cross-scenario physical layer security guarantee. Specifically, we first select a few representative scenarios and establish the scenario-specific generative diffusion model (GDM)-based experts for secure transmission beamforming with artificial noise. The diffusion nature of experts learns the overall probability distribution of security strategy solution landscape and the Transformer-based denoising process enhances the ability to generalize across varying network configurations. Then, a lightweight gating network is constructed to identify the scenarios by engineering the channel features and select the most relevant experts. Finally, an attention-based combiner is introduced to synthesize the security proposals from the top-rated experts to produce a high-fidelity security strategy to cover the unseen scenarios. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed GDM-based MoE framework can accurately recognize the scenarios and properly select the experts, maintaining near-optimal secrecy rates across a continuum of wireless scenarios and outperforming traditional single-model paradigms.

Xiao Tang, Tong Hui, Chao Shen +4

School of Information and Communication Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China · Shenzhen Research Institute of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Shenzhen 518057, China · School of Electronics and Information, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China +3

6G Networks Wireless Communications Mixture-of-Experts Models

Sep 14, 2026cs.NI

On Identifying Adversarial Intent Injection in AI-Native 6G Networks

AI-native 6G networks have brought Intent-Based Networking (IBN) to the forefront, enabling high-level goals to be translated into network configurations. However, this abstraction opens new attack surfaces, primarily adversarial intent injection, where malicious policies are disguised within benign intent flows. The detection of attack instances might become significantly more difficult if the adversaries adopt a stealthy mode of malicious intent injection. With all these in mind, we first define a fine-grained threat model that facilitates the threat of malicious intent injection in an AI-native network. Alongside, we investigate four malicious intent injection strategies

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stealth-mode, random distribution, increasing frequency, and decreasing frequency- and propose a dual-path detection framework: (i) a CNN using TF-IDF features for supervised malicious intent detection, and (ii) an AutoEncoder trained exclusively on benign data for one-class malicious intent detection. Our evaluation demonstrates strong detection performance, with accuracy improving to 0.97 (~9% gain) and F1-score to 0.98 (~36% gain) over the state-of-the-art baseline.

Nilesh Chakraborty, Petar Djukic, Burak Kantarci

University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada · Nokia Bell Labs, 600 March Road, Kanata, ON K2K 2E6, Canada

6G Networks Adversarial Attacks Intent-Based Networking

Sep 10, 2026eess.SP

Adaptive Distributed Physical-Layer Authentication and Attack Detection in 6G Non-Terrestrial Networks via Causal Meta-Learning

Physical-layer authentication (PLA) in non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) is challenged by severe Doppler shifts, long delays, and fast channel variations, which cause distribution shifts and degrade conventional learning methods. Existing PLA schemes often rely on single features or generalize poorly to unseen environments. This paper proposes a secure adaptive framework for authentication in multi-zone networks (SAFA-MZ), a causal meta-learning framework for distributed PLA (DPLA) in NTNs. First, we design a multi-feature fingerprint that combines spatial, angular, combiner, subspace, and Doppler-delay features. The fingerprint is adaptive and distributed, as it fuses heterogeneous physical-layer features and measurements from multiple aerial nodes. Second, we formulate a structural causal model (SCM) to capture the relations among design choices, environmental factors, extracted features, and authentication outcomes. Third, we develop a model-agnostic meta-learning (MAML) strategy with invariant risk minimization (IRM) and causal consistency regularization for fast adaptation to unseen NTN environments with few labeled samples. Fourth, we propose a two-stage authentication scheme that performs local recognition and activates time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) localization with a graph attention (GAT) network only when needed, which reduces backhaul overhead. Simulations show that SAFA-MZ achieves 92% accuracy and 96% AUC, outperforming centralized deep learning and single-feature baselines across diverse environments.

Parsa Rajabi, Mohammad Reza Abedi, Nader Mokari +2

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, 14115-111, Iran · Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, K1S 5B6, Canada

6G Networks Meta-Learning Wireless Communications

Sep 9, 2026eess.SP

Efficient Graph Neural Networks for Multicarrier Wideband Hybrid Beamforming Optimization

6G wireless technology is poised to adopt higher and wider frequency bands, leveraging highly directional beamforming. However, the vast bandwidths amplify the impact of beam squinting. Traditional solutions, such as adding a true-time-delay filter to each antenna, are cost-prohibitive due to the required hardware scale. This paper proposes a signal processing alternative using Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to optimize hybrid beamforming in multicarrier wideband systems. Using a bipartite graph to represent a shared analog beamformer among multiple subcarriers, we develop three GNN structures with distinct digital beamformer representations (i) at the subcarrier nodes, (ii) at the edges, or (iii) integrating traditional singular-value decomposition solutions. By designing an efficient message-passing mechanism, these structures offer insights into the impact of different GNN designs on communication system performance and computational complexity. Extensive analysis and ablation studies show that our proposed GNN structures outperform traditional optimization methods and existing ML-based solutions. Furthermore, the proposed GNNs exhibit strong resiliency to beam squinting and better robustness against imperfect CSI than even fully digital beamforming and all existing hybrid designs. These GNNs can also be extended to multi-user scenarios and demonstrate excellent generalization capabilities, allowing trained models to adapt to diverse multicarrier and multi-user settings without retraining.

Beier Li, Mai Vu

Graph Neural Networks 6G Networks Wireless Communications

Sep 1, 2026cs.NI

Agents That Model Agents: Five Principles Toward a Theory of Mind for 6G Networks

Future 6G networks will rely on Large Language Model (LLM) agents to manage the Radio Access Network (RAN). However, current architectures assume inter-agent messages convey objective facts. A message is instead a \emph{trace} of the sender's reasoning: it carries a subjective conclusion, so a syntactically valid report can propagate an AI hallucination and trigger a cascading outage invisible to protocol validation. Reading such a trace requires a Theory of Mind (ToM)---before acting, the receiver must model what the peer believes, and what a peer in that position should have believed. Modeling these interactions as cognitive channels on a cellular sheaf, we obtain a unified framework for resilient multi-agent systems, from which five design principles emerge: (i) a message is evidence of the sender's hidden reasoning; (ii) trust is a continuous cognitive Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)---asserted precision over deviation from the modeled peer belief; (iii) network-wide consistency and resistance to hallucination contagion are computable via the sheaf's Laplacian; (iv) peer-modeling must halt at exactly two levels to conserve compute and survive mutual information decay; and (v) credible capacity is bounded by operational goal alignment, not link bandwidth. A signaling-storm study on locally deployed 1B-parameter telecom language models validates it: cognitive SNR isolates a hallucinating peer that three of its four neighbors agree with, where a divergence gate ranks every wrong peer above the right one; only depth two ToM recovers the correct action; and the spectral gap decides whether a topology reaches consistency inside the near-real-time budget.

Hatim Chergui, Carolina Fernández-Martínez, Mehdi Bennis +1

i2CAT Foundation, Spain · University of Oulu, Finland · Research Institute for Digital Future, Khalifa University, 127788 Abu Dhabi, UAE

6G Networks Theory of Mind Multi-Agent Systems Multi-Agent Communication LLM Agent Reliability

Sep 1, 2026eess.SP

BeamRMX: Radiation-Pattern-Driven Learning for Generalizable Beam Radio Map Prediction and Beam Management

The evolution toward sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks is driving larger antenna arrays and highly directional multi-beam transmission, making accurate knowledge of beam-dependent spatial coverage important for beam management and environment-aware network operation. Radio maps (RMs) provide such a representation, yet conventional RM prediction assumes omnidirectional or transmitter-level radiation. In beamformed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, one propagation scene instead gives rise to many configuration-dependent beam radio maps (BeamRMs), creating challenges in beam representation and generalization. Existing methods either condition prediction on beam descriptors or use beam maps as auxiliary inputs to generic architectures. We propose BeamRMX, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first dedicated framework to treat the spatial radiation pattern as the primary BeamRM query and learn how scene geometry transforms it into the received power field. XBase learns multiscale interactions between the radiation query and scene geometry, while an optional Evidence Adapter uses a few cross-configuration BeamRMs from the same scene. Matched-domain and zero-shot experiments show consistent gains over deterministic and diffusion baselines, including mean absolute error reductions of 26.1% on unseen scenes and 47.8% on an unseen configuration. Cross-configuration evidence further improves reconstruction and intra-sector beam refinement.

Yue Zhang, Xiucheng Wang, Wenshuo Chen +1

State Key Laboratory of ISN and the School of Telecommunications Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou 511453, China

6G Networks Radio Propagation Modeling

Sep 1, 2026cs.LG

CRAFT: Fine-Tuning Pre-hoc Explainability in AI-native 6G RAN

The next generation of mobile networks is envisioned as fully AI-native, with AI-RAN architectures embedding small language models (SLMs) to perform reasoning over real-time telemetry. The state-of-the-art training paradigms for telecom LLMs, exemplified by RANSTRUCT-style supervised fine-tuning (SFT) on curated instruction data, are limited to post hoc rationalization. Here, the explanations, when produced at all, are generated after or independently of the decision, leaving the decision process unauditable. Pre-hoc reasoning, where a causal reasoning trace is produced before the output label, is preferable, and the broader LLM reasoning literature has made real progress toward it via RL methods such as Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO). Here we observe that transplanting this recipe into the telecom setting runs into a cold-start barrier: SLMs either learn to output the desired format or learn to predict the label, but rarely both. We identify this barrier and propose CRAFT, which stands for Cold-start Reasoning Alignment via Fine-Tuning, a data-centric method to autonomously generate a verified dataset of (input, trace, label) triplets. CRAFT fine-tunes SLMs on this verified data using low-rank adaptation (LoRA), requiring substantially less compute and wall-clock time than GRPO-based methods. On the TRACTOR and IC xApp telecom datasets, CRAFT achieves up to 86.5% and 94.6% for accuracy and F1 with no parse failures, while direct GRPO and SFT+GRPO fail to exceed 28% and 53.5% F1 with multiple parse failures. We further show that CRAFT-initialized policies serve as a robust foundation for subsequent GRPO fine-tuning, as under diverse reward functions the performance remains consistent with no parse failures. Finally, we demonstrate that CRAFT consumes 59% less energy than GRPO-based baselines, making it a sustainable path to deployable, auditable AI in 6G RAN.

Pranshav Gajjar, Vijay K Shah

NextG Wireless Lab NCSU Raleigh USA

6G Networks LLM Interpretability RL for Language Model Reasoning Causal Reasoning in Language Models LLM Post-Training

Aug 13, 2026eess.SP

Heterogeneity-Aware Belief Synchronization for Semantic Communication in AI-Native 6G Networks

6G networks will not be serving as communication infrastructures only; rather, they are expected to evolve into intelligent systems, where thousands of autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents are interconnected. The agents are deployed across a wide range of platforms including low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, high-altitude platforms (HAPs), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), edge servers, and terrestrial devices. These agents continuously observe their environment and exchange information. Semantic communication provides an efficient mechanism for exchanging meaningful information instead of raw data. However, its effectiveness depends on the communicating agents having sufficiently aligned beliefs to correctly interpret and decode the transmitted messages. This assumption becomes difficult to satisfy in the 6G network where heterogeneous AI models operate under diverse computational constraints and continuously acquire different knowledge from their local environments. This article presents a heterogeneity-aware belief synchronization framework for 6G AI-native networks. It uses latent translation models deployed on multi-access edge computing (MEC) servers. These models translate belief updates from one agent to agent-specific knowledge without requiring joint training and a homogeneous architecture of models. By exchanging compact belief updates through a latent translation model only when necessary, the framework preserves privacy, reduces synchronization cost, and minimizes local knowledge drift. We validate the framework through a case study on a multi-layered terrestrial/non-terrestrial network. Results demonstrate that it maintains low synchronization cost, measured by the number of parameters transmitted, and low belief alignment error across the heterogeneous agents in the case study.

Muhammad Hannan Akram, Muhammad Abubakar Rashid, Wassi Haider Kabir +3

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad 44000, Pakistan · Department of Electronic Engineering, Kyung Hee University, Yongin 17104, South Korea · CONNECT Centre and the Department of Computer Science, Munster Technological University, Ireland

6G Networks Semantic Communication Multi-Agent Consensus Multi-Agent Communication

Aug 13, 2026cs.LG

Multi-perspective Imbalance-Conscious 6G Beamforming Optimization and Performance

The study presents a systematic machine learning (ML) study of 6G-IoT beamforming optimization (6GBO) using supervised and unsupervised approaches. We compared the predictive power of network, environmental, device, and vision feature groups for 6GBO. Additionally, it addressed other unsupervised perspectives that can enhance 6GBO, including clustering network scenarios using methods such as K-means, DBSCAN, and hierarchical clustering. Several imbalance-aware experiments revealed that network features possess better prediction power than device, environmental, and vision feature groups, as evidenced by their recall, F1-score and ROC-AUC values. For unsupervised ML exploration (assessed using Elbow, Silhouette score, and Davies-Bouldin Index methods), the results indicate that the deployment environment and type of device primarily influence clustering, rather than mobility-based attributes. Furthermore, the explainability analysis showed that bandwidth, IoT sensors, and mobility possess higher global feature importance across the feature groups. In the future, we would apply deep and reinforcement learning techniques to predict throughput/latency or to optimize rewards determined by performance indicators like SNR enhancement

Chukwunonso Henry Nwokoye, Blessing Oluchi Iloka, Chikwue V. Umeugoji +2

Liberal Arts & Professional Studies York University, Toronto, Canada · Physics, Engineering & Computer Science University of Hertfordshire England, United Kingdom · IT Services, Joint Admissions & Matn. Board Lagos, Nigeria +1

6G Networks Wireless Resource Allocation

Aug 11, 2026cs.NI

Conversational Orchestration for Organic 6G

The Organic 6G vision of a network of networks spanning an edge-cloud continuum complemented by non-terrestrial resources requires, to realize its promise, service provisioning that is simple to operate, scalable across independently administered domains, and agile under domain churn (i.e., domains dynamically joining and leaving). Despite advances in cross-domain orchestration, many proposals rely on heavy integration fabrics, multi-layer coordinators, and deep telemetry pipelines that hinder deployability and amplify coordination overhead. We propose a lightweight, decentralized conversational orchestration framework based on Large Language Model (LLM)-driven domain agents. Each domain remains autonomous: an agent observes local state via tools, reasons in a closed loop, and exchanges summaries with neighboring agents over an Agent-to-Agent (A2A) overlay aligned with data-plane coupling. Fast feasible placement is enabled by periodic, routing-like dissemination of reachability advertisements (latency, bottleneck bandwidth, and compute capacity), while safe re-optimization, scaling, and migration are handled through event-driven requests and negotiation. To meet real-time constraints, we deploy a compact reasoning model trained with verifier-based self-verification and periodically refined online via shadow updates. Simulations show manageable, near-linear control-plane overhead as domains scale and during domain joins, and robust decision quality, including recovery after objective changes. We close by outlining future research directions for principled, secure, and uncertainty-aware agentic orchestration in Organic 6G.

Masoud Shokrnezhad, Tarik Taleb

ICTFICIAL Oy, Espoo, Finland · Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

Multi-Agent Orchestration 6G Networks LLM Agent Orchestration Multi-Agent Communication

Aug 4, 2026cs.LG

FedCritic-MIMO: Communication-Efficient Serverless Federated Critic Learning for Massive-MIMO Resource Control in Open and Disaggregated 6G RANs

This paper proposes FedCritic-MIMO, a communication-efficient serverless federated multi-agent reinforcement learning framework for AI-native resource control across independently deployable cell-level controllers in open and disaggregated 6G RANs. Controllers share no trainer, retain local actors and personalized critic components, and exchange only compatible shared critic parameters. FedCritic-MIMO targets reuse-

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multi-cell massive-MIMO OFDMA deployments, where RAN controllers jointly manage user scheduling, per-stream power allocation, beamforming, interference, and long-term QoS with limited inter-controller signaling. Each base station locally executes its actor without centralized training or actor federation, while critic knowledge is exchanged peer-to-peer over an interference-aware graph. It enables this collaboration through wireless-aware event triggering, adaptive layer-wise top-

k

sparse critic exchange with error feedback, and balanced interference-aware fusion. We establish conditional finite-time stationarity and consensus guarantees for the balanced, compressed peer-to-peer critic recursion under a fixed-policy, frozen-target critic-regression model. In strongly interference-coupled reuse-

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simulations, FedCritic-MIMO achieves the best performance-communication tradeoff among heuristic, independent-learning, centralized-training, and communication-ablation baselines. It achieves the highest held-out throughput, improves user-rate distribution and mean SINR, increases QoS satisfaction, and attains the lowest interference cost per delivered bit among learning baselines. It reduces critic-communication overhead by

76\%

relative to uncompressed distributed critic exchange. These results demonstrate that serverless exchange of compatible shared critic parameters can coordinate RAN controllers without centralized trajectory collection or parameter-server aggregation.

Amin Farajzadeh, Melike Erol-Kantarci

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada · with the NETCORE Lab

Federated RL 6G Networks Communication-Efficient Distributed Training Wireless Resource Allocation Decentralized MARL

Aug 3, 2026cs.IT

CARNet: Channel-Adaptive Receiver Network for Robust NextG Communications

Neural receivers have been recognized as a promising paradigm for the next-generation (NextG) communications. However, due to the reliance on a static network optimized for specific channel conditions, their generalization capability across diverse scenarios remains a significant challenge. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel channel-adaptive neural receiver network (CARNet) based on the mixture-of-experts (MoE) framework. The proposed architecture employs multiple expert networks together with an efficient routing mechanism to enable signal detection in various scenarios. The experts are constructed via stacked ResNet blocks and specialize in robust signal detection within specific channel conditions, while the routing mechanism incorporates a lightweight representation learning module, which projects the coarse channel estimate into a low-dimensional latent embedding. The learned embedding characterizes task-relevant channel conditions and provides efficient guidance for accurate expert selection. Link-level simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed CARNet achieves superior performance across diverse channel conditions.

Chao Jiang, Zhuo Xu, Yongli Yan

Department of Electronic Engineering and the State Key Laboratory of Space Network and Communications, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Adaptive Model Routing 6G Networks Wireless Communications

Jul 17, 2026cs.NI

LLM-Powered Agentic AI for 5G/6G Networks: A Tutorial and Survey on Architectures, Protocols, and Standardization

Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI), enabled by Large Language Models, marks a shift from rule-based automation toward autonomous, goal-driven control of Next-Generation Networks (NGNs). Existing surveys treat the two domains in isolation, leaving protocol integration, evaluation, and standardization alignment underexplored. To address this gap, a two-part tutorial-and-survey is presented. Part I formalises the control, management, and AI-native planes of 5G and 6G. It then covers the foundations of agentic systems: reasoning, planning, tool use, multi-agent coordination, and evaluation. Part II maps agentic capabilities onto 5G/6G control surfaces, standardization, and major 6G initiatives. Finally, it identifies open challenges shaping autonomous telecommunications.

Mazene Ameur, Abdelkader Mekrache, Bouziane Brik +1

EURECOM, France · Simula Metropolitan, Norway · University of Sharjah, UAE

Multi-Agent LLM Systems Agent Communication Protocols 6G Networks Agentic AI

Jul 15, 2026cs.LG

A VAE-Driven Multi-Task Satellite-Aided Semantic Communication Framework for 6G-Enabled Connected Autonomous Vehicles

The development of smart transportation systems and the introduction of 6G wireless communication technologies have significantly changed vehicle network topologies. Future connected autonomous vehicle (CAV) networks require bandwidth-efficient, reliable, and low-latency communication for safety-critical applications such as traffic sign recognition and decision-making. Conventional communication systems transmit raw data regardless of task relevance, which is inefficient in resource-constrained satellite channels where uplink bandwidth is scarce and propagation losses are large. Semantic communication addresses this limitation by transmitting task-relevant information instead of full signal representations. It extracts and conveys essential semantic features and leverages deep learning to optimize task performance at the receiver. Therefore, we present a Variational Autoencoder (VAE)-based multi-task semantic communication framework for satellite-assisted autonomous driving. Unlike deterministic autoencoder-based methods, the proposed model uses probabilistic latent representations for more robust and efficient encoding. The learned features are transmitted over noisy wireless channels to perform traffic sign reconstruction and classification. The framework is trained end-to-end to jointly optimize both tasks. Results show that the proposed approach achieves significant bandwidth reduction of up to 87.23% to 98.17% while maintaining stable performance across varying signal-to-noise ratio conditions.

S. M. Abtahiul Alam, Niloy Das, Apurba Adhikary +3

Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Noakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh · Department of Artificial Intelligence, Kyung Hee University, Yongin-si 17104, Republic of Korea · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004-4005, USA +1

6G Networks Semantic Communication Wireless Communications

Jul 10, 2026cs.IT

Generative Communications: Overview, Technologies, and Trends

The groundbreaking development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly boosting the ability to generate content such as images and videos, reshaping communication paradigms. This article introduces generative communications (GenCom), a novel paradigm for 6G networks in which large AI models (LAMs) drive semantic understanding, reasoning, and content generation, embedding these into the communication process. Unlike traditional systems that strictly pursue accurate bit transmission, GenCom enables transmitters to convey only minimal yet sufficient information, while receivers leverage shared generative priors and knowledge bases to synthesize the intended output. Communication is thus redefined as controlled generation rather than data reproduction. We formalize the concept of GenCom, clarify its AI-native and generation-driven properties, and present its core mechanisms. A two-layer GenCom architecture supported by key enabling technologies is proposed, and analysis of four representative application scenarios demonstrates that GenCom offers ultra-efficient transmission, semantic-level robustness, and new network functions. Finally, we outline future research directions, including foundational theory and real-time processing, highlighting a promising pathway toward 6G networks.

Wenjun Zhang, Zhiyong Chen, Tong Wu +4

Cooperative Medianet Innovation Center and the School of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

6G Networks Semantic Communication Wireless Communications

Jul 9, 2026cs.LG

JEPA for AI-Native 6G: Predictive Representations and Open Challenges

Sixth-generation (6G) networks are moving toward AI-native operation, where learning modules are embedded across the radio access network (RAN), edge, and core. This transition requires learning from limited labels, heterogeneous wireless and network data, partial observations, non-stationary propagation, and latency-constrained control loops. Joint-embedding predictive architecture (JEPA) is a promising self-supervised paradigm for this setting because it predicts missing or future representations in latent space instead of reconstructing raw measurements or using contrastive negative samples. This article presents a wireless-oriented tutorial on JEPA for 6G intelligence. We define the JEPA training mechanism, describe how CSI, beam measurements, KPIs, topology graphs, and sensing observations can be tokenized and masked, and position the learned encoder as a predictive representation layer for RAN, O-RAN, edge, and core functions, with task-specific heads or controllers producing final decisions. Then we present an illustrative, beam-management case study suggesting that a wireless-aware target, specifically an auxiliary future beam-energy target during self-supervised pretraining, can improve label efficiency and robustness across shifted deployment conditions relative to a supervised source domain. Finally, we outline open challenges in multi-timescale prediction, action-conditioned modeling, distributed training, trustworthiness, efficient deployment, benchmarking, and standardization.

Sheikh Salman Hassan, Irshad A. Meer, Almoatssimbillah Saifaldawla +9

IDCoM, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3BF, UK · KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden · SnT, University of Luxembourg, L-1855 Luxembourg +6

6G Networks Self-Supervised Pre-Training Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture Wireless Communications Predictive Representation Learning

Jul 9, 2026cs.IT

RadioDiff-v2: Generative Angular Radio Maps for Multi-Beam Selection and Localization

Angular radio maps describe the received-power distribution over the angle of arrival and underpin beam selection and receiver localization in sixth-generation (6G) networks. Predicting the angular power spectrum (APS) from geometry is difficult, because the mapping is ill-posed in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions and must generalize to unseen environments. Distortion-minimizing regressors return the conditional mean, which over-smooths the spectrum and erases the multipath structure that downstream tasks need. We cast the task as a perception-distortion problem and propose RadioDiff-v2, a dual-branch one-dimensional diffusion transformer trained with flow matching. It couples periodic angular encoding, adaptive layer-normalization conditioning, a Fourier angular mixer, and joint velocity and clean-signal heads. A per-metric estimator portfolio reads every deployment quantity from this single model, so that samples carry the distribution, the clean-signal head supplies a regression-grade point estimate, Bayes-optimal rules select beams, and the conditional likelihood localizes the receiver. We prove that a concentrated conditional yields a straight probability-flow trajectory that one step integrates exactly, identifying deterministic transport as the correct inductive bias. On a zero-shot test of 99 environments and one million links, RadioDiff-v2 leads every baseline on every metric, with a 0.39 dB Wasserstein-1 distance, per-bin error below the regression baseline, a 2.43 dB eight-beam NLOS sweep loss, and a 20.6-pixel localization error with four base stations. Code is available at https://github.com/UNIC-Lab/RadioDiff-v2.

Xiucheng Wang, Junxi Huang, Nan Cheng

State Key Laboratory of ISN and School of Telecommunications Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China

Diffusion Transformer 6G Networks Wireless Localization Radio Propagation Modeling Map-Based Localization

Jul 7, 2026cs.NI

From Agentic to Autogenic Network Management for AI-Native 6G and Beyond: A Standards Perspective

Standards bodies, including TM Forum, 3GPP, and ETSI, are converging on Agentic AI as the foundation for next-generation network management, where Large AI Model (LAM)-based agents autonomously interpret intent, coordinate resources, and adapt operational behaviors at runtime. However, achieving this vision at the scale and complexity of 6G networks requires management systems that can generate and evolve their own automation software during operation. We introduce Autogenic network management, a reference architecture that extends agentic capabilities with self-programming, self reflection, self-orienting, and self-architecting capabilities. The architecture supports practical staged deployment beginning with human-supervised LAM-based agents and progressing toward autonomous operation as confidence builds. We demonstrate the approach through high-priority operator scenarios drawn from TM Forum's autonomous network use cases, showing how autogenic management addresses real operational challenges. We conclude with a research roadmap outlining the technical advances needed to make autogenic network management realistic in future 6G networks.

Petar Djukic, Sudipta Acharya, Takai Eddine Kennouche +1

Bell Labs Research, 600 March Rd, Kanata, ON K2K 2E6 · University of Ottawa, 350 Legget Drive, Kanata, ON, Canada, K2K 2W7 · Nokia Technology Standards, Nokia France, 12 rue Jean Bart Massy 91300

6G Networks Wireless Communications Agentic AI Self-Evolving Agents

Jul 7, 2026cs.IT

6G Sensing Security: Distributed Game-Theoretic RL for Urban Beamforming and Attacker Detection

In next-generation networks, communication systems will no longer be limited to data transmission and will be expected to acquire awareness of the surrounding environment. This leads to the concept of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), where the same wireless infrastructure is used for both communication and environmental sensing. Thus, ISAC enables the system to transmit information efficiently and observe and interpret channel variations and user behavior. Motivated by this capability, this work focuses on detecting an active attacker in an urban environment scenario, where the attacker intentionally manipulates beamforming directions to increase interference and mislead the transmitter into allocating the main lobe of beam toward itself instead of legitimate users. We apply game-theoretic approaches to model the interaction between legitimate users and the attacker, and integrate the resulting utility-based formulation into a reinforcement learning (RL) framework. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively addresses security challenges in dynamic 6G ISAC systems.

Parmida Geranmayeh, Onur Günlü

Lehrstuhl für Nachrichtentechnik, Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany · †Information Theory and Security Laboratory (ITSL), Linköping University, Sweden

Integrated Sensing and Communication 6G Networks Wireless Communications

Jun 30, 2026cs.AI

Optimization Algorithms for Joint OFDM Waveform Design and RIS Configuration in 6G Networks: From Convex Relaxation to Foundation Models

Joint OFDM-RIS optimization for 6G is a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem covering sum-rate maximization, energy efficiency, max-min fairness, and peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR)-constrained objectives. Seventy-eight joint OFDM-RIS optimization works published between 2021 and 2026 are surveyed. No standardized benchmark exists, and cross-paper comparisons remain infeasible. This survey classifies these works into four paradigms: (I) model-based convex relaxation, (II) heuristic and metaheuristic search, (III) deep reinforcement and unsupervised learning, and (IV) emerging methods including foundation models (FM), diffusion-based generative AI, and quantum optimization. A literature synthesis of self-reported benchmarks shows that ML-based methods (Paradigm~III) report 95-99% of model-based spectral efficiency at 10^2-10^4 x faster per-inference runtime (method-pair dependent; literature values are self-reported and exclude ML pre-training cost). A companion tutorial benchmark at N=16, N=64, and N=128 reveals a critical scaling property: GPU-based neural network inference (DDQN, PPO, graph neural network (GNN), unsupervised DL) is N-invariant, with identical runtime at N=16 and N=128, while iterative solvers (AO+SCA, PSO) scale polynomially. Energy efficiency (P2) and PAPR-constrained (P4) benchmarks are deferred to future work with standardized power models and waveform generators. Six open challenges emerge from the synthesis: the cross-paradigm benchmark deficit, real-world hardware-constrained deployment, joint waveform-RIS optimization for doubly-dispersive channels, multi-objective PAPR trade-offs, LLM safety in live network control, and diminishing returns of standalone heuristics. We specify requirements for a standardized benchmark. This study serves as a roadmap for researchers and practitioners working on joint OFDM-RIS optimization in 6G networks.

Ahmet Kaplan

Department of AI Engineering, Istanbul Medipol University, Istanbul, Türkiye

6G Networks Benchmark Design Constrained Optimization Wireless Resource Allocation Multi-Objective Optimization

Jun 12, 2026cs.LG

Towards CSI-Native Foundation Models: A Channel-Adaptive Roadmap for 6G

Wireless foundation models offer a path toward reusable channel state information (CSI) intelligence for sixth-generation (6G) systems. However, existing generic-backbone adaptation and CSI pretraining methods often treat CSI as task tensors rather than propagation-conditioned channel responses, thereby failing to capture the intrinsic time-frequency-spatial geometry of wireless environments. This paper presents a channel-adaptive roadmap toward CSI-native foundation models, proposing a unified framework that aligns pretraining, positional modeling, and attention control with three channel requirements: scale-aware heterogeneous exposure, physical time-frequency-antenna coordinates, and correlation-bounded token interaction. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework across three dimensions: zero-shot generalization, reducing NMSE by more than 4 dB across spatial-temporal-frequency tasks; scale extrapolation, yielding up to a 5.4 dB gain under 8 times unseen antenna scaling; and inference efficiency, accelerating mobility-aware processing by up to 18.8%. A system-level evaluation with Sionna SYS further shows that the proposed framework uses only 7.01% of dense-pilot overhead, reaches -18.64 dB average NMSE, and improves average net spectral efficiency by 36.6% over dense LMMSE and 15.5% over WiFo, indicating that CSI-native representation learning can support pilot-efficient radio access.

Chenyu Zhang, Xinchen Lyu, Chenshan Ren +2

National Engineering Research Center for Mobile Network Technologies, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China · Key Laboratory of Ethnic Language Intelligent Analysis and Security Governance of MOE, Minzu University of China, Beijing 100081, China · China Telecom Corporation Limited Gansu Branch, Gansu 730000, China

Wireless Foundation Models Representation Learning 6G Networks Wireless Communications Channel Estimation

Jun 12, 2026eess.IV

Explainable Task-Oriented Token Communication for AI-Native 6G Networks

The integration of Foundation Models (FMs) and wireless communications is driving the evolution of image communication from bit-accurate transmission toward task-oriented transmission. However, existing task-oriented image communication methods still face three major challenges: insufficient task-oriented Token representation, inadequate collaboration between Visual Tokens and Task Tokens, and limited interpretability of task decisions. To address these challenges, we propose an Explainable Task-Oriented Token Communication (ET-TokenCom) framework. By treating Tokens as unified units for information representation and transmission, the proposed framework constructs an end-to-end communication link that spans visual perception, wireless transmission, and task reasoning. At the transmitter, the ET-TokenCom framework extracts Visual Tokens from images to preserve low-level visual information. Meanwhile, Task Tokens generated by the FM are introduced to represent the target information and decision intent required by the current task. A Cross-Modal Attention (CMA) fusion mechanism is further designed, enabling Task Tokens to explicitly guide the selection, weighting, and transmission of Visual Tokens. At the receiver, the framework integrates Token decoding with an explainable output mechanism, where attention heatmaps are generated to highlight critical perceptual regions under different task objectives and reveal the influence of Task Tokens on the outputs. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed ET-TokenCom framework.

Feibo Jiang, Lei Mao, Li Dong +3

6G Networks Visual Tokenization Semantic Communication Task-Oriented Semantic Communication Wireless Communications

Jun 6, 2026cs.CR

AI-Native Closed-Loop Security for 6G-Enabled Cyber-Physical Systems: From Edge Detection to Network-Wide Mitigation

In sixth-generation (6G) networks, billions of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) - autonomous vehicles, smart grids, industrial robots, and remote-surgical equipment - will run over ultra-reliable low-latency slices, collapsing the gap between a remote breach and physical harm to milliseconds, a budget perimeter firewalls and centralised security operations centres cannot meet. This survey reframes 6G CPS security as a closed-loop, AI-native pipeline that senses at the multi-access edge computing (MEC) tier, using minute-scale call-detail records (CDRs) for baseline learning and sub-millisecond RAN/Open-RAN (O-RAN) telemetry for the latency-critical path. It decides locally with compressed deep models, mitigates network-wide via SDN, NFV, and O-RAN controllers, and retrains through federated learning (FL) and digital-twin (DT) replay. We formalise a per-slice, tail-bounded latency contract on the sense, detect, and mitigate stages, enforced at a slice-dependent tail percentile (p99 for safety-critical URLLC slices). Organising 128 peer-reviewed studies (2017-2026) under a PRISMA 2020 protocol, we (i) map the 6G/CPS threat surface to MITRE ATT&CK and a CDR-observable feature space; (ii) unify edge anomaly detection and DDoS classification across twelve datasets and statistical, graph, and transformer models; (iii) synthesise SDN/NFV/O-RAN primitives into one closed-loop reference architecture; (iv) treat FL, large language models (LLMs), DT, post-quantum cryptography (PQC), zero-trust architecture (ZTA), and explainable AI as cross-cutting enablers, not parallel pillars; and (v) consolidate open problems into five directions spanning data, latency, trust, standardisation, and evaluation.

Bilal Hussain, Muhammad Bilal, Tan Li +6

Division of Science, Engineering, and Health Studies, School of Professional Education and Executive Development, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China · School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, United Kingdom · Department of Computer Science, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China +4

Cyber-Physical Systems 6G Networks Autonomous Cyber Defense Network Intrusion Detection Cybersecurity Anomaly Detection

Jun 5, 2026cs.NI

Mitigating Anchoring Bias in LLM-Based Agents for Energy-Efficient 6G Autonomous Networks

This paper presents an autonomous agentic resource negotiation framework designed to enable zero-touch network slicing in 6G architectures using Large Language Model (LLM) agents. While LLMs offer powerful reasoning capabilities, we demonstrate that such agents inherently suffer from anchoring bias, rigidly adhering to initial heuristic proposals and causing severe network over-provisioning. To systematically mitigate this cognitive bias, we propose a novel randomized anchoring strategy modeled via a Truncated 3-Parameter Weibull distribution. This mathematically bounded approach seamlessly integrates with burst-aware Digital Twins (DTs) employing Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) to rigorously guarantee strict Service Level Agreement (SLA) tail-latencies. To validate our methodology, we introduce and prove the \emph{Bimodal Constraint-Avoidance Utility Theorem}, demonstrating that while feasible negotiations follow classical convex bounds, highly constrained scenarios undergo a phase transition governed by an inverse rational decay envelope. Empirical results generated using a locally hosted 1B-parameter model otel-llm-1b-it confirm these dual-regime bounds. Our cognitive de-biasing successfully dismantles rigid negotiation patterns, forcing agents into active exploration to safely ride SLA boundaries and boost system energy savings up to 25%. Crucially, the lightweight 1B LLM achieves sub-second inference latencies (0.95s mean), ensuring our multi-agent framework is compatible with the operational timescales of the O-RAN non-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller (non-RT RIC)\footnote{Our source code is available for non-commercial use at https://github.com/HatimChergui.

Hatim Chergui, Claudia Carballo González, Farhad Rezazadeh +1

i2CAT Foundation, 08034 Barcelona, Spain · Universitat Polit`ecnica de Catalunya (UPC), 08034 Barcelona, Spain · Research Institute for Digital Future, Khalifa University, 127788 Abu Dhabi, UAE

Multi-Agent LLM Systems 6G Networks Wireless Communications LLM Agents Wireless Resource Allocation Conditional Value-at-Risk

May 31, 2026cs.NI

Multi-Agent DRL for QoS and Energy Optimization in RIS-Enabled Open-RAN Industrial 6G TN/NTN Networks

Industrial 6G networks require ultra-reliable, low-latency, and energy-efficient connectivity in dynamic and blockage-prone environments, where conventional terrestrial deployments often fail to ensure stable coverage. Hence, in this paper, we propose a RIS-enabled Open-RAN framework for integrated terrestrial/non-terrestrial (TN/NTN) industrial 6G networks, in which UAVs-mounted reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) cooperate with ground radio units and a high-altitude platform (HAP) to enhance connectivity for dense industrial IoT devices. Owing to the high dimensionality and strong coupling among decision variables, conventional optimization techniques become computationally intractable. To overcome this limitation, the joint optimization problem of data rates, latency, and energy consumptions is formulated as a decentralized partially observable Markov decision process (Dec-POMDP) and solved using a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning framework. Simulation results show improvements of up to 75% in data rate, 25% latency reduction, and 16% energy savings compared with state-of-the-art learning-based and non-RIS baselines, demonstrating the effectiveness of RIS-assisted Open-RAN intelligence for industrial 6G networks.

Marwan Dhuheir, Thang X. Vu, Symeon Chatzinotas

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg.

6G Networks Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces Wireless Communications Open Radio Access Network Wireless Resource Allocation Multi-Objective Optimization

May 31, 2026eess.SP

A Communication-Centric 6G-LLM Architecture for Scalable Tactical Autonomous Defense Vehicle Networks

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emerging 6G networks introduces new opportunities for scalable coordination in tactical autonomous vehicle systems. This paper proposes a communication-centric hierarchical architecture for Tactical Autonomous Defense Vehicle Networks (TADVNs) that models the integration of edge-assisted Large Language Model (LLM) reasoning with 6G-enabled connectivity and semantic communication. The framework is designed to improve coordination efficiency, reduce communication overhead, and enhance latency resilience under increasing fleet-scale operation. Unlike conventional task-specific AI pipelines that rely on structured feature processing and rule-based coordination, the proposed approach incorporates semantic abstraction and context-aware decision support within a layered edge-cloud communication architecture. We evaluate communication and coordination performance via Monte Carlo simulations across fleet sizes of 5-30 vehicles under contested network conditions. Results indicate that at a 30-vehicle scale, the 6G-LLM configuration achieves 75.2% latency reduction (29.1 ms vs. 117.5 ms), a 68.7 percentage point increase in mission success rate (82.9% vs. 14.2%), and an 88.6% reduction in communication overhead compared to a 5G-based conventional AI baseline. These findings demonstrate measurable benefits in coordination and communication when semantic reasoning is combined with low-latency 6G connectivity.

Kiran Khurshid, Shumaila Javaid, Nasir Saeed

Department of Computer and Software Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan · Department of Control Science and Engineering, College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Tongji University and National Key Laboratory of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems, Tongji University, China · Department of Electrical and Communication Engineering, UAE University, Al-Ain 15551, UAE

Multi-Agent Coordination 6G Networks Semantic Communication Wireless Communications

May 29, 2026cs.NI

AgentxGCore: Agentic AI for Next-Generation Mobile Core Network

To meet the stringent requirements of emerging applications and the increasingly complex network management and operation, the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NextG), or 6G, will adopt an AI-native architecture on the Core Network (CN). In this movement, the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has extended the cellular CN with new function as a first step toward integrating analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and machine learning. However, those new functionalities are constrained by a centralized approach and managerial complexity. Furthermore, with the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), a new era in network orchestration and management begins, leveraging and empowering the Intent-based Networking (IBN) paradigm. In addition, AI agents and Agentic AI integrate Reasoning and Acting (ReAct), enabling the usage of such intents to continuously interact with the network. Unlike state-of-the-art approaches that primarily employ Agentic AI to mitigate deployment and configuration complexity in the CN, this paper introduces AgentxGCore, which leverages an Agentic AI-Native layer to extend the 3GPP architecture and enable a system based on the existing APIs across the Beyond Next Generation Core (xGC) domain. This proposal establishes an AI-driven closed-loop for continuous optimization based on real-time information, enabling self-organization and self-adaptation. Our approach involves a multi-agent specialized system, divided into a network planner agent, capable of visualizing the network state and developing a plan to meet the intents, and a network executor, responsible for criticizing and executing the plan. To validate the proposed solution, an environment was built using an open-source CN, heterogeneous datasets, and different LLMs were employed to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Maria Katarine Santana Barbosa, Kelvin L. Dias

Centro de InformÃ¡tica - Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil

Multi-Agent Orchestration 6G Networks LLM Agent Orchestration Wireless Communications Intent-Based Networking Agentic AI

May 29, 2026eess.SP

DRIFT: Joint Channel Estimation and Prediction Towards Pilotless 6G Non-Terrestrial Networks

Non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) are expected to play a pivotal role in sixth-generation (6G) systems by enabling ubiquitous connectivity and massive communication. In this context, channel prediction emerges as a key technique to improve the spectrum utilization efficiency by limiting the pilot overhead. However, many proposed predictors based on artificial intelligence (AI) are characterized by high inference complexity, posing challenges to onboard implementation. In this paper, we address the challenge of designing accurate yet computationally efficient channel prediction techniques tailored to low Earth orbit (LEO) NTNs, where strict power constraints limit model complexity, to enable spectral efficiency gains. We propose an iterative joint channel estimation and prediction framework in the context of 6G NTNs that significantly reduces pilot overhead by transmitting pilots only in the initial slot and relying on data-driven processing for subsequent slots. We introduce Data-driven Refinement and Iterative Forecast for wireless channel Tracking (DRIFT), a lightweight architecture that refines data-aided channel estimates and predicts future channel frequency responses with low computational cost and reduced error propagation. Two predictor variants based on convolutional and long short-term memory layers are investigated. Simulation results in an end-to-end simulation of an uplink LEO NTN scenario show that the proposed approach achieves up to 12% spectral efficiency gain compared to conventional pilot-based systems, with robustness to training-test mismatches and consistent performance across different channel models. Moreover, DRIFT requires fewer than 200k multiply-accumulate operations, making it suitable for on-board satellite implementation under stringent power constraints.

Bruno De Filippo, Carla Amatetti, Alessandro Vanelli-Coralli

Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering (DEI), Univ. of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

6G Networks Wireless Communications Channel Estimation

May 28, 2026cs.NI

Privacy-Aware Agent Collaboration for Dynamic VR Slice Management in 6G SD-RAN

Ultra-low latency and high throughput are required for Virtual Reality (VR) services in 6G networks, which presents critical challenges for Software-Defined Radio Access Networks (SD-RANs) dynamic resource management. This work propose a mobility-driven, privacy-aware Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) framework for VR slice management, in which cooperative agents maximize resource distribution over end-to-end VR links while protecting the privacy of user data. Our approach incorporates mobility prediction and an information bottleneck encoder to facilitate effective and secure agent collaboration. In simulations, comparisons with traditional methods are studied which show up to 34% throughput improvement, 28% fewer resources, and 85% less privacy leakage, guaranteeing dependable immersive VR experiences in future 6G environments.

Khaled M. Naguib, Soumaya Cherkaoui, Mahmoud M. Elmesalawy +2

Department of Computer and Software Engineering, Polytechnique Montr´eal, Montr´eal, Canada · Electronics and Communications, Helwan Univ. Cairo, Egypt

6G Networks Wireless Communications Wireless Resource Allocation Cooperative MARL Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

May 26, 2026cs.NI

GENESIS: Harnessing AI Agents for Autonomous 6G RAN Synthesis, Research, and Testing

Cellular research and development (R&D) is throttled by six structural processes that each consume months of manual engineering work per iteration: (i) synthesizing new features from standards or research papers into production code; (ii) conformance and interoperability testing; (iii) hardening against field anomalies and diverse deployment environments; (iv) data-driven optimization of network functionalities; (v) discovering and prototyping novel waveforms, functionalities, and capabilities for future standards; and (vi) securing the stack against vulnerabilities. Although Large Language Models (LLMs) have compressed comparable R&D work in general software engineering from days to minutes, their known pitfalls worsen on Radio Access Network (RAN) use cases: they hallucinate Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and mis-read specifications, which kills interoperability of RAN components at the first mistake, and they heavily rely on simulations for designing algorithms, which is notorious for breaking when transferred to real hardware. To address these challenges, we present GENESIS, an agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) framework that converts intents (e.g., a specification clause, a telemetry anomaly, or a research hypothesis) into solutions validated with over-the-air experiments, fed back into a persistent knowledge base. GENESIS is built on three composable primitives (agents, skills, hooks) and a knowledge layer (SYNAPSE) that doubles as the source of ground truth and the recipient of every artifact the framework produces, making capabilities compound across runs.

Tamerlan Aghayev, Maxime Elkael, Michele Polese +11

Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems at Northeastern University, Boston, MA.

6G Networks Wireless Communications Autonomous Experimentation Autonomous Research Agents