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Selecting Offline Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Stochastic Network Control

arXiv:2603.03932v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a promising approach for next-generation wireless networks, where online exploration is unsafe and large amounts of operational data can be reused across the model lifecycle. However, the behavior of offline RL algorithms under genuinely stochastic dynamics -- inherent to wireless systems due to fading, noise, and traffic mobility -- remains insufficiently understood. We address this gap by evaluating Bellman-based (Conservative Q-Learning), sequence-based (Decision Transformers), and hybrid (Critic-Guided Decision Transformers) offline RL methods in an open-access stochastic telecom environment (mobile-env). Our results show that Conservative Q-Learning consistently produces more robust policies across different sources of stochasticity, making it a reliable default choice in lifecycle-driven AI management frameworks. Sequence-based methods remain competitive and can outperform Bellman-based approaches when sufficient high-return trajectories are available. These findings provide practical guidance for offline RL algorithm selection in AI-driven network control pipelines, such as O-RAN and future 6G functions, where robustness and data availability are key operational constraints.

Characterizing VLA Models: Identifying the Action Generation Bottleneck for Edge AI Architectures

arXiv:2603.02271v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models are an emerging class of workloads critical for robotics and embodied AI at the edge. As these models scale, they demonstrate significant capability gains, yet they must be deployed locally to meet the strict latency requirements of real-time applications. This paper characterizes VLA performance on two generations of edge hardware, viz. the Nvidia Jetson Orin and Thor platforms. Using MolmoAct-7B, a state-of-the-art VLA model, we identify a primary execution bottleneck: up to 75% of end-to-end latency is consumed by the memory-bound action-generation phase. Through analytical modeling and simulations, we project the hardware requirements for scaling to 100B parameter models. We also explore the impact of high-bandwidth memory technologies and processing-in-memory (PIM) as promising future pathways in edge systems for embodied AI.
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