Distributed Constrained Resource Management in 6G Networks: A Scalable Hybrid Model-Learning Framework

2026-10-08

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenges of poor scalability and difficulty in satisfying hard quality-of-service (QoS) constraints in distributed radio resource management for 6G networks. To this end, we propose a two-stage hybrid learning framework that incorporates orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) domain knowledge. The first stage allocates minimal resources based on channel statistics to strictly guarantee QoS requirements. Subsequently, structured interference information is leveraged to decompose the action space, thereby avoiding exponential growth, while multi-agent reinforcement learning optimizes the remaining resources to maximize system throughput. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared with baseline methods, the proposed approach improves throughput by 40% in realistic scenarios, achieves 100% constraint satisfaction with negligible resource overhead, and effectively balances scalability with rigorous constraint enforcement.

Abstract

Radio Resource Management (RRM) is a fundamental challenge in 6G wireless networks, particularly under dynamic user demands, inter-cell interference, and heterogeneous QoS constraints. Centralized optimization solutions are often infeasible in practice due to the lack of system-wide state information, dynamic conditions, and signaling delays, making distributed learning-based approaches attractive. However, conventional multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) struggles with scalability and constraint satisfaction in such highly dynamic environments. We introduce a scalable two-phase hybrid learning framework to address the RRM challenges where orthogonal-frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) domain knowledge is explicitly incorporated into the MARL pipeline. In our proposed two-phase learning framework, the first phase allocates a minimum resource to satisfy users' QoS requirements based on channel statistics, avoiding the inefficiencies of training policies under hard QoS constraints. Subsequently, a multiagent system is employed in the second phase to optimally allocate the remaining resources for system throughput maximization. By exploiting the structural interference information, we propose a scalable MARL algorithm which decomposes the original learning problem into smaller subproblems that can be handled independently, thereby avoiding exponential growth of the action space without compromising performance. Extensive simulations in realistic scenarios with 50MHz bandwidth and different numerologies show that our method significantly outperforms existing optimization and learning baselines, offering up to 40% throughput improvement, and 100% constraint satisfaction with minimal resource usage.

Problem

• Radio Resource Management
• 6G Networks
• Distributed Optimization
• Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
• QoS Constraints

Innovation

• Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
• Radio Resource Management
• Scalable Hybrid Framework
• Distributed Optimization
• 6G Networks