Goal-Oriented Learning at the Edge: Graph Neural Networks Over-the-Air for Blockage Prediction

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Amorosa, Lorenzo Mario, Gao, Zhan, Chahoud, Tony, Wu, Yiqun, Eller, Lukas, Skocaj, Marco, Verdone, Roberto
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Amorosa, Lorenzo Mario
Gao, Zhan
Chahoud, Tony
Wu, Yiqun
Eller, Lukas
Skocaj, Marco
Verdone, Roberto
author_facet Amorosa, Lorenzo Mario
Gao, Zhan
Chahoud, Tony
Wu, Yiqun
Eller, Lukas
Skocaj, Marco
Verdone, Roberto
contents Sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks evolve from connecting devices to connecting intelligence. The focus turns to Goal-Oriented Communications, where the effectiveness of communication is assessed through task-level objectives over traditional throughput-centric metrics. As communication intertwines with learning at the edge, distributed inference over wireless networks faces a critical trade-off between task accuracy and efficient radio resource use. Traditional communication schemes (e.g., OFDMA) are not designed for this trade-off, often facing challenges related to scalability and latency. Therefore, we propose a novel goal-oriented framework that integrates over-the-air computation with spatio-temporal graph learning. Leveraging the wireless channel as an analog aggregation layer, the proposed framework enables low-latency message passing while efficiently aggregating semantically relevant features from distributed nodes. Theoretical analysis confirms that our analog architecture converges to the expressive power of digital message passing, while offering decisive scalability advantages. We assess the framework in proactive line-of-sight blockage prediction for millimeter-wave networks. Through high-fidelity ray-tracing simulations, the framework exhibits strong inductive generalization to unseen networks and adapts to domain shifts via lightweight transfer learning, matching or even outperforming digital baselines with significantly reduced communication overhead.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_13094
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Goal-Oriented Learning at the Edge: Graph Neural Networks Over-the-Air for Blockage Prediction
Amorosa, Lorenzo Mario
Gao, Zhan
Chahoud, Tony
Wu, Yiqun
Eller, Lukas
Skocaj, Marco
Verdone, Roberto
Networking and Internet Architecture
Sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks evolve from connecting devices to connecting intelligence. The focus turns to Goal-Oriented Communications, where the effectiveness of communication is assessed through task-level objectives over traditional throughput-centric metrics. As communication intertwines with learning at the edge, distributed inference over wireless networks faces a critical trade-off between task accuracy and efficient radio resource use. Traditional communication schemes (e.g., OFDMA) are not designed for this trade-off, often facing challenges related to scalability and latency. Therefore, we propose a novel goal-oriented framework that integrates over-the-air computation with spatio-temporal graph learning. Leveraging the wireless channel as an analog aggregation layer, the proposed framework enables low-latency message passing while efficiently aggregating semantically relevant features from distributed nodes. Theoretical analysis confirms that our analog architecture converges to the expressive power of digital message passing, while offering decisive scalability advantages. We assess the framework in proactive line-of-sight blockage prediction for millimeter-wave networks. Through high-fidelity ray-tracing simulations, the framework exhibits strong inductive generalization to unseen networks and adapts to domain shifts via lightweight transfer learning, matching or even outperforming digital baselines with significantly reduced communication overhead.
title Goal-Oriented Learning at the Edge: Graph Neural Networks Over-the-Air for Blockage Prediction
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.13094