CDS4RAG: Cyclic Dual-Sequential Hyperparameter Optimization for RAG

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chen, Pengzhou, Chen, Tao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Chen, Pengzhou
Chen, Tao
author_facet Chen, Pengzhou
Chen, Tao
contents Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is sensitive to the vast hyperparameters of the retriever and generator, yet optimizing them using given queries is a challenging task due to the complex interactions and expensive evaluation costs. Existing algorithms are ineffective and slow in convergence, since they often treat RAG as a monolithic black box or only optimize partial hyperparameters. In this paper, we propose CDS4RAG, a framework that optimizes the full RAG hyperparameters using given queries via a new cyclic dual-sequential formulation. CDS4RAG is special in the sense that it distinguishes the hyperparameters of the retriever and generator, cyclically optimizing them in turn. Such a paradigm allows us to design fine-grained within-cycle budget provision and expedite the optimization via cross-cycle seeding when optimizing the generator. CDS4RAG is also an algorithm-agnostic framework that can be paired with diverse general algorithms. Through experiments on four common benchmarks and two backbone LLMs, we reveal that CDS4RAG considerably boosts the vanilla algorithms in 21/24 cases while significantly outperforming state-of-the-art algorithms in all cases with up to 1.54x improvements of generation quality and better speedup.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_08333
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CDS4RAG: Cyclic Dual-Sequential Hyperparameter Optimization for RAG
Chen, Pengzhou
Chen, Tao
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Performance
Software Engineering
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is sensitive to the vast hyperparameters of the retriever and generator, yet optimizing them using given queries is a challenging task due to the complex interactions and expensive evaluation costs. Existing algorithms are ineffective and slow in convergence, since they often treat RAG as a monolithic black box or only optimize partial hyperparameters. In this paper, we propose CDS4RAG, a framework that optimizes the full RAG hyperparameters using given queries via a new cyclic dual-sequential formulation. CDS4RAG is special in the sense that it distinguishes the hyperparameters of the retriever and generator, cyclically optimizing them in turn. Such a paradigm allows us to design fine-grained within-cycle budget provision and expedite the optimization via cross-cycle seeding when optimizing the generator. CDS4RAG is also an algorithm-agnostic framework that can be paired with diverse general algorithms. Through experiments on four common benchmarks and two backbone LLMs, we reveal that CDS4RAG considerably boosts the vanilla algorithms in 21/24 cases while significantly outperforming state-of-the-art algorithms in all cases with up to 1.54x improvements of generation quality and better speedup.
title CDS4RAG: Cyclic Dual-Sequential Hyperparameter Optimization for RAG
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Performance
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.08333