Networking-Aware Energy Efficiency in Agentic AI Inference: A Survey

The rapid emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) has catalyzed Agentic artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems integrating perception, reasoning, and action into closed-loop pipelines for continuous adaptation. While unlocking transformative applications in mobile edge computing, autonomous systems, and next-generation wireless networks, this paradigm creates fundamental energy challenges through iterative inference and persistent data exchange. Unlike traditional AI where bottlenecks are computational Floating Point Operations (FLOPs), Agentic AI faces compounding computational and communication energy costs. In this survey, we propose an energy accounting framework identifying computational and communication costs across the Perception-Reasoning-Action cycle. We establish a unified taxonomy spanning model simplification, computation control, input and attention optimization, and hardware-aware inference. We explore cross-layer co-design strategies jointly optimizing model parameters, wireless transmissions, and edge resources. Finally, we identify open challenges of federated green learning, carbon-aware agency, 6th generation mobile communication (6G)-native Agentic AI, and self-sustaining systems, providing a roadmap for scalable autonomous intelligence.

SL-FAC: A Communication-Efficient Split Learning Framework with Frequency-Aware Compression

The growing complexity of neural networks hinders the deployment of distributed machine learning on resource-constrained devices. Split learning (SL) offers a promising solution by partitioning the large model and offloading the primary training workload from edge devices to an edge server. However, the increasing number of participating devices and model complexity leads to significant communication overhead from the transmission of smashed data (e.g., activations and gradients), which constitutes a critical bottleneck for SL. To tackle this challenge, we propose SL-FAC, a communication-efficient SL framework comprising two key components: adaptive frequency decomposition (AFD) and frequency-based quantization compression (FQC). AFD first transforms the smashed data into the frequency domain and decomposes it into spectral components with distinct information. FQC then applies customized quantization bit widths to each component based on its spectral energy distribution. This collaborative approach enables SL-FAC to achieve significant communication reduction while strategically preserving the information most crucial for model convergence. Extensive experiments confirm the superior performance of SL-FAC for improving the training efficiency.

GAPSL: A Gradient-Aligned Parallel Split Learning on Heterogeneous Data

The increasing complexity of neural networks poses significant challenges for democratizing FL on resource?constrained client devices. Parallel split learning (PSL) has emerged as a promising solution by offloading substantial computing workload to a server via model partitioning, shrinking client-side computing load, and eliminating the client-side model aggregation for reduced communication and deployment costs. Since PSL is aggregation-free, it suffers from severe training divergence stemming from gradient directional inconsistency across clients. To address this challenge, we propose GAPSL, a gradient-aligned PSL framework that comprises two key components: leader gradient identification (LGI) and gradient direction alignment (GDA). LGI dynamically selects a set of directionally consistent client gradients to construct a leader gradient that captures the global convergence trend. GDA employs a direction-aware regularization to align each client's gradient with the leader gradient, thereby mitigating inter-device gradient directional inconsistency and enhancing model convergence. We evaluate GAPSL on a prototype computing testbed. Extensive experiments demonstrate that GAPSL consistently outperforms state-of-the-art benchmarks in training accuracy and latency.

Exploiting Adaptive Channel Pruning for Communication-Efficient Split Learning

Split learning (SL) transfers most of the training workload to the server, which alleviates computational burden on client devices. However, the transmission of intermediate feature representations, referred to as smashed data, incurs significant communication overhead, particularly when a large number of client devices are involved. To address this challenge, we propose an adaptive channel pruning-aided SL (ACP-SL) scheme. In ACP-SL, a label-aware channel importance scoring (LCIS) module is designed to generate channel importance scores, distinguishing important channels from less important ones. Based on these scores, an adaptive channel pruning (ACP) module is developed to prune less important channels, thereby compressing the corresponding smashed data and reducing the communication overhead. Experimental results show that ACP-SL consistently outperforms benchmark schemes in test accuracy. Furthermore, it reaches a target test accuracy in fewer training rounds, thereby reducing communication overhead.

Efficient Cross-View Localization in 6G Space-Air-Ground Integrated Network

Recently, visual localization has become an important supplement to improve localization reliability, and cross-view approaches can greatly enhance coverage and adaptability. Meanwhile, future 6G will enable a globally covered mobile communication system, with a space-air-ground integrated network (SAGIN) serving as key supporting architecture. Inspired by this, we explore an integration of cross-view localization (CVL) with 6G SAGIN, thereby enhancing its performance in latency, energy consumption, and privacy protection. First, we provide a comprehensive review of CVL and SAGIN, highlighting their capabilities, integration opportunities, and potential applications. Benefiting from the fast and extensive image collection and transmission capabilities of the 6G SAGIN architecture, CVL achieves higher localization accuracy and faster processing speed. Then, we propose a split-inference framework for implementing CVL, which fully leverages the distributed communication and computing resources of the 6G SAGIN architecture. Subsequently, we conduct joint optimization of communication, computation, and confidentiality within the proposed split-inference framework, aiming to provide a paradigm and a direction for making CVL efficient. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework and provide solutions to the optimization problem. Finally, we discuss potential research directions for 6G SAGIN-enabled CVL.

Exploiting Label-Aware Channel Scoring for Adaptive Channel Pruning in Split Learning

Split learning (SL) transfers most of the training workload to the server, which alleviates computational burden on client devices. However, the transmission of intermediate feature representations, referred to as smashed data, incurs significant communication overhead, particularly when a large number of client devices are involved. To address this challenge, we propose an adaptive channel pruning-aided SL (ACP-SL) scheme. In ACP-SL, a label-aware channel importance scoring (LCIS) module is designed to generate channel importance scores, distinguishing important channels from less important ones. Based on these scores, an adaptive channel pruning (ACP) module is developed to prune less important channels, thereby compressing the corresponding smashed data and reducing the communication overhead. Experimental results show that ACP-SL consistently outperforms benchmark schemes in test accuracy. Furthermore, it reaches a target test accuracy in fewer training rounds, thereby reducing communication overhead.

Federated Agentic AI for Wireless Networks: Fundamentals, Approaches, and Applications

Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) presents a promising pathway toward realizing autonomous and self-improving wireless network services. However, resource-constrained, widely distributed, and data-heterogeneous nature of wireless networks poses significant challenges to existing agentic AI that relies on centralized architectures, leading to high communication overhead, privacy risks, and non-independent and identically distributed (non-IID) data. Federated learning (FL) has the potential to improve the overall loop of agentic AI through collaborative local learning and parameter sharing without exchanging raw data. This paper proposes new federated agentic AI approaches for wireless networks. We first summarize fundamentals of agentic AI and mainstream FL types. Then, we illustrate how each FL type can strengthen a specific component of agentic AI's loop. Moreover, we conduct a case study on using FRL to improve the performance of agentic AI's action decision in low-altitude wireless networks (LAWNs). Finally, we provide a conclusion and discuss future research directions.

Event-Triggered Gossip for Distributed Learning

While distributed learning offers a new learning paradigm for distributed network with no central coordination, it is constrained by communication bottleneck between nodes. We develop a new event-triggered gossip framework for distributed learning to reduce inter-node communication overhead. The framework introduces an adaptive communication control mechanism that enables each node to autonomously decide in a fully decentralized fashion when to exchange model information with its neighbors based on local model deviations. We analyze the ergodic convergence of the proposed framework under noconvex objectives and interpret the convergence guarantees under different triggering conditions. Simulation results show that the proposed framework achieves substantially lower communication overhead than the state-of-the-art distributed learning methods, reducing cumulative point-to-point transmissions by \textbf{71.61\%} with only a marginal performance loss, compared with the conventional full-communication baseline.

SIDeR: Semantic Identity Decoupling for Unrestricted Face Privacy

With the deep integration of facial recognition into online banking, identity verification, and other networked services, achieving effective decoupling of identity information from visual representations during image storage and transmission has become a critical challenge for privacy protection. To address this issue, we propose SIDeR, a Semantic decoupling-driven framework for unrestricted face privacy protection. SIDeR decomposes a facial image into a machine-recognizable identity feature vector and a visually perceptible semantic appearance component. By leveraging semantic-guided recomposition in the latent space of a diffusion model, it generates visually anonymous adversarial faces while maintaining machine-level identity consistency. The framework incorporates momentum-driven unrestricted perturbation optimization and a semantic-visual balancing factor to synthesize multiple visually diverse, highly natural adversarial samples. Furthermore, for authorized access, the protected image can be restored to its original form when the correct password is provided. Extensive experiments on the CelebA-HQ and FFHQ datasets demonstrate that SIDeR achieves a 99% attack success rate in black-box scenarios and outperforms baseline methods by 41.28% in PSNR-based restoration quality.

Enhancing Conversational Agents via Task-Oriented Adversarial Memory Adaptation

Conversational agents struggle to handle long conversations due to context window limitations. Therefore, memory systems are developed to leverage essential historical information. Existing memory systems typically follow a pipeline of offline memory construction and update, and online retrieval. Despite the flexible online phase, the offline phase remains fixed and task-independent. In this phase, memory construction operates under a predefined workflow and fails to emphasize task relevant information. Meanwhile, memory updates are guided by generic metrics rather than task specific supervision. This leads to a misalignment between offline memory preparation and task requirements, which undermines downstream task performance. To this end, we propose an Adversarial Memory Adaptation mechanism (AMA) that aligns memory construction and update with task objectives by simulating task execution. Specifically, first, a challenger agent generates question answer pairs based on the original dialogues. The constructed memory is then used to answer these questions, simulating downstream inference. Subsequently, an evaluator agent assesses the responses and performs error analysis. Finally, an adapter agent analyzes the error cases and performs dual level updates on both the construction strategy and the content. Through this process, the memory system receives task aware supervision signals in advance during the offline phase, enhancing its adaptability to downstream tasks. AMA can be integrated into various existing memory systems, and extensive experiments on long dialogue benchmark LoCoMo demonstrate its effectiveness.