Navid Nikaein

Ilias Chatzistefanidis, Navid Nikaein

Large Language Model (LLM)-based autonomous agents are expected to play a vital role in the evolution of 6G networks, by empowering real-time decision-making related to management and service provisioning to end-users. This shift facilitates the transition from a specialized intelligence approach, where artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms handle isolated tasks, to artificial general intelligence (AGI)-driven networks, where agents possess broader reasoning capabilities and can manage diverse network functions. In this paper, we introduce a novel agentic paradigm that combines LLMs with real-time optimization algorithms towards Trustworthy AI, defined as symbiotic agents. Optimizers at the LLM's input-level provide bounded uncertainty steering for numerically precise tasks, whereas output-level optimizers supervised by the LLM enable adaptive real-time control. We design and implement two novel agent types including: (i) Radio Access Network optimizers, and (ii) multi-agent negotiators for Service-Level Agreements (SLAs). We further propose an end-to-end architecture for AGI networks and evaluate it on a 5G testbed capturing channel fluctuations from moving vehicles. Results show that symbiotic agents reduce decision errors fivefold compared to standalone LLM-based agents, while smaller language models (SLM) achieve similar accuracy with a 99.9% reduction in GPU resource overhead and in near-real-time loops of 82 ms. A multi-agent demonstration for collaborative RAN on the real-world testbed highlights significant flexibility in service-level agreement and resource allocation, reducing RAN over-utilization by approximately 44%. Drawing on our findings and open-source implementations, we introduce the symbiotic paradigm as the foundation for next-generation, AGI-driven networks-systems designed to remain adaptable, efficient, and trustworthy even as LLMs advance.

Adnan Shahid, Adrian Kliks, Ahmed Al-Tahmeesschi et al.

This white paper discusses the role of large-scale AI in the telecommunications industry, with a specific focus on the potential of generative AI to revolutionize network functions and user experiences, especially in the context of 6G systems. It highlights the development and deployment of Large Telecom Models (LTMs), which are tailored AI models designed to address the complex challenges faced by modern telecom networks. The paper covers a wide range of topics, from the architecture and deployment strategies of LTMs to their applications in network management, resource allocation, and optimization. It also explores the regulatory, ethical, and standardization considerations for LTMs, offering insights into their future integration into telecom infrastructure. The goal is to provide a comprehensive roadmap for the adoption of LTMs to enhance scalability, performance, and user-centric innovation in telecom networks.

Ilias Chatzistefanidis, Andrea Leone, Ali Yaghoubian et al.

Future 6G radio access networks (RANs) will be artificial intelligence (AI)-native: observed, reasoned about, and re-configured by autonomous agents cooperating across the cloud-edge continuum. We introduce MX-AI, the first end-to-end agentic system that (i) instruments a live 5G Open RAN testbed based on OpenAirInterface (OAI) and FlexRIC, (ii) deploys a graph of Large-Language-Model (LLM)-powered agents inside the Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) layer, and (iii) exposes both observability and control functions for 6G RAN resources through natural-language intents. On 50 realistic operational queries, MX-AI attains a mean answer quality of 4.1/5.0 and 100 % decision-action accuracy, while incurring only 8.8 seconds end-to-end latency when backed by GPT-4.1. Thus, it matches human-expert performance, validating its practicality in real settings. We publicly release the agent graph, prompts, and evaluation harness to accelerate open research on AI-native RANs. A live demo is presented here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEIya7988Ug&t=285s&ab_channel=BubbleRAN

Ilias Chatzistefanidis, Navid Nikaein, Andrea Leone et al.

Next-generation mobile networks must reconcile the often-conflicting goals of multiple service owners. However, today's network slice controllers remain rigid, policy-bound, and unaware of the business context. We introduce Agoran Service and Resource Broker (SRB), an agentic marketplace that brings stakeholders directly into the operational loop. Inspired by the ancient Greek agora, Agoran distributes authority across three autonomous AI branches: a Legislative branch that answers compliance queries using retrieval-augmented Large Language Models (LLMs); an Executive branch that maintains real-time situational awareness through a watcher-updated vector database; and a Judicial branch that evaluates each agent message with a rule-based Trust Score, while arbitrating LLMs detect malicious behavior and apply real-time incentives to restore trust. Stakeholder-side Negotiation Agents and the SRB-side Mediator Agent negotiate feasible, Pareto-optimal offers produced by a multi-objective optimizer, reaching a consensus intent in a single round, which is then deployed to Open and AI RAN controllers. Deployed on a private 5G testbed and evaluated with realistic traces of vehicle mobility, Agoran achieved significant gains: (i) a 37% increase in throughput of eMBB slices, (ii) a 73% reduction in latency of URLLC slices, and concurrently (iii) an end-to-end 8.3% saving in PRB usage compared to a static baseline. An 1B-parameter Llama model, fine-tuned for five minutes on 100 GPT-4 dialogues, recovers approximately 80% of GPT-4.1's decision quality, while operating within 6 GiB of memory and converging in only 1.3 seconds. These results establish Agoran as a concrete, standards-aligned path toward ultra-flexible, stakeholder-centric 6G networks. A live demo is presented https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7vEyMu2f5w\&ab_channel=BubbleRAN.

Xenofon Vasilakos, Navid Nikaein, Dean H Lorenz et al.

Fifth Generation (5G) networks are envisioned to be fully autonomous in accordance to the ETSI-defined Zero touch network and Service Management (ZSM) concept. To this end, purpose-specific Machine Learning (ML) models can be used to manage and control physical as well as virtual network resources in a way that is fully compliant to slice Service Level Agreements (SLAs), while also boosting the revenue of the underlying physical network operator(s). This is because specially designed and trained ML models can be both proactive and very effective against slice management issues that can induce significant SLA penalties or runtime costs. However, reaching that point is very challenging. 5G networks will be highly dynamic and complex, offering a large scale of heterogeneous, sophisticated and resource-demanding 5G services as network slices. This raises a need for a well-defined, generic and step-wise roadmap to designing, building and deploying efficient ML models as collaborative components of what can be defined as Cognitive Network and Slice Management (CNSM) 5G systems. To address this need, we take a use case-driven approach to design and present a novel Integrated Methodology for CNSM in virtualized 5G networks based on a concrete eHealth use case, and elaborate on it to derive a generic approach for 5G slice management use cases. The three fundamental components that comprise our proposed methodology include (i) a 5G Cognitive Workflow model that conditions everything from the design up to the final deployment of ML models; (ii) a Four-stage approach to Cognitive Slice Management with an emphasis on anomaly detection; and (iii) a Proactive Control Scheme for the collaboration of different ML models targeting different slice life-cycle management problems.