VIL2C: Value-of-Information Aware Low-Latency Communication for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Inter-agent communication serves as an effective mechanism for enhancing performance in collaborative multi-agent reinforcement learning(MARL) systems. However, the inherent communication latency in practical systems induces both action decision delays and outdated information sharing, impeding MARL performance gains, particularly in time-critical applications like autonomous driving. In this work, we propose a V alue-of-Information aware Low-latency Communication(VIL2C) scheme that proactively adjusts the latency distribution to mitigate its effects in MARL systems. Specifically, we define a V alue of Information (VOI) metric to quantify the importance of delayed message transmission based on each delayed message's importance. Moreover, we propose a progressive message reception mechanism to adap-tively adjust the reception duration based on received messages. We derive the optimized V oI aware resource allocation and theoretically prove the performance advantage of the proposed VIL2C scheme. Extensive experiments demonstrate that VIL2C outperforms existing approaches under various communication conditions. These gains are attributed to the low-latency transmission of high-V oI messages via resource allocation and the elimination of unnecessary waiting periods via adaptive reception duration.