AI Networking Cookbook: Practical recipes for AI-assisted network automation and development
TL;DR
A unified view of how 6G communications, empowered by advanced AI and ML technologies and distributed intelligence, are expected to drive evolution and expedite the journey toward a smart and intelligent connected world is offered.
The sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks are expected to enable the deep integration of communication, sensing, computing, control, and intelligence in highly dynamic environments. This evolution drives a fundamental transition from conventional passive channel adaptation to proactive channel cognition and reconfiguration, wherein wireless channels are no longer regarded as uncontrollable propagation media but as network resources that can be learned, predicted, and actively reconfigured. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of this emerging paradigm. We first review channel cognition through the channel knowledge map (CKM) as a systematic framework for learning and exploiting channel characteristics across space, time, and frequency domain. The definitions, construction methods, and applications in wireless networks of CKMs are comprehensively reviewed. Building upon channel cognition, we then review channel reconfiguration technologies from two complementary perspectives: transceiver-side reconfiguration enabled by movable antennas (MAs) and environment-side reconfiguration enabled by intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs). For both MA- and IRS-enabled wireless systems, we review their architectures, performance advantages, and key design challenges. Finally, we discuss several promising research directions to inspire further innovations in this burgeoning field.
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI), reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is emerging as a key enabler for intelligent, adaptive, and efficient wireless networks in the 6G era. This survey provides a comprehensive and well-structured overview of how AI is revolutionizing RIS-assisted ISAC by enabling dynamic, data-driven control over the radio environment. Through intelligent configuration of RIS, AI facilitates real-time adaptation of signal propagation paths, enhances sensing resolution, and ensures robust communication performance across diverse and dynamic network conditions. The discussion is organized across two major domains: terrestrial networks (TNs) and non-terrestrial networks (NTNs). In TNs, we examine four critical directions: (i) improving EE, (ii) strengthening security, (iii) achieving high sensing accuracy and low communication latency via joint optimization, and (iv) maximizing throughput. In NTN domain, especially within UAV-based platforms, we explore AI-RIS frameworks that support coordinated sensing and communication, reinforce link security in mobile and unpredictable environments, and enhance aerial network capacity through real-time RIS tuning. By bridging both terrestrial and aerial applications, this survey highlights how AI-driven RIS control enables environment-aware, low-latency, and secure ISAC operations. Finally, we identify and analyze key challenges such as managing trade-offs between sensing and communication, generalizing AI models across varied network scenarios, and ensuring scalable, low-complexity real-time deployment. The work concludes with forward-looking insights into future research directions essential for realizing robust and intelligent RIS-assisted ISAC architectures in 6G and beyond.
A comparative analysis of key technologies in intelligent signal processing for 6G based on a literature survey indicates that AI-based methods offer superior performance and lower computational latency in complex scenarios, yet they continue to face challenges related to interpretability, generalization, and standardization.
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) and AI-and-communication (AIAC) are identified as separate usage scenarios in the ITU IMT-2030 vision for sixth-generation (6G) networks. In practice, however, these two directions are already beginning to merge. ISAC gives the network a way to observe the physical world, while AI gives the network a way to learn from those observations and act on them. This article introduces AI-integrated sensing and communication (AISAC) as a closed-loop framework for this merger. In AISAC, AI is not only a tool used to optimize an ISAC system. ISAC is also the physical substrate through which AI receives data, context, and connectivity. The key technical message is that AISAC requires a new physical-layer design principle, in which the ISAC waveform, beam, power, bandwidth, and sensing mode should be configured for learning alignment, not for sensing distortion or communication rate alone. In particular, the sensing configuration that is most accurate from a classical estimation viewpoint need not be the one that is most useful for training or inference. We present the AISAC landscape, explain why imperfect sensing changes the learning problem, develop the closed-loop architecture and its three-way sensing-communication-learning tension, and outline a vehicular edge-intelligence use case together with open problems for theory, implementation, and standardization.
This paper presents a comprehensive framework for artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled autonomous network slicing optimization in 6G systems and investigates the application of advanced machine learning paradigms specifically deep reinforcement learning, federated learning, and generative AI to orchestrate dynamic resource provisioning, cross-slice isolation, and proactive SLA (Service Level Agreement) enforcement.
This survey formally categorizes state-of-the-art DTN architectures into passive monitoring twins and active control twins, and provides an in-depth evaluation of their underlying enabling technologies, specifically ray-tracing, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, artificial intelligence, and mobile edge computing.
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