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CALF: Communication-Aware Learning Framework for Distributed Reinforcement Learning

Machine Learning 2026-03-16 v1 Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Distributed reinforcement learning policies face network delays, jitter, and packet loss when deployed across edge devices and cloud servers. Standard RL training assumes zero-latency interaction, causing severe performance degradation under realistic network conditions. We introduce CALF (Communication-Aware Learning Framework), which trains policies under realistic network models during simulation. Systematic experiments demonstrate that network-aware training substantially reduces deployment performance gaps compared to network-agnostic baselines. Distributed policy deployments across heterogeneous hardware validate that explicitly modelling communication constraints during training enables robust real-world execution. These findings establish network conditions as a major axis of sim-to-real transfer for Wi-Fi-like distributed deployments, complementing physics and visual domain randomisation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.12543,
  title  = {CALF: Communication-Aware Learning Framework for Distributed Reinforcement Learning},
  author = {Carlos Purves and Pietro Lio'},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.12543},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:17:44.285Z