# Learning Practical Communication Strategies in Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.01288 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01288/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Sep 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [Empirical Evaluation of Gated Recurrent Neural Networks on Sequence Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.3555/) (2014)
- [Deep Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06114/) (2017)
- [HyperNetworks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.09106/) (2016)
- [QMIX: Monotonic Value Function Factorisation for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11485/) (2018)
- [Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06676/) (2016)
- [Value-Decomposition Networks For Cooperative Multi-Agent Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05296/) (2017)
- [Learning Multiagent Communication with Backpropagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.07736/) (2016)
- [TarMAC: Targeted Multi-Agent Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11187/) (2018)
- [Learning to Schedule Communication in Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.01554/) (2019)
- [Efficient Communication in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning via Variance Based Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.02682/) (2019)
- [A Game-Theoretic Model and Best-Response Learning Method for Ad Hoc Coordination in Multiagent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01170/) (2015)
- [R-MADDPG for Partially Observable Environments and Limited Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06684/) (2020)
- [Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning with Human Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.04562/) (2018)
- [Collaborative Multi-Robot Systems for Search and Rescue: Coordination and Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12610/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Wireless Communication Enhanced Value Decomposition for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08728/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning, communication is critical to encourage cooperation among agents. Communication in realistic wireless networks can be highly unreliable due to network conditions varying with agents' mobility, and stochasticity in the transmission process. We propose a framework to learn practical communication strategies by addressing three fundamental questions: (1) When: Agents learn the timing of communication based on not only message importance but also wireless channel conditions. (2) What: Agents augment message contents with wireless network measurements to better select the game and communication actions. (3) How: Agents use a novel neural message encoder to preserve all information from received messages, regardless of the number and order of messages. Simulating standard benchmarks under realistic wireless network settings, we show significant improvements in game performance, convergence speed and communication efficiency compared with state-of-the-art.