# AFFormer: Adaptive Feature Fusion Transformer for V2X Cooperative Perception under Channel Impairments

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.01888 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01888/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [V2X-ViT: Vehicle-to-Everything Cooperative Perception with Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10638/) (2022)
- [OPV2V: An Open Benchmark Dataset and Fusion Pipeline for Perception with Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07644/) (2021)
- [V2VNet: Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication for Joint Perception and Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07519/) (2020)
- [DAIR-V2X: A Large-Scale Dataset for Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperative 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05575/) (2022)
- [Where2comm: Communication-Efficient Collaborative Perception via Spatial Confidence Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12836/) (2022)
- [Learning Distilled Collaboration Graph for Multi-Agent Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00643/) (2021)
- [F-Cooper: Feature based Cooperative Perception for Autonomous Vehicle Edge Computing System Using 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06459/) (2019)
- [Robust Collaborative 3D Object Detection in Presence of Pose Errors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07214/) (2022)
- [COOPERNAUT: End-to-End Driving with Cooperative Perception for Networked Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.02222/) (2022)
- [Latency-Aware Collaborative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08560/) (2022)
- [Collaboration Helps Camera Overtake LiDAR in 3D Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13560/) (2023)
- [Asynchrony-Robust Collaborative Perception via Bird's Eye View Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16940/) (2023)
- [Learning for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Cooperative Perception under Lossy Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08273/) (2022)
- [The OpenCDA Open-source Ecosystem for Cooperative Driving Automation Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07325/) (2023)
- [Interruption-Aware Cooperative Perception for V2X Communication-Aided Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11821/) (2023)
- [A Survey and Framework of Cooperative Perception: From Heterogeneous Singleton to Hierarchical Cooperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10590/) (2022)
- [S2R-ViT for Multi-Agent Cooperative Perception: Bridging the Gap from Simulation to Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07935/) (2023)
- [Probabilistic 3D Multi-Object Cooperative Tracking for Autonomous Driving via Differentiable Multi-Sensor Kalman Filter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14655/) (2023)
- [Vehicle-to-Everything Cooperative Perception for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03525/) (2023)
- [DSRC: Learning Density-insensitive and Semantic-aware Collaborative Representation against Corruptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10739/) (2024)
- [SmartCooper: Vehicular Collaborative Perception with Adaptive Fusion and Judger Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00321/) (2024)
- [V2X-PC: Vehicle-to-everything Collaborative Perception via Point Cluster](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16635/) (2024)
- [MASS: Mobility-Aware Sensor Scheduling of Cooperative Perception for Connected Automated Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13029/) (2023)
- [Self-supervised Adaptive Weighting for Cooperative Perception in V2V Communications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10342/) (2023)
- [Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.11p Preamble Insertion in C-V2X Sidelink Signals for Co-Channel Coexistence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07036/) (2022)

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

- [Multi-Agent Embodied Autonomous Driving (MAEAD): From V2X Information Exchange to Shared World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13840/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate 3D object detection is essential for ensuring the safety of autonomous vehicles. Cooperative perception, which leverages vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication to share perceptual data, enhances detection but is vulnerable to channel impairments, such as noise, fading, and interference. To strengthen the reliability of intelligent transportation systems, this work improves the robustness of V2X cooperative perception under communication conditions that reflect common channel impairments. This paper proposes an Adaptive Feature Fusion Transformer (AFFormer), a Transformer-based framework that mitigates the adverse effects of corrupted features by modeling temporal, inter-agent, and spatial correlations. AFFormer introduces three key modules: Multi-Agent and Temporal Aggregation for context-aware fusion across agents and over time, Dual Spatial Attention for efficient modeling of spatial dependencies, and Uncertainty-Guided Fusion for entropy-driven refinement of fused features. A teacher-student knowledge distillation strategy further enhances robustness by aligning fused features with reliable early-collaboration supervision. AFFormer is validated on the V2XSet and DAIR-V2X datasets, where it consistently outperforms existing methods under both ideal and impaired communication conditions, demonstrating improved robustness to communication-induced feature degradation while maintaining a competitive efficiency-accuracy trade-off.