DinoLink: A Token-Centric Representation Compression Framework for Bandwidth-Constrained Collaborative V2X Perception

High-precision remote perception is often hindered by the severe bandwidth constraints of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) networks. We propose textitDinoLink, a token-centric compression framework that replaces raw pixel streaming with discrete semantic communication for vehicle-cloud collaborative inference. DinoLink employs a dual-sparsity architecture: a saliency-aware selector prunes redundant background tokens, while a Residual Vector Quantization (RVQ) module collapses features into compact codebook indices. By transmitting only lightweight indices and positional priors, DinoLink achieves a 139× bitrate reduction compared to uncompressed transmission while maintaining a competitive 32.8% mAP on the nuScenes dataset. Deployment simulations further demonstrate a 34.5× acceleration in narrow-band environments, such as LoRa. Our results substantiate DinoLink as a robust, bandwidth-efficient frontend for high-fidelity remote perception in constrained V2X scenarios. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/UGA-MOBILITY-LAB/dinolink.