Queue-Aware Token Communications: Bridging AI Representation and Wireless Service

Yuquan Xiao, Qinghe Du, Chaoyang Zhang, Wenchi Cheng, Jingqing Wang +2

The rapid advancement of foundation models and edge intelligence is transforming wireless networks from data-oriented communication systems into artificial intelligence (AI)-native service platforms. Token communications (TokenCom) has emerged as a promising paradigm that directly transmits task-oriented AI representations. However, existing studies typically assume that generated tokens can be transmitted immediately, overlooking the queueing dynamics arising from the mismatch between token workload generation and time-varying wireless service capability. To address this limitation, we introduce Queue-Aware TokenCom, which explicitly incorporates token queues into the AI service pipeline. We present an end-to-end architecture integrating AI representation generation, token workload management, wireless transmission, and downstream task inference. We then discuss two key design directions: budget-aware token representation optimization and queue-aware token service optimization, with the token budget serving as a critical interface between AI performance and communication efficiency. Moreover, we investigate fixed and adaptive token budget strategies to characterize the…