LLM-Empowered Agentic MAC Protocols: A Dynamic Stackelberg Game Approach

Abstract: Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols, essential for wireless networks, are typically manually configured. While deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based protocols enhance task-specified network performance, they suffer from poor generalizability and resilience, demanding costly retraining to adapt to dynamic environments. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a game-theoretic LLM-empowered multi-agent DRL (MARL) framework, in which the uplink transmission between a base station and a varying number of user equipments is modeled as a dynamic multi-follower Stackelberg game (MFSG), capturing the network's natural hierarchical structure. Within this game, LLM-driven agents, coordinated through proximal policy optimization (PPO), synthesize adaptive, semantic MAC protocols in response to network dynamics. Protocol action grammar (PAG) is employed to ensure the reliability and efficiency of this process. Under this system, we further analyze the existence and convergence behavior in terms of a Stackelberg equilibrium by studying the learning dynamics of LLM-empowered unified policies in response to changing followers. Simulations corroborate that our framework achieves a 77.6% greater throughput and a 65.2% fairness improvement over conventional baselines. Besides, our framework generalizes excellently to a fluctuating number of users without requiring retraining or architectural changes.