Reinforcement learning-based SDN routing scheme empowered by causality detection and GNN

Abstract

In recent years, with the rapid development of network applications and the increasing demand for high-quality network service, quality-of-service (QoS) routing has emerged as a critical network technology. The application of machine learning techniques, particularly reinforcement learning and graph neural network, has garnered significant attention in addressing this problem. However, existing reinforcement learning methods lack research on the causal impact of agent actions on the interactive environment, and graph neural network fail to effectively represent link features, which are pivotal for routing optimization. Therefore, this study quantifies the causal influence between the intelligent agent and the interactive environment based on causal inference techniques, aiming to guide the intelligent agent in improving the efficiency of exploring the action space. Simultaneously, graph neural network is employed to embed node and link features, and a reward function is designed that comprehensively considers network performance metrics and causality relevance. A centralized reinforcement learning method is proposed to effectively achieve QoS-aware routing in Software-Defined Networking (SDN). Finally, experiments are conducted in a network simulation environment, and metrics such as packet loss, delay, and throughput all outperform the baseline.

Keywords: SDN routing; causal inference; graph neural network; quality-of-service; reinforcement learning.