On the Convergence of Large Language Model Optimizer for Black-Box Network Management

  • Hoon Lee
  • , Wentao Zhou
  • , Merouane Debbah
  • , Inkyu Lee*
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Future wireless networks are expected to incorporate diverse services that often lack general mathematical models. To address such black-box network management tasks, the large language model (LLM) optimizer framework, which leverages pretrained LLMs as optimization agents, has recently been promoted as a promising solution. This framework utilizes natural language prompts describing the given optimization problems along with past solutions generated by LLMs themselves. As a result, LLMs can obtain efficient solutions autonomously without knowing the mathematical models of the objective functions. Although the viability of the LLM optimizer (LLMO) framework has been studied in various black-box scenarios, it has so far been limited to numerical simulations. For the first time, this paper establishes a theoretical foundation for the LLMO framework. With careful investigations of LLM inference steps, we can interpret the LLMO procedure as a finite-state Markov chain, and prove the convergence of the framework. Our results are extended to a more advanced multiple LLM architecture, where the impact of multiple LLMs is rigorously verified in terms of the convergence rate. Comprehensive numerical simulations validate our theoretical results and provide a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the LLMO framework.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)11385-11402
Number of pages18
JournalIEEE Transactions on Communications
Volume73
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 1972-2012 IEEE.

Keywords

  • Large language models (LLMs)
  • black-box optimization (BBO)
  • finite-state Markov chain

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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