DRLM: Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based LLM Query Orchestration in Edge Environments

Reza Farahani (TU Wien, Austria), Zoha Azimi (AAU, Austria), Mario Colosi (University of Messina, Italy), Lauri Lovén (University of Oulu, Finland), Christian Timmerer (AAU, Austria), Schahram Dustdar (TU Wien, Austria)

IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)

7 – 11 December 2026

Macau S.A.R., China

Large language model (LLM) services increasingly process heterogeneous queries with diverse latency, accuracy, and resource requirements. While edge deployment reduces response time, the heterogeneity of devices and the diversity of model families, parameter scales, and quantization levels make efficient LLM query orchestration challenging. This paper introduces DRLM, a Deep Reinforcement Learning-based LLM query orchestration framework in edge environments. DRLM integrates two lightweight predictors: (i) a class-conditioned quality estimator that maps queries to semantic categories and infers model performance, and (ii) a feature-driven latency predictor that estimates inference time across model-device configurations. These predictions, combined with system state (resource utilization and queue dynamics), feed a factorized Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) agent that performs state-aware orchestration decisions. To enable data-driven orchestration, we construct a large-scale benchmarking dataset with 223 835 measurements spanning 1258 queries, 6 query classes, 8 model families (32 deployed instances), 5 quantization levels, and heterogeneous edge devices. Evaluation on a realistic 64-node edge cluster and comparison with three baselines and two state-of-the-art methods show that DRLM reduces inference latency by up to 51 % and queuing delay by up to 67 %, while incurring at most 8 % accuracy loss. DRLM further improves latency under increasing workloads up to 61.4 %, demonstrating robust and stable orchestration.