@inproceedings{manvattira-etal-2026-deepspecs,
title = "{D}eep{S}pecs: Expert-Level Question Answering in 5{G}",
author = "Manvattira, Aman Ganapathy and
Xu, Yifei and
Dang, Ziyue and
Lu, Songwu",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1343/",
pages = "26935--26953",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "5G technology enables mobile Internet access for billions of users. Its design, implementation and operations are regulated by 3GPP standard specifications. We study standard-native question answering over 5G specifications, where expert-level queries require navigating thousands of pages of cross-referenced standards that evolve across tens of releases. Existing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks, including telecom-specific approaches, rely on semantic similarity and cannot reliably resolve cross-references or reason about specification evolution. We present DeepSpecs, a standard-native RAG system with three metadata-rich indices: SpecDB (clause-aligned specification text), ChangeDB (line-level version diffs), and TDocDB (Change Requests with design rationale). DeepSpecs resolves cross-references by recursively retrieving referenced clauses via metadata lookup, and traces evolution by mining clause changes and linking them to corresponding Change Requests. We curate two 5G QA datasets: 573 expert-annotated real-world questions and 350 evolution-focused questions derived from approved Change Requests. Across multiple LLM backends, DeepSpecs outperforms base models and state-of-the-art telecom RAG systems; ablations confirm that cross-reference resolution and evolution-aware retrieval substantially improve answer quality. Our methodology is conceptually applicable to other networked systems."
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<abstract>5G technology enables mobile Internet access for billions of users. Its design, implementation and operations are regulated by 3GPP standard specifications. We study standard-native question answering over 5G specifications, where expert-level queries require navigating thousands of pages of cross-referenced standards that evolve across tens of releases. Existing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks, including telecom-specific approaches, rely on semantic similarity and cannot reliably resolve cross-references or reason about specification evolution. We present DeepSpecs, a standard-native RAG system with three metadata-rich indices: SpecDB (clause-aligned specification text), ChangeDB (line-level version diffs), and TDocDB (Change Requests with design rationale). DeepSpecs resolves cross-references by recursively retrieving referenced clauses via metadata lookup, and traces evolution by mining clause changes and linking them to corresponding Change Requests. We curate two 5G QA datasets: 573 expert-annotated real-world questions and 350 evolution-focused questions derived from approved Change Requests. Across multiple LLM backends, DeepSpecs outperforms base models and state-of-the-art telecom RAG systems; ablations confirm that cross-reference resolution and evolution-aware retrieval substantially improve answer quality. Our methodology is conceptually applicable to other networked systems.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T DeepSpecs: Expert-Level Question Answering in 5G
%A Manvattira, Aman Ganapathy
%A Xu, Yifei
%A Dang, Ziyue
%A Lu, Songwu
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F manvattira-etal-2026-deepspecs
%X 5G technology enables mobile Internet access for billions of users. Its design, implementation and operations are regulated by 3GPP standard specifications. We study standard-native question answering over 5G specifications, where expert-level queries require navigating thousands of pages of cross-referenced standards that evolve across tens of releases. Existing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks, including telecom-specific approaches, rely on semantic similarity and cannot reliably resolve cross-references or reason about specification evolution. We present DeepSpecs, a standard-native RAG system with three metadata-rich indices: SpecDB (clause-aligned specification text), ChangeDB (line-level version diffs), and TDocDB (Change Requests with design rationale). DeepSpecs resolves cross-references by recursively retrieving referenced clauses via metadata lookup, and traces evolution by mining clause changes and linking them to corresponding Change Requests. We curate two 5G QA datasets: 573 expert-annotated real-world questions and 350 evolution-focused questions derived from approved Change Requests. Across multiple LLM backends, DeepSpecs outperforms base models and state-of-the-art telecom RAG systems; ablations confirm that cross-reference resolution and evolution-aware retrieval substantially improve answer quality. Our methodology is conceptually applicable to other networked systems.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1343/
%P 26935-26953
Markdown (Informal)
[DeepSpecs: Expert-Level Question Answering in 5G](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1343/) (Manvattira et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Aman Ganapathy Manvattira, Yifei Xu, Ziyue Dang, and Songwu Lu. 2026. DeepSpecs: Expert-Level Question Answering in 5G. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026, pages 26935–26953, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.