Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Comprehensive Survey of Architectures, Enhancements, and Robustness Frontiers

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00054v1
• Date: Wed, 28 May 2025 22:57:04 GMT
• Title: Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Comprehensive Survey of Architectures, Enhancements, and Robustness Frontiers
• Authors: Chaitanya Sharma,
• Abstract summary: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a powerful paradigm to enhance large language models.<n>RAG introduces new challenges in retrieval quality, grounding fidelity, pipeline efficiency, and robustness against noisy or adversarial inputs.<n>This survey aims to consolidate current knowledge in RAG research and serve as a foundation for the next generation of retrieval-augmented language modeling systems.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a powerful paradigm to enhance large language models (LLMs) by conditioning generation on external evidence retrieved at inference time. While RAG addresses critical limitations of parametric knowledge storage-such as factual inconsistency and domain inflexibility-it introduces new challenges in retrieval quality, grounding fidelity, pipeline efficiency, and robustness against noisy or adversarial inputs. This survey provides a comprehensive synthesis of recent advances in RAG systems, offering a taxonomy that categorizes architectures into retriever-centric, generator-centric, hybrid, and robustness-oriented designs. We systematically analyze enhancements across retrieval optimization, context filtering, decoding control, and efficiency improvements, supported by comparative performance analyses on short-form and multi-hop question answering tasks. Furthermore, we review state-of-the-art evaluation frameworks and benchmarks, highlighting trends in retrieval-aware evaluation, robustness testing, and federated retrieval settings. Our analysis reveals recurring trade-offs between retrieval precision and generation flexibility, efficiency and faithfulness, and modularity and coordination. We conclude by identifying open challenges and future research directions, including adaptive retrieval architectures, real-time retrieval integration, structured reasoning over multi-hop evidence, and privacy-preserving retrieval mechanisms. This survey aims to consolidate current knowledge in RAG research and serve as a foundation for the next generation of retrieval-augmented language modeling systems.

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