Efficient Dynamic Clustering-Based Document Compression for Retrieval-Augmented-Generation

Abstract: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a widely adopted approach for knowledge integration during LLM inference in recent years. However, current RAG implementations face challenges in effectively addressing noise, repetition and redundancy in retrieved content, primarily due to their limited ability to exploit fine-grained inter-document relationships. To address these limitations, we propose an \textbf{E}fficient \textbf{D}ynamic \textbf{C}lustering-based document \textbf{C}ompression framework (\textbf{EDC\textsuperscript{2}-RAG}) that effectively utilizes latent inter-document relationships while simultaneously removing irrelevant information and redundant content. We validate our approach, built upon GPT-3.5, on widely used knowledge-QA and hallucination-detected datasets. The results show that this method achieves consistent performance improvements across various scenarios and experimental settings, demonstrating strong robustness and applicability. Our code and datasets can be found at https://github.com/Tsinghua-dhy/EDC-2-RAG.