VQ-DeepISC: Vector Quantized-Enabled Digital Semantic Communication with Channel Adaptive Image Transmission

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chen, Jianqiao, Zhu, Tingting, Song, Huishi, Ma, Nan, Xu, Xiaodong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Chen, Jianqiao
Zhu, Tingting
Song, Huishi
Ma, Nan
Xu, Xiaodong
author_facet Chen, Jianqiao
Zhu, Tingting
Song, Huishi
Ma, Nan
Xu, Xiaodong
contents Discretization of semantic features enables interoperability between semantic and digital communication systems, showing significant potential for practical applications. The fundamental difficulty in digitizing semantic features stems from the need to preserve continuity and context in inherently analog representations during their compression into discrete symbols while ensuring robustness to channel degradation. In this paper, we propose a vector quantized (VQ)-enabled digital semantic communication system with channel adaptive image transmission, named VQ-DeepISC. Guided by deep joint source-channel coding (DJSCC), we first design a Swin Transformer backbone for hierarchical semantic feature extraction, followed by VQ modules projecting features into discrete latent spaces. Consequently, it enables efficient index-based transmission instead of raw feature transmission. To further optimize this process, we develop an attention mechanism-driven channel adaptation module to dynamically optimize index transmission. Secondly, to counteract codebook collapse during training process, we impose a distributional regularization by minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD) between codeword usage frequencies and a uniform prior. Meanwhile, exponential moving average (EMA) is employed to stabilize training and ensure balanced feature coverage during codebook updates. Finally, digital communication is implemented using quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation alongside orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), adhering to the IEEE 802.11a standard. Experimental results demonstrate superior reconstruction fidelity of the proposed system over benchmark methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_03740
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle VQ-DeepISC: Vector Quantized-Enabled Digital Semantic Communication with Channel Adaptive Image Transmission
Chen, Jianqiao
Zhu, Tingting
Song, Huishi
Ma, Nan
Xu, Xiaodong
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Discretization of semantic features enables interoperability between semantic and digital communication systems, showing significant potential for practical applications. The fundamental difficulty in digitizing semantic features stems from the need to preserve continuity and context in inherently analog representations during their compression into discrete symbols while ensuring robustness to channel degradation. In this paper, we propose a vector quantized (VQ)-enabled digital semantic communication system with channel adaptive image transmission, named VQ-DeepISC. Guided by deep joint source-channel coding (DJSCC), we first design a Swin Transformer backbone for hierarchical semantic feature extraction, followed by VQ modules projecting features into discrete latent spaces. Consequently, it enables efficient index-based transmission instead of raw feature transmission. To further optimize this process, we develop an attention mechanism-driven channel adaptation module to dynamically optimize index transmission. Secondly, to counteract codebook collapse during training process, we impose a distributional regularization by minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD) between codeword usage frequencies and a uniform prior. Meanwhile, exponential moving average (EMA) is employed to stabilize training and ensure balanced feature coverage during codebook updates. Finally, digital communication is implemented using quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation alongside orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), adhering to the IEEE 802.11a standard. Experimental results demonstrate superior reconstruction fidelity of the proposed system over benchmark methods.
title VQ-DeepISC: Vector Quantized-Enabled Digital Semantic Communication with Channel Adaptive Image Transmission
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03740