Less Signals, More Understanding: Channel-Capacity Codebook Design for Digital Task-Oriented Semantic Communication

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhang, Anbang, Guo, Shuaishuai, Feng, Chenyuan, Du, Hongyang, Li, Haojin, Sun, Chen, Zhang, Haijun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916883866845184
author Zhang, Anbang
Guo, Shuaishuai
Feng, Chenyuan
Du, Hongyang
Li, Haojin
Sun, Chen
Zhang, Haijun
author_facet Zhang, Anbang
Guo, Shuaishuai
Feng, Chenyuan
Du, Hongyang
Li, Haojin
Sun, Chen
Zhang, Haijun
contents Discrete representation has emerged as a powerful tool in task-oriented semantic communication (ToSC), offering compact, interpretable, and efficient representations well-suited for low-power edge intelligence scenarios. Its inherent digital nature aligns seamlessly with hardware-friendly deployment and robust storage/transmission protocols. However, despite its strengths, current ToSC frameworks often decouple semantic-aware discrete mapping from the underlying channel characteristics and task demands. This mismatch leads to suboptimal communication performance, degraded task utility, and limited generalization under variable wireless conditions. Moreover, conventional designs frequently overlook channel-awareness in codebook construction, restricting the effectiveness of semantic symbol selection under constrained resources. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a channel-aware discrete semantic coding framework tailored for low-power edge networks. Leveraging a Wasserstein-regularized objective, our approach aligns discrete code activations with optimal input distributions, thereby improving semantic fidelity, robustness, and task accuracy. Extensive experiments on the inference tasks across diverse signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes show that our method achieves notable gains in accuracy and communication efficiency. This work provides new insights into integrating discrete semantics and channel optimization, paving the way for the widespread adoption of semantic communication in future digital infrastructures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_04291
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Less Signals, More Understanding: Channel-Capacity Codebook Design for Digital Task-Oriented Semantic Communication
Zhang, Anbang
Guo, Shuaishuai
Feng, Chenyuan
Du, Hongyang
Li, Haojin
Sun, Chen
Zhang, Haijun
Signal Processing
Image and Video Processing
Discrete representation has emerged as a powerful tool in task-oriented semantic communication (ToSC), offering compact, interpretable, and efficient representations well-suited for low-power edge intelligence scenarios. Its inherent digital nature aligns seamlessly with hardware-friendly deployment and robust storage/transmission protocols. However, despite its strengths, current ToSC frameworks often decouple semantic-aware discrete mapping from the underlying channel characteristics and task demands. This mismatch leads to suboptimal communication performance, degraded task utility, and limited generalization under variable wireless conditions. Moreover, conventional designs frequently overlook channel-awareness in codebook construction, restricting the effectiveness of semantic symbol selection under constrained resources. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a channel-aware discrete semantic coding framework tailored for low-power edge networks. Leveraging a Wasserstein-regularized objective, our approach aligns discrete code activations with optimal input distributions, thereby improving semantic fidelity, robustness, and task accuracy. Extensive experiments on the inference tasks across diverse signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes show that our method achieves notable gains in accuracy and communication efficiency. This work provides new insights into integrating discrete semantics and channel optimization, paving the way for the widespread adoption of semantic communication in future digital infrastructures.
title Less Signals, More Understanding: Channel-Capacity Codebook Design for Digital Task-Oriented Semantic Communication
topic Signal Processing
Image and Video Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04291