Privacy-Preserving Semantic Communication over Wiretap Channels with Learnable Differential Privacy

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Chen, Weixuan, Yang, Qianqian, Shao, Shuo, Tang, Shunpu, Shi, Zhiguo, Yu, Shui
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Chen, Weixuan
Yang, Qianqian
Shao, Shuo
Tang, Shunpu
Shi, Zhiguo
Yu, Shui
author_facet Chen, Weixuan
Yang, Qianqian
Shao, Shuo
Tang, Shunpu
Shi, Zhiguo
Yu, Shui
contents While semantic communication (SemCom) improves transmission efficiency by focusing on task-relevant information, it also raises critical privacy concerns. Many existing secure SemCom approaches rely on restrictive or impractical assumptions, such as favorable channel conditions for the legitimate user or prior knowledge of the eavesdropper's model. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a novel secure SemCom framework for image transmission over wiretap channels, leveraging differential privacy (DP) to provide approximate privacy guarantees. Specifically, our approach first extracts disentangled semantic representations from source images using generative adversarial network (GAN) inversion method, and then selectively perturbs private semantic representations with approximate DP noise. Distinct from conventional DP-based protection methods, we introduce DP noise with learnable pattern, instead of traditional white Gaussian or Laplace noise, achieved through adversarial training of neural networks (NNs). This design mitigates the inherent non-invertibility of DP while effectively protecting private information. Moreover, it enables explicitly controllable security levels by adjusting the privacy budget according to specific security requirements, which is not achieved in most existing secure SemCom approaches. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared with the previous DP-based method and direct transmission, the proposed method significantly degrades the reconstruction quality for the eavesdropper, while introducing only slight degradation in task performance. Under comparable security levels, our approach achieves an LPIPS advantage of 0.06-0.29 and an FPPSR advantage of 0.10-0.86 for the legitimate user compared with the previous DP-based method.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_23274
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Privacy-Preserving Semantic Communication over Wiretap Channels with Learnable Differential Privacy
Chen, Weixuan
Yang, Qianqian
Shao, Shuo
Tang, Shunpu
Shi, Zhiguo
Yu, Shui
Cryptography and Security
Image and Video Processing
While semantic communication (SemCom) improves transmission efficiency by focusing on task-relevant information, it also raises critical privacy concerns. Many existing secure SemCom approaches rely on restrictive or impractical assumptions, such as favorable channel conditions for the legitimate user or prior knowledge of the eavesdropper's model. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a novel secure SemCom framework for image transmission over wiretap channels, leveraging differential privacy (DP) to provide approximate privacy guarantees. Specifically, our approach first extracts disentangled semantic representations from source images using generative adversarial network (GAN) inversion method, and then selectively perturbs private semantic representations with approximate DP noise. Distinct from conventional DP-based protection methods, we introduce DP noise with learnable pattern, instead of traditional white Gaussian or Laplace noise, achieved through adversarial training of neural networks (NNs). This design mitigates the inherent non-invertibility of DP while effectively protecting private information. Moreover, it enables explicitly controllable security levels by adjusting the privacy budget according to specific security requirements, which is not achieved in most existing secure SemCom approaches. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared with the previous DP-based method and direct transmission, the proposed method significantly degrades the reconstruction quality for the eavesdropper, while introducing only slight degradation in task performance. Under comparable security levels, our approach achieves an LPIPS advantage of 0.06-0.29 and an FPPSR advantage of 0.10-0.86 for the legitimate user compared with the previous DP-based method.
title Privacy-Preserving Semantic Communication over Wiretap Channels with Learnable Differential Privacy
topic Cryptography and Security
Image and Video Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23274