Learning to Optimize Joint Source and RIS-assisted Channel Encoding for Multi-User Semantic Communication Systems

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Hauptverfasser: Wang, Haidong, Zhao, Songhan, Gu, Bo, Gong, Shimin, Du, Hongyang, Wang, Ping
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Wang, Haidong
Zhao, Songhan
Gu, Bo
Gong, Shimin
Du, Hongyang
Wang, Ping
author_facet Wang, Haidong
Zhao, Songhan
Gu, Bo
Gong, Shimin
Du, Hongyang
Wang, Ping
contents In this paper, we explore a joint source and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted channel encoding (JSRE) framework for multi-user semantic communications, where a deep neural network (DNN) extracts semantic features for all users and the RIS provides channel orthogonality, enabling a unified semantic encoding-decoding design. We aim to maximize the overall energy efficiency of semantic communications across all users by jointly optimizing the user scheduling, the RIS's phase shifts, and the semantic compression ratio. Although this joint optimization problem can be addressed using conventional deep reinforcement learning (DRL) methods, evaluating semantic similarity typically relies on extensive real environment interactions, which can incur heavy computational overhead during training. To address this challenge, we propose a truncated DRL (T-DRL) framework, where a DNN-based semantic similarity estimator is developed to rapidly estimate the similarity score. Moreover, the user scheduling strategy is tightly coupled with the semantic model configuration. To exploit this relationship, we further propose a semantic model caching mechanism that stores and reuses fine-tuned semantic models corresponding to different scheduling decisions. A Transformer-based actor network is employed within the DRL framework to dynamically generate action space conditioned on the current caching state. This avoids redundant retraining and further accelerates the convergence of the learning process. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed JSRE framework significantly improves the system energy efficiency compared with the baseline methods. By training fewer semantic models, the proposed T-DRL framework significantly enhances the learning efficiency.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_21097
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning to Optimize Joint Source and RIS-assisted Channel Encoding for Multi-User Semantic Communication Systems
Wang, Haidong
Zhao, Songhan
Gu, Bo
Gong, Shimin
Du, Hongyang
Wang, Ping
Networking and Internet Architecture
Machine Learning
In this paper, we explore a joint source and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted channel encoding (JSRE) framework for multi-user semantic communications, where a deep neural network (DNN) extracts semantic features for all users and the RIS provides channel orthogonality, enabling a unified semantic encoding-decoding design. We aim to maximize the overall energy efficiency of semantic communications across all users by jointly optimizing the user scheduling, the RIS's phase shifts, and the semantic compression ratio. Although this joint optimization problem can be addressed using conventional deep reinforcement learning (DRL) methods, evaluating semantic similarity typically relies on extensive real environment interactions, which can incur heavy computational overhead during training. To address this challenge, we propose a truncated DRL (T-DRL) framework, where a DNN-based semantic similarity estimator is developed to rapidly estimate the similarity score. Moreover, the user scheduling strategy is tightly coupled with the semantic model configuration. To exploit this relationship, we further propose a semantic model caching mechanism that stores and reuses fine-tuned semantic models corresponding to different scheduling decisions. A Transformer-based actor network is employed within the DRL framework to dynamically generate action space conditioned on the current caching state. This avoids redundant retraining and further accelerates the convergence of the learning process. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed JSRE framework significantly improves the system energy efficiency compared with the baseline methods. By training fewer semantic models, the proposed T-DRL framework significantly enhances the learning efficiency.
title Learning to Optimize Joint Source and RIS-assisted Channel Encoding for Multi-User Semantic Communication Systems
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.21097