STAR-RIS-Assisted Privacy Protection in Semantic Communication System

TL;DR

This paper introduces a STAR-RIS-assisted method to enhance privacy in semantic communication systems by improving signal transmission to legitimate users and interfering with eavesdroppers, demonstrating superior privacy protection in simulations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel STAR-RIS-based approach to protect privacy in semantic communication, combining signal enhancement and interference to safeguard against eavesdropping.

Findings

Generated disturbance reduces eavesdropper success rate

STAR-RIS improves legitimate signal quality

Simulation confirms effectiveness of privacy protection

Abstract

Semantic communication (SemCom) has emerged as a promising architecture in the realm of intelligent communication paradigms. SemCom involves extracting and compressing the core information at the transmitter while enabling the receiver to interpret it based on established knowledge bases (KBs). This approach enhances communication efficiency greatly. However, the open nature of wireless transmission and the presence of homogeneous KBs among subscribers of identical data type pose a risk of privacy leakage in SemCom. To address this challenge, we propose to leverage the simultaneous transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) to achieve privacy protection in a SemCom system. In this system, the STAR-RIS is utilized to enhance the signal transmission of the SemCom between a base station and a destination user, as well as to covert the signal to interference specifically for the eavesdropper (Eve). Simulation results demonstrate that our generated task-level disturbance outperforms other benchmarks in protecting SemCom privacy, as evidenced by the significantly lower task success rate achieved by Eve.