Efficient Semantic Communication Through Transformer-Aided Compression

TL;DR

This paper introduces a transformer-based adaptive semantic communication framework that dynamically compresses image regions based on their importance and channel conditions, improving efficiency and fidelity in bandwidth-limited scenarios.

Contribution

It presents a novel channel-aware adaptive compression method using vision transformers to prioritize semantic content based on real-time channel bandwidth.

Findings

Maintains high semantic fidelity under bandwidth constraints

Optimizes transmission efficiency by content-aware encoding

Effective in limited bandwidth environments

Abstract

Transformers, known for their attention mechanisms, have proven highly effective in focusing on critical elements within complex data. This feature can effectively be used to address the time-varying channels in wireless communication systems. In this work, we introduce a channel-aware adaptive framework for semantic communication, where different regions of the image are encoded and compressed based on their semantic content. By employing vision transformers, we interpret the attention mask as a measure of the semantic contents of the patches and dynamically categorize the patches to be compressed at various rates as a function of the instantaneous channel bandwidth. Our method enhances communication efficiency by adapting the encoding resolution to the content's relevance, ensuring that even in highly constrained environments, critical information is preserved. We evaluate the proposed adaptive transmission framework using the TinyImageNet dataset, measuring both reconstruction quality and accuracy. The results demonstrate that our approach maintains high semantic fidelity while optimizing bandwidth, providing an effective solution for transmitting multi-resolution data in limited bandwidth conditions.