SITP: A High-Reliability Semantic Information Transport Protocol Without Retransmission for Semantic Communication

TL;DR

This paper introduces SITP, a novel semantic transport protocol that achieves high reliability and low latency without retransmission, supported by a cross-layer model and a feature interleaving mechanism to improve robustness in 6G networks.

Contribution

The paper presents SITP, a new semantic transport protocol that combines TCP-level reliability with UDP-level latency, along with a cross-layer analytical model and a cross-image feature interleaving method for burst loss mitigation.

Findings

SITP achieves lower latency than TCP with similar reliability at low SNRs.

SITP matches UDP latency and improves reconstruction quality.

Cross-image interleaving effectively mitigates burst packet loss effects.

Abstract

With the evolution of 6G networks, modern communication systems are facing unprecedented demands for high reliability and low latency. However, conventional transport protocols are designed for bit-level reliability, failing to meet the semantic robustness requirements. To address this limitation, this paper proposes a novel Semantic Information Transport Protocol (SITP), which achieves TCP-level reliability and UDP level latency by verifying only packet headers while retaining potentially corrupted payloads for semantic decoding. Building upon SITP, a cross-layer analytical model is established to quantify packet-loss probability across the physical, data-link, network, transport, and application layers. The model provides a unified probabilistic formulation linking signal noise rate (SNR) and packet-loss rate, offering theoretical foundation into end-to-end semantic transmission. Furthermore, a cross-image feature interleaving mechanism is developed to mitigate consecutive burst losses by redistributing semantic features across multiple correlated images, thereby enhancing robustness in burst-fade channels. Extensive experiments show that SITP offers lower latency than TCP with comparable reliability at low SNRs, while matching UDP-level latency and delivering superior reconstruction quality. In addition, the proposed cross-image semantic interleaving mechanism further demonstrates its effectiveness in mitigating degradation caused by bursty packet losses.