Scalable Semantic Adaptive Communication for Task Requirements in WSNs

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged as an efficient solution for numerous real-time applications, attributable to their compactness, cost effectiveness, and ease of deployment. The rapid advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and sixth-generation mobile communication technology (6G) and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) in recent years has catalyzed the transition towards large-scale deployment of WSN devices, and changed the image sensing and understanding to novel modes (such as machine-to-machine or human-to-machine interactions). However, the resulting data proliferation and the dynamics of communication environments introduce new challenges for WSN communication: (1) ensuring robust communication in adverse environments and (2) effectively alleviating bandwidth pressure from massive data transmission. To address these issues, this paper proposes a Scalable Semantic Adaptive Communication (SSAC) for task requirement. Firstly, we design an Attention Mechanism-based Joint Source Channel Coding (AMJSCC) in order to fully exploit the correlation among semantic features, channel conditions, and tasks. Then, a Prediction Scalable Semantic Generator (PSSG) is constructed to implement scalable semantics, allowing for flexible adjustments to achieve channel adaptation. The experimental results show that the proposed SSAC is more robust than traditional and other semantic communication algorithms in image classification tasks, and achieves scalable compression rates without sacrificing classification performance, while improving the bandwidth utilization of the communication system.