Decoupling Source and Semantic Encoding: An Implementation Study

Abstract

Despite the remarkable achievements of modern communication systems based on Shannon’s theory, there is still considerable room for exploration in information transmission capacity, and semantic communication technology has emerged as a promising approach in this regard. Nonetheless, the benefits of semantic communication remain elusive, and the absence of a unified system model has hindered practical implementation. In this context, we contend that semantic communication can benefit from data distortion and the incorporation of natural language modeling information, such that source coding with semantic modeling information does not compromise the performance of semantic communication systems. To fortify our stance, a novel Separated Data-Semantic Coding (SDSC) system is proposed, which disentangles the source coding and semantic coding. Furthermore, relevant experiments are conducted to validate the contention and the SDSC system. By illuminating the superiority of semantic communication, the research not only contributes to the advancement of semantic communication technologies but also facilitates the development of more practical communication systems.