Transformer-Aided Semantic Communications

The transformer structure employed in large language models (LLMs), as a specialized category of deep neural networks (DNNs) featuring attention mechanisms, stands out for their ability to identify and highlight the most relevant aspects of input data. Such a capability is particularly beneficial in addressing a variety of communication challenges, notably in the realm of semantic communication where proper encoding of the relevant data is critical especially in systems with limited bandwidth. In this work, we employ vision transformers specifically for the purpose of compression and compact representation of the input image, with the goal of preserving semantic information throughout the transmission process. Through the use of the attention mechanism inherent in transformers, we create an attention mask. This mask effectively prioritizes critical segments of images for transmission, ensuring that the reconstruction phase focuses on key objects highlighted by the mask. Our methodology significantly improves the quality of semantic communication and optimizes bandwidth usage by encoding different parts of the data in accordance with their semantic information content, thus enhancing overall efficiency. We evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed framework using the TinyImageNet dataset, focusing on both reconstruction quality and accuracy. Our evaluation results demonstrate that our framework successfully preserves semantic information, even when only a fraction of the encoded data is transmitted, according to the intended compression rates

On Optimal Multi-user Beam Alignment in Millimeter Wave Wireless Systems

Directional transmission patterns (a.k.a. narrow beams) are the key to wireless communications in millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands which suffer from high path loss and severe shadowing. In addition, the propagation channel in mmWave frequencies incorporates only a few number of spatial clusters requiring a procedure to align the corresponding narrow beams with the angle of departure (AoD) of the channel clusters. The objective of this procedure, called beam alignment (BA) is to increase the beamforming gain for subsequent data communication. Several prior studies consider optimizing BA procedure to achieve various objectives such as reducing the BA overhead, increasing throughput, and reducing power consumption. While these studies mostly provide optimized BA schemes for scenarios with a single active user, there are often multiple active users in practical networks. Consequently, it is more efficient in terms of BA overhead and delay to design multi-user BA schemes which can perform beam management for multiple users collectively. This paper considers a class of multi-user BA schemes where the base station performs a one shot scan of the angular domain to simultaneously localize multiple users. The objective is to minimize the average of expected width of remaining uncertainty regions (UR) on the AoDs after receiving users' feedbacks. Fundamental bounds on the optimal performance are analyzed using information theoretic tools. Furthermore, a beam design optimization problem is formulated and a practical BA scheme, which provides significant gains compared to the beam sweeping used in 5G standard is proposed

Semantic Multi-Resolution Communications

Deep learning based joint source-channel coding (JSCC) has demonstrated significant advancements in data reconstruction compared to separate source-channel coding (SSCC). This superiority arises from the suboptimality of SSCC when dealing with finite block-length data. Moreover, SSCC falls short in reconstructing data in a multi-user and/or multi-resolution fashion, as it only tries to satisfy the worst channel and/or the highest quality data. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel deep learning multi-resolution JSCC framework inspired by the concept of multi-task learning (MTL). This proposed framework excels at encoding data for different resolutions through hierarchical layers and effectively decodes it by leveraging both current and past layers of encoded data. Moreover, this framework holds great potential for semantic communication, where the objective extends beyond data reconstruction to preserving specific semantic attributes throughout the communication process. These semantic features could be crucial elements such as class labels, essential for classification tasks, or other key attributes that require preservation. Within this framework, each level of encoded data can be carefully designed to retain specific data semantics. As a result, the precision of a semantic classifier can be progressively enhanced across successive layers, emphasizing the preservation of targeted semantics throughout the encoding and decoding stages. We conduct experiments on MNIST and CIFAR10 dataset. The experiment with both datasets illustrates that our proposed method is capable of surpassing the SSCC method in reconstructing data with different resolutions, enabling the extraction of semantic features with heightened confidence in successive layers. This capability is particularly advantageous for prioritizing and preserving more crucial semantic features within the datasets

Deep Learning-Based Real-Time Quality Control of Standard Video Compression for Live Streaming

Ensuring high-quality video content for wireless users has become increasingly vital. Nevertheless, maintaining a consistent level of video quality faces challenges due to the fluctuating encoded bitrate, primarily caused by dynamic video content, especially in live streaming scenarios. Video compression is typically employed to eliminate unnecessary redundancies within and between video frames, thereby reducing the required bandwidth for video transmission. The encoded bitrate and the quality of the compressed video depend on encoder parameters, specifically, the quantization parameter (QP). Poor choices of encoder parameters can result in reduced bandwidth efficiency and high likelihood of non-conformance. Non-conformance refers to the violation of the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) constraint for an encoded video segment. To address these issues, a real-time deep learning-based H.264 controller is proposed. This controller dynamically estimates the optimal encoder parameters based on the content of a video chunk with minimal delay. The objective is to maintain video quality in terms of PSNR above a specified threshold while minimizing the average bitrate of the compressed video. Experimental results, conducted on both QCIF dataset and a diverse range of random videos from public datasets, validate the effectiveness of this approach. Notably, it achieves improvements of up to 2.5 times in average bandwidth usage compared to the state-of-the-art adaptive bitrate video streaming, with a negligible non-conformance probability below $10^{-2}$.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2310.0685

Power Optimal Scheduling with Maximum Delay Constraints

Conference PaperMost multimedia sources are bursty in nature, a property which can be used to trade queuing delay with the resulting average transmission power [2, 3, 4]. In this paper, we study the relation between average transmission power and strict delay constraints. Our main contributions are two-fold. First, we establish necessary and sufficient conditions on the service rates of the wireless transmitter, to meet the delay deadline of every packet in the queue. Second, the conditions are used to show that a scheduler which meets a delay guarantee Dmax for each of the packet over Gaussian channels is a time-varying low-pass filter of order no more than Dmax. This confirms the intuitive explanation for power reduction due to additional queuing delay provided in [3]. Using the relation between delay bounded scheduling and linear filtering, we construct schedulers without the knowledge of source statistics. This marks a significant departure from most information theoretic work on power efficient scheduling [2, 3]. We construct the optimal time-invariant scheduler, which does not require the knowledge of the source statistics

Delay-constrained Scheduling: Power Efficiency, Filter Design, and Bounds

Conference PaperIn this paper, packet scheduling with maximum delay constraints is considered with the objective to minimize average transmit power over Gaussian channels. The main emphasis is on deriving robust schedulers which do not rely on the knowledge of the source arrival process. Towards that end, we first show that all schedulers (robust or otherwise) which guarantee a maximum queuing delay for each packet are equivalent to a time-varying linear filter. Using the connection between filtering and scheduling, we study the design of optimal power minimizing robust schedulers. Two cases, motivated by filtering connection, are studied in detail. First, a time-invariant robust scheduler is presented and its performance is completely characterized. Second, we present the optimal time-varying robust scheduler, and show that it has a very intuitive time water-filling structure. We also present upper and lower bounds on the performance of power-minimizing schedulers as a function of delay constraints. The new results form an important step towards understanding of the packet time-scale interactions between physical layer metric of power and network layer metric of delay