Resource Allocation for Text Semantic Communications

• Published in: IEEE wireless communications letters Vol. 11; no. 7; pp. 1394 - 1398
• Main Authors: Yan, Lei, Qin, Zhijin, Zhang, Rui, Li, Yongzhao, Li, Geoffrey Ye
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.07.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Bandwidth; Communication; Communications systems; Efficiency; Reliability; Resource allocation; Resource management; Semantic communications; semantic spectral efficiency; Semantics; Spectral efficiency; Symbols; Transmitters; Wireless communication
• ISSN: 2162-2337; 2162-2345
• DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2022.3170849

Semantic communications have shown its great potential to improve the transmission reliability, especially in the low signal-to-noise regime. However, resource allocation for semantic communications still remains unexplored, which is a critical issue in guaranteeing the semantic transmission reliability and the communication efficiency. To fill this gap, we investigate the spectral efficiency in the semantic domain and rethink the semantic-aware resource allocation issue. Specifically, taking text semantic communication as an example, the semantic spectral efficiency (S-SE) is defined for the first time, and is used to optimize resource allocation in terms of channel assignment and the number of transmitted semantic symbols. Additionally, for fair comparison of semantic and conventional communication systems, a transform method is developed to convert the conventional bit-based spectral efficiency to the S-SE. Simulation results demonstrate the validity and feasibility of the proposed resource allocation method, as well as the superiority of semantic communications in terms of the S-SE.