Adaptive Bit Rate Control in Semantic Communication with Incremental Knowledge-based HARQ

Semantic communication has witnessed a great progress with the development of natural language processing (NLP) and deep learning (DL). Although existing semantic communication technologies can effectively reduce errors in semantic interpretation, most of these solutions adopt a fixed bit length structure, along with a rigid transmission scheme, which is inefficient and lacks scalability when faced with different meanings and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions. In this paper, we explore the impact of adaptive bit lengths on semantic coding (SC) under various channel conditions. First, we propose progressive semantic hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) schemes that utilize incremental knowledge (IK) to simultaneously reduce the communication cost and semantic error. On top of this, we design a novel semantic encoding solution with multi-bit length selection. In this fashion, the transmitter employs a policy network to decide the appropriate coding rate, so as to secure the correct information delivery at the cost of minimal bits. Moreover, a specific denoiser is further introduced to reduce the semantic errors encountered in the transmission process according to the semantic characteristics of context. Extensive simulation results have been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed solution.