# Hybrid Digital-Analog Semantic Communications

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.12580 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12580/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 21 May 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Semantics-Guided Diffusion for Deep Joint Source-Channel Coding in Wireless Image Transmission](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01138/) (2025)
- [Generative Semantic Communication: Architectures, Technologies, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08642/) (2024)
- [Pilot-guided Multimodal Semantic Communication for Audio-Visual Event Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06208/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Digital and analog semantic communications (SemCom) face inherent limitations such as data security concerns in analog SemCom, as well as leveling-off and cliff-edge effects in digital SemCom. In order to overcome these challenges, we propose a novel SemCom framework and a corresponding system called HDA-DeepSC, which leverages a hybrid digital-analog approach for multimedia transmission. This is achieved through the introduction of digital-analog allocation and fusion modules. To strike a balance between data rate and distortion, we design new loss functions that take into account long-distance dependencies in the semantic distortion constraint, essential information recovery in the channel distortion constraint, and optimal bit stream generation in the rate constraint. Additionally, we propose denoising diffusion-based signal detection techniques, which involve carefully designed variance schedules and sampling algorithms to refine transmitted signals. Through extensive numerical experiments, we will demonstrate that HDA-DeepSC exhibits robustness to channel variations and is capable of supporting various communication scenarios. Our proposed framework outperforms existing benchmarks in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio and multi-scale structural similarity, showcasing its superiority in semantic communication quality.