# Mutual Information-Empowered Task-Oriented Communication: Principles, Applications and Challenges

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20195 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20195/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 26 Mar 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Semantic-Aware Task Clustering for Constructive and Cooperative Multi-Tasking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.21426/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Mutual information (MI)-based guidelines have recently proven to be effective for designing task-oriented communication systems, where the ultimate goal is to extract and transmit task-relevant information for downstream task. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of MI-empowered task-oriented communication, highlighting how MI-based methods can serve as a unifying design framework in various task-oriented communication scenarios. We begin with the roadmap of MI for designing task-oriented communication systems, and then introduce the roles and applications of MI to guide feature encoding, transmission optimization, and efficient training with two case studies. We further elaborate the limitations and challenges of MI-based methods. Finally, we identify several open issues in MI-based task-oriented communication to inspire future research.