# Generative Semantic Communication via Alternating Dual-Domain Posterior Sampling

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16796 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16796/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 21 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14687/) (2022)
- [The Perception-Distortion Tradeoff](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06077/) (2017)
- [Rethinking Lossy Compression: The Rate-Distortion-Perception Tradeoff](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07821/) (2019)
- [Beyond Transmitting Bits: Context, Semantics, and Task-Oriented Communications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09353/) (2022)
- [Semantic Communications: Principles and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01389/) (2021)
- [CDDM: Channel Denoising Diffusion Models for Wireless Semantic Communications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08895/) (2023)
- [Generative Joint Source-Channel Coding for Semantic Image Transmission](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13772/) (2022)
- [SwinJSCC: Taming Swin Transformer for Deep Joint Source-Channel Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09361/) (2023)
- [High Perceptual Quality Wireless Image Delivery with Denoising Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15889/) (2023)
- [DiffCom: Channel Received Signal is a Natural Condition to Guide Diffusion Posterior Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07390/) (2024)
- [SNR-adaptive deep joint source-channel coding for wireless image transmission](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.00202/) (2021)
- [Enabling Training-Free Semantic Communication Systems with Generative Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01209/) (2025)
- [Cache-enabled Generative Joint Source-Channel Coding for Evolving Semantic Communications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17702/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generative semantic communication (SemCom) harnesses pretrained generative priors to improve the perceptual quality of wireless image transmission. Existing generative SemCom receivers, however, rely on maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation, which fundamentally cannot preserve the data distribution and thus limits achievable perceptual quality. Moreover, current diffusion-based approaches using single-domain guidance face significant limitations: latent-domain guidance is sensitive to channel noise, while image-domain guidance inherits decoder bias. Simply combining both domains simultaneously yields an overconfident pseudo-posterior. In this paper, we formulate semantic decoding as a Bayesian inverse problem and prove that posterior sampling achieves optimal perceptual quality by preserving the data distribution. Building on this insight, we propose alternating dual-domain posterior sampling (ADDPS), a diffusion-based SemCom receiver that alternately enforces latent-domain and image-domain consistency during the sampling process. This alternating strategy decomposes joint posterior sampling into simpler subproblems, avoiding gradient conflicts while retaining the complementary strengths of both domains. Experiments on FFHQ demonstrate that the proposed ADDPS achieves superior perceptual quality compared with existing methods.
