Significance-Driven Semantic Communication
Abstract
In this paper, we study a significance-driven cross- layer semantic communication design problem. Based on sta- tistical decision theory, we introduce an information-theoretic measure of per-sample data significance that quantifies the task-specific value of each individual observation. Using this metric, we formulate a cross-layer optimization problem that simultaneously optimizes (i) physical-layer semantic encoding and inference and (ii) MAC-layer resource allocation, with the objective of maximizing semantic spectrum efficiency, defined as the semantic value delivered per unit bandwidth per unit time. At the physical layer, we develop Meta-Learning Variational Information Bottleneck (Meta-VIB), a new semantic transceiver that employs a meta-learned hypernetwork to compress high- dimensional observations into semantically significant latents, enabling instantaneous adaptation to dynamic channel conditions and varying symbol budgets without online retraining. At the MAC layer, we model channel allocation as a Multi-Action Restless Multi-Armed Bandit (MA-RMAB) and adopt the Q- Maximization algorithm, which dynamically allocates channel resources to sensors based on their semantic value of information. Experimental results on a real-world pedestrian safety dataset demonstrate that our joint design achieves substantial gains in semantic spectrum efficiency over baselines, reaching up to 1000 times gain at an average SNR of 0 dB and 40 times gain at an average SNR of 5 dB.
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BibTeX
@misc{mcdowell2026significancedriven,
title = {{Significance-Driven Semantic Communication}},
author = {Christian McDowell and Andrea Panebianco and Sirin Chakraborty and Yin Sun},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.28441},
eprint = {2608.28441},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28441},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Significance-Driven Semantic Communication
AU - Christian McDowell
AU - Andrea Panebianco
AU - Sirin Chakraborty
AU - Yin Sun
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/31
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.28441
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28441
AB - In this paper, we study a significance-driven cross- layer semantic communication design problem. Based on sta- tistical decision theory, we introduce an information-theoretic measure of per-sample data significance that quantifies the task-specific value of each individual observation. Using this metric, we formulate a cross-layer optimization problem that simultaneously optimizes (i) physical-layer semantic encoding and inference and (ii) MAC-layer resource allocation, with the objective of maximizing semantic spectrum efficiency, defined as the semantic value delivered per unit bandwidth per unit time. At the physical layer, we develop Meta-Learning Variational Information Bottleneck (Meta-VIB), a new semantic transceiver that employs a meta-learned hypernetwork to compress high- dimensional observations into semantically significant latents, enabling instantaneous adaptation to dynamic channel conditions and varying symbol budgets without online retraining. At the MAC layer, we model channel allocation as a Multi-Action Restless Multi-Armed Bandit (MA-RMAB) and adopt the Q- Maximization algorithm, which dynamically allocates channel resources to sensors based on their semantic value of information. Experimental results on a real-world pedestrian safety dataset demonstrate that our joint design achieves substantial gains in semantic spectrum efficiency over baselines, reaching up to 1000 times gain at an average SNR of 0 dB and 40 times gain at an average SNR of 5 dB.
ER -