AI-Native Task-Oriented Semantic Communications over a Relay: Benefits and Vulnerabilities
Abstract
Semantic communication (SemCom) using a relay node is considered, where the relay assists in conveying task-relevant information from a source to a destination, with meaning defined by classification labels. A joint end-to-end design of the source encoder, relay transformation, and destination decoders is developed to optimize both semantic inference accuracy and perceptual reconstruction quality for image data. Relay-assisted schemes are shown to outperform direct transmission, with gains that become more pronounced in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes across different relaying strategies. Alongside these performance benefits, however, a key security vulnerability introduced by the relay is identified, and a Byzantine attack is formulated in which the relay injects structured, learned perturbations into its transmitted signal. The attack operates on intermediate communication representations subject to channel effects, with perturbations generated through a learned mapping applied at test time. It is shown to significantly degrade semantic inference accuracy at the destination. These results reveal a clear trade-off between SemCom gains and security risks in relay-assisted systems, motivating the need for secure relay designs that account for insider threats.
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BibTeX
@misc{sagduyu2026ainative,
title = {{AI-Native Task-Oriented Semantic Communications over a Relay: Benefits and Vulnerabilities}},
author = {Yalin E. Sagduyu and Tugba Erpek and Aylin Yener},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.08155},
eprint = {2611.08155},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08155},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - AI-Native Task-Oriented Semantic Communications over a Relay: Benefits and Vulnerabilities
AU - Yalin E. Sagduyu
AU - Tugba Erpek
AU - Aylin Yener
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.08155
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08155
AB - Semantic communication (SemCom) using a relay node is considered, where the relay assists in conveying task-relevant information from a source to a destination, with meaning defined by classification labels. A joint end-to-end design of the source encoder, relay transformation, and destination decoders is developed to optimize both semantic inference accuracy and perceptual reconstruction quality for image data. Relay-assisted schemes are shown to outperform direct transmission, with gains that become more pronounced in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes across different relaying strategies. Alongside these performance benefits, however, a key security vulnerability introduced by the relay is identified, and a Byzantine attack is formulated in which the relay injects structured, learned perturbations into its transmitted signal. The attack operates on intermediate communication representations subject to channel effects, with perturbations generated through a learned mapping applied at test time. It is shown to significantly degrade semantic inference accuracy at the destination. These results reveal a clear trade-off between SemCom gains and security risks in relay-assisted systems, motivating the need for secure relay designs that account for insider threats.
ER -