A Transmitter-Model Unaware Generative Image Compression Framework for Semantic Communication

Unlike traditional bit-level data transmission methods, semantic communication focuses on conveying the meaning behind the data. Though promising results have been achieved, existing end-to-end learning-based semantic communication frameworks often require a synchronization of deep models between the transmitter and the receiver. Such design leads to tens of thousands models to be stored at receiver since different manufactures may optimize their own models. To address this problem, we propose a novel model-unaware generative image compression framework for semantic communication. It features at employing human-understandable multi-modality representations as an intermediate layer to enhance information transmission efficiency and semantic consistency. Our framework introduces a mask-based rate-distortion optimization module, which effectively removes low-relevance information for image generation and reduces the bit rate while maintaining semantic consistency. Experimental results demonstrate that the framework can still reconstruct high-quality images at very low bit rates, showcasing its potential for applications in modern communication systems.