Coding in the Presence of Semantic Value of Information: Unequal Error Protection Using Poset Decoders

Abstract: In this work we explore possibilities for coding when information worlds have different (semantic) values. We introduce a loss function that expresses the overall performance of a coding scheme for discrete channels and exchange the usual goal of minimizing the error probability to that of minimizing the expected loss. In this environment we explore the possibilities of using poset-decoders to make a message-wise unequal error protection (UEP), where the most valuable information is protected by placing in its proximity information words that differ by small valued information. Similar definitions and results are shortly presented also for signal constellations in Euclidean space.