SNR-aware Semantic Image Transmission with Deep Learning-based Channel Estimation in Fading Channels

Abstract: Semantic communications (SCs) play a central role in shaping the future of the sixth generation (6G) wireless systems, which leverage rapid advances in deep learning (DL). In this regard, end-to-end optimized DL-based joint source-channel coding (JSCC) has been adopted to achieve SCs, particularly in image transmission. Utilizing vision transformers in the encoder/decoder design has enabled significant advancements in image semantic extraction, surpassing traditional convolutional neural networks (CNNs). In this paper, we propose a new JSCC paradigm for image transmission, namely Swin semantic image transmission (SwinSIT), based on the Swin transformer. The Swin transformer is employed to construct both the semantic encoder and decoder for efficient image semantic extraction and reconstruction. Inspired by the squeezing-and-excitation (SE) network, we introduce a signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR)-aware module that utilizes SNR feedback to adaptively perform a double-phase enhancement for the encoder-extracted semantic map and its noisy version at the decoder. Additionally, a CNN-based channel estimator and compensator (CEAC) module repurposes an image-denoising CNN to mitigate fading channel effects. To optimize deployment in resource-constrained IoT devices, a joint pruning and quantization scheme compresses the SwinSIT model. Simulations evaluate the SwinSIT performance against conventional benchmarks demonstrating its effectiveness. Moreover, the model's compressed version substantially reduces its size while maintaining favorable PSNR performance.