Survey on Intelligent Covert Semantic Communication
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摘要: 面向第六代移动通信网络(6G)在超大规模连接、高可靠低时延等典型场景下的安全高效传输需求,语义隐蔽通信能够通过联合语义感知、语义压缩与隐蔽传输控制,在降低传输开销的同时实现信息的安全隐蔽传输,并提升低信噪比条件下的鲁棒性与资源利用率。此外,随着人工智能(AI)技术的快速发展,其具备的语义感知理解、智能决策优化与动态适应能力能够支撑语义重要性判别、自适应隐蔽策略优化以及语义驱动的智能隐蔽传输决策,为复杂动态场景下的智能语义隐蔽通信提供重要支撑。该文针对智能语义隐蔽通信展开综述。首先,介绍了语义通信、隐蔽通信以及语义隐蔽通信的基础概念。之后,探讨了人工智能赋能的智能语义隐蔽通信及其架构,并讨论了智能语义隐蔽通信的典型应用场景。然后,讨论了信道估计、频谱预测、波形设计等关键技术在智能语义隐蔽通信中的作用。最后,讨论了智能语义隐蔽通信面临的挑战和未来研究方向。Abstract:
Significance As the 6th generation mobile communication network (6G) evolves from the internet of everything to the intelligent connection of everything, the communication model is shifting from reliable bit transmission to effective semantic delivery. Semantic communication can extract and compress task-related semantics to reduce redundancy and resource consumption. However, with the highly structured nature, these semantics are vulnerable to eavesdropping and attacks. To address this challenge, covert communication is designed to prevent illegal monitoring and attacks by hiding the transmission behavior. With the support of artificial intelligence (AI), covert communication can leverage reinforcement learning to rapidly adjust power and resource allocation in the dynamic environment. Additionally, generative models can conceal signals within the environment by replicating their patterns. However, the stringent constraints imposed by covertness limit the transmission rates, making large-scale data transmission difficult. Intelligent semantic covert communication integrates semantic extraction with covert transmission, providing an effective and reliable solution for the secure and efficient 6G network. Progress With the development of AI, particularly the advances in deep learning for modeling complex features, semantic communication enables efficient semantic extraction and nonlinear compression of multimodal data. Moreover, research on semantic communication has shifted from separate source-channel coding to joint source-channel coding to achieve optimal performance through end-to-end training. For image transmission, convolutional neural networks can use local receptive fields to capture their spatial correlations. Moreover, for sequential data transmission, long short-term memory networks can use gating mechanisms to maintain temporal coherence. Additionally, generative AI, including generative adversarial networks and diffusion models, can learn the statistical patterns of environmental noise in the time, frequency and spatial domains to conceal the transmitted signals. Such approaches reduce the effectiveness of illegal monitoring and detection and enhance the adaptability of covert communication systems in the dynamic environment. AI has also significantly improved the autonomous decision-making in dynamic covert communication. By modeling covert transmission as a Markov decision process, deep reinforcement learning can learn to adjust resource allocation through interaction with the environment, thereby offering lower computational complexity than traditional convex optimization methods. Additionally, by integrating semantic extraction and covert transmission, intelligent semantic covert communication enables semantic-driven covert transmission, where large language models can assess semantic sensitivity and contextual risks, thereby enabling the selective covert transmission of sensitive semantic information. Conclusions Research on intelligent semantic covert communication demonstrates the advantages of close cooperation between semantic perception and physical-layer covert mechanisms. Moreover, the support of AI has significantly improved the efficiency of semantic extraction and the adaptability to dynamic and complex environment. Intelligent semantic covert communication guarantees efficiency and security for ubiquitous 6G services by integrating semantic understanding with covert transmission strategies. Prospects Future development of intelligent semantic covert communication should focus on key challenges, including AI-enabled detection, unified semantic metrics, model lightweighting, multimodal semantic alignment, system interpretability, and semantic hallucination. Active threat detection and adaptive strategies are essential to countering AI-driven surveillance. Moreover, causal reasoning within large multimodal models can mitigate semantic hallucinations and ensure reliable data transmission. In addition, advances in model compression technology and cloud-edge collaboration architectures are indispensable for deploying high-complexity AI models on resource-limited terminals. With the rapid development of AI, intelligent semantic covert communication can provide core support for the intelligent connection of everything, thereby helping build a more secure, efficient and reliable 6G network. -
表 1 AI驱动的语义隐蔽通信简要总结
研究方向 AI模型 关键作用机制 优点 缺点 智能语义通信 深度学习 从原始数据中学习语义特征与压缩
映射关系无需人工语义建模 语义度量不统一 智能隐蔽通信 强化学习与生成式AI 通过环境交互学习隐蔽策略、拟合
背景噪声生成伪装信号降低计算复杂度,提升实时性 训练过程的不稳定性 智能语义隐蔽通信 大语言模型 基于上下文理解与推理能力,进行
语义感知和隐蔽策略决策支持语义驱动的
跨层联合优化推理时延和算力需求较高 表 2 不同通信范式之间的对比与总结
对比维度 传统通信 语义通信 隐蔽通信 智能语义隐蔽通信 传输目标 比特无差错传输 语义信息准确恢复 通信行为的低可检测性 语义高效传输与通信行为隐蔽 传输效率 受信道容量约束 通过语义压缩提升效率 受平方根定律约束,
传输速率较低语义压缩缓解隐蔽约束,
效率优于隐蔽通信安全机制 无安全保障 无专门安全机制 通过降低可检测性抵御监测和干扰 语义重要性驱动的选择性隐蔽,实现差异化保护 资源开销 无额外开销 语义编解码计算开销 无额外开销 语义编解码的计算开销与隐蔽
决策的AI推理开销智能化水平 无 依赖数据驱动语义建模 以数值优化为主 AI驱动跨层联合优化 适用场景 通用通信场景 资源受限、低时延场景 高安全性与抗干扰场景 语义高效传输与隐蔽性协同保障的复杂通信场景 表 3 智能语义隐蔽通信关键技术简要总结
关键技术 参考文献 面临挑战 AI模型 优势 智能信道估计 文献[32] 低信噪比下难以精准获取信道信息 深度残差网络、生成式AI 非线性的信道特征重构 智能频谱预测 文献[33] 动态环境频谱规律难捕捉 深度学习 时序频谱特征的精准预测 多维波形设计 文献[26] 语义强结构性易暴露特征 生成对抗网络、扩散模型 拟合背景噪声统计分布 智能波束赋形 文献[34, 35] 时变信道下波束的动态调整 深度强化学习 实时的波束设计与优化 智能协同干扰 文献[36] 分布式节点的协调与同步 多智能体强化学习 去中心化的动态干扰策略 智能资源分配 文献[37, 38] 多维资源耦合的非凸优化 深度强化学习 低复杂度下实现实时决策 自适应传输调度 文献[39] 跨层参数耦合决策复杂 大语言模型智能体 语义信息驱动的传输决策 -
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