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Semantic communication (SemCom) significantly improves inter-vehicle interactions in intelligent connected vehicles (ICVs) within limited wireless spectrum. However, the open nature of wireless communications introduces eavesdropping risks. To mitigate this, we propose the Efficient Semantic-aware Encryption (ESAE) mechanism, integrating cryptography into SemCom to secure semantic transmission without complex key management. ESAE leverages semantic reciprocity between source and reconstructed information from past communications to independently generate session keys at both ends, reducing key transmission costs and associated security risks. Additionally, ESAE introduces a semantic-aware key pre-processing method (SA-KP) using the YOLO-v10 model to extract consistent semantics from bit-level diverse yet semantically identical content, ensuring key consistency. Experimental results validate ESAE's effectiveness and feasibility under various wireless conditions, with key performance factors discussed.

In recent years, Semantic Communication (SemCom), which aims to achieve efficient and reliable transmission of meaning between agents, has garnered significant attention from both academia and industry. To ensure the security of communication systems, encryption techniques are employed to safeguard confidentiality and integrity. However, traditional cryptography-based encryption algorithms encounter obstacles when applied to SemCom. Motivated by this, this paper explores the feasibility of applying homomorphic encryption to SemCom. Initially, we review the encryption algorithms utilized in mobile communication systems and analyze the challenges associated with their application to SemCom. Subsequently, we employ scale-invariant feature transform to demonstrate that semantic features can be preserved in homomorphic encrypted ciphertext. Based on this finding, we propose a task-oriented SemCom scheme secured through homomorphic encryption. We design the privacy preserved deep joint source-channel coding (JSCC) encoder and decoder, and the frequency of key updates can be adjusted according to service requirements without compromising transmission performance. Simulation results validate that, when compared to plaintext images, the proposed scheme can achieve almost the same classification accuracy performance when dealing with homomorphic ciphertext images. Furthermore, we provide potential future research directions for homomorphic encrypted SemCom., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

Semantic communication (SemCom) is regarded as a promising and revolutionary technology in 6G, aiming to transcend the constraints of ``Shannon's trap" by filtering out redundant information and extracting the core of effective data. Compared to traditional communication paradigms, SemCom offers several notable advantages, such as reducing the burden on data transmission, enhancing network management efficiency, and optimizing resource allocation. Numerous researchers have extensively explored SemCom from various perspectives, including network architecture, theoretical analysis, potential technologies, and future applications. However, as SemCom continues to evolve, a multitude of security and privacy concerns have arisen, posing threats to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of SemCom systems. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the technologies that can be utilized to secure SemCom. Firstly, we elaborate on the entire life cycle of SemCom, which includes the model training, model transfer, and semantic information transmission phases. Then, we identify the security and privacy issues that emerge during these three stages. Furthermore, we summarize the techniques available to mitigate these security and privacy threats, including data cleaning, robust learning, defensive strategies against backdoor attacks, adversarial training, differential privacy, cryptography, blockchain technology, model compression, and physical-layer security. Lastly, this paper outlines future research directions to guide researchers in related fields., Comment: 123 pages, 27 figures

In this paper, we propose a cross-layer encrypted semantic communication (CLESC) framework for panoramic video transmission, incorporating feature extraction, encoding, encryption, cyclic redundancy check (CRC), and retransmission processes to achieve compatibility between semantic communication and traditional communication systems. Additionally, we propose an adaptive cross-layer transmission mechanism that dynamically adjusts CRC, channel coding, and retransmission schemes based on the importance of semantic information. This ensures that important information is prioritized under poor transmission conditions. To verify the aforementioned framework, we also design an end-to-end adaptive panoramic video semantic transmission (APVST) network that leverages a deep joint source-channel coding (Deep JSCC) structure and attention mechanism, integrated with a latitude adaptive module that facilitates adaptive semantic feature extraction and variable-length encoding of panoramic videos. The proposed CLESC is also applicable to the transmission of other modal data. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed CLESC effectively achieves compatibility and adaptation between semantic communication and traditional communication systems, improving both transmission efficiency and channel adaptability. Compared to traditional cross-layer transmission schemes, the CLESC framework can reduce bandwidth consumption by 85% while showing significant advantages under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions.

To ensure secure and reliable communication in wireless systems, authenticating the identities of numerous nodes is imperative. Traditional cryptography-based authentication methods suffer from issues such as low compatibility, reliability, and high complexity. Physical-Layer Authentication (PLA) is emerging as a promising complement due to its exploitation of unique properties in wireless environments. Recently, Machine Learning (ML)-based PLA has gained attention for its intelligence, adaptability, universality, and scalability compared to non-ML approaches. However, a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art ML-based PLA and its foundational aspects is lacking. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of characteristics and technologies that can be used in the ML-based PLA. We categorize existing ML-based PLA schemes into two main types: multi-device identification and attack detection schemes. In deep learning-based multi-device identification schemes, Deep Neural Networks are employed to train models, avoiding complex processing and expert feature transformation. Deep learning-based multi-device identification schemes are further subdivided, with schemes based on Convolutional Neural Networks being extensively researched. In ML-based attack detection schemes, receivers utilize intelligent ML techniques to set detection thresholds automatically, eliminating the need for manual calculation or knowledge of channel models. ML-based attack detection schemes are categorized into three sub-types: Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, and Reinforcement Learning. Additionally, we summarize open-source datasets used for PLA, encompassing Radio Frequency fingerprints and channel fingerprints. Finally, this paper outlines future research directions to guide researchers in related fields., Comment: 111 pages, 9 figures

In this paper, we propose an adaptive panoramic video semantic transmission (APVST) framework enabled by rate splitting multiple access (RSMA). The APVST framework consists of a semantic transmitter and receiver, utilizing a deep joint source-channel coding structure to adaptively extract and encode semantic features from panoramic frames. To achieve higher spectral efficiency and conserve bandwidth, APVST employs an entropy model and a dimension-adaptive module to control the transmission rate. Additionally, we take weighted-to-spherically-uniform peak signal-to-noise ratio (WS-PSNR) and weighted-to-spherically-uniform structural similarity (WS-SSIM) as distortion evaluation metrics for panoramic videos and design a weighted self-attention module for APVST. This module integrates weights and feature maps to enhance the quality of the immersive experience. Considering the overlap in the field of view when users watch panoramic videos, we further utilize RSMA to split the required panoramic video semantic streams into common and private messages for transmission. We propose an RSMA-enabled semantic stream transmission scheme and formulate a joint problem of latency and immersive experience quality by optimizing the allocation ratios of power, common rate, and channel bandwidth, aiming to maximize the quality of service (QoS) scores for users. To address the above problem, we propose a deep reinforcement learning algorithm based on proximal policy optimization (PPO) with high efficiency to handle dynamically changing environments. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed APVST framework saves up to 20% and 50% of channel bandwidth compared to other semantic and traditional video transmission schemes, respectively. Moreover, our study confirms the efficiency of RSMA in panoramic video transmission, achieving performance gains of 13% and 20% compared to NOMA and OFDMA.

The future 6G-enabled IoT will facilitate seamless global connectivity among ubiquitous wireless devices, but this advancement also introduces heightened security risks such as spoofing attacks. Physical-Layer Authentication (PLA) has emerged as a promising, inherently secure, and energy-efficient technique for authenticating IoT terminals. However, applying state-of-the-art PLA schemes directly to 6G-enabled IoT faces two primary challenges: inaccurate channel fingerprints and inefficient utilization of prior fingerprint information. To tackle these challenges, we leverage Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRSs) to enhance fingerprint accuracy. Additionally, we integrate active learning and Gaussian Processes (GPs) to propose an Efficient Gaussian Process Classification (EGPC)-based PLA scheme, aiming for reliable and lightweight authentication. Following Bayes' theorem, we model configurable fingerprints using GPs and employ the Expectation Propagation (EP) method to identify unknown fingerprints. Given the difficulty of obtaining sufficient labeled fingerprint samples to train PLA models, we propose three fingerprint selection algorithms. These algorithms select unlabeled fingerprints whose identities are then queried to upper-layer authentication mechanisms. Among these methods, the optimal algorithm reduces the required number of training fingerprints through importance sampling and eliminates the need for PLA model retraining via joint distribution calculation. The simulations conducted on synthetic datasets demonstrate that the IRS-assisted PLA framework reduces the authentication error rate by 98.69% compared to the non-IRS-based approach. Furthermore, our proposed fingerprint selection algorithms achieve the reduction in the authentication error rate of up to 86.93% compared to baseline active learning algorithms., Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures

Traditional communication systems focus on the transmission process, and the context-dependent meaning has been ignored. The fact that 5G system has approached Shannon limit and the increasing amount of data will cause communication bottleneck, such as the increased delay problems. Inspired by the ability of artificial intelligence to understand semantics, we propose a new communication paradigm, which integrates artificial intelligence and communication, the semantic communication system. Semantic communication is at the second level of communication based on Shannon and Weaver\cite{6197583}, which retains the semantic features of the transmitted information and recovers the signal at the receiver, thus compressing the communication traffic without losing important information. Different from other semantic communication systems, the proposed system not only transmits semantic information but also transmits semantic decoder. In addition, a general semantic metrics is proposed to measure the quality of semantic communication system. In particular, the semantic communication system for image, namely AESC-I, is designed to verify the feasibility of the new paradigm. Simulations are conducted on our system with the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and the multipath fading channel using MNIST and Cifar10 datasets. The experimental results show that DeepSC-I can effectively extract semantic information and reconstruct images at a relatively low SNR.