A Coding-Enhanced Jamming Approach for Secure Semantic Communication over Wiretap Channels

2025-04-23

AI Summary

To address the lack of semantic-level security control in semantic communication (SemCom) over open wireless channels, this paper proposes an encoding-enhanced active jamming mechanism. Methodologically, we design a two-layer superimposed coding architecture: the outer layer conveys the source image’s semantic information, while the inner layer embeds a key image; semantic mapping in the constellation domain is achieved via deep joint source-channel coding (DeepJSCC) and neural modulation. We further introduce mutual information minimization to optimize the jamming signal and explicitly control the security–performance trade-off through an adjustable power allocation coefficient. Experiments demonstrate that, across varying signal-to-noise ratios and compression ratios, the proposed scheme significantly improves reconstruction quality at the legitimate receiver while driving the eavesdropper’s image recovery failure rate to nearly 100%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to achieve semantic-aware, power-controllable, and optimization-enabled secure semantic transmission.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Learning to Search
• Computer Vision: Multi-modal Vision
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Neural Spike Coding

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Applications of cryptography
• Semantics and Knowledge: Methods to enhance, augment, integrate or synergize semantic models such as knowledge graphs and LLMs
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems

Abstract

As semantic communication (SemCom) gains increasing attention as a novel communication paradigm, ensuring the security of transmitted semantic information over open wireless channels becomes crucial. Existing secure SemCom solutions often lack explicit control over security. To address this, we propose a coding-enhanced jamming approach for secure SemCom over wiretap channels. This approach integrates deep joint source and channel coding (DeepJSCC) with neural network-based digital modulation, enabling controlled jamming through two-layer superposition coding. The outer constellation sequence encodes the source image, while the inner constellation sequence, derived from a secret image, acts as the jamming signal. By minimizing the mutual information between the outer and inner constellation sequences, the jamming effect is enhanced. The jamming signal is superposed on the outer constellation sequence, preventing the eavesdropper from recovering the source image. The power allocation coefficient (PAC) in the superposition coding can be adjusted to control system security. Experiments show that our approach matches existing methods in security while significantly improving reconstruction performance across varying channel signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and compression ratios.

Problem

• Ensuring secure semantic communication over wiretap channels
• Controlling jamming effect via two-layer superposition coding
• Balancing security and reconstruction performance in SemCom

Innovation

• DeepJSCC with neural modulation for secure SemCom
• Two-layer superposition coding for controlled jamming
• Adjustable PAC enhances security and reconstruction