Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation in Generative AI-Aided Secure Semantic Mobile Networks

The integration of semantic communication with Internet of Things (IoT) technologies has advanced the development of Semantic IoT (SIoT), with edge mobile networks playing an increasingly vital role. This paper presents a framework for SIoT-based image retrieval services, focusing on the application in automotive market analysis. Here, semantic information in the form of textual representations is transmitted to users, such as automotive companies, and stored as knowledge graphs, instead of raw imagery. This approach reduces the amount of data transmitted, thereby lowering communication resource usage, and ensures user privacy. We explore potential adversarial attacks that could disrupt image transmission in SIoT and propose a defense mechanism utilizing Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), specifically the Generative Diffusion Models (GDMs). Unlike methods that necessitate adversarial training with specifically crafted adversarial example samples, GDMs adopt a strategy of adding and removing noise to negate adversarial perturbations embedded in images, offering a more universally applicable defense strategy. The GDM-based defense aims to protect image transmission in SIoT. Furthermore, considering mobile devices' resource constraints, we employ GDM to devise resource allocation strategies, optimizing energy use and balancing between image transmission and defense-related energy consumption. Our numerical analysis reveals the efficacy of GDM in reducing energy consumption during adversarial attacks. For instance, in a scenario, GDM-based defense lowers energy consumption by 5.64%, decreasing the number of image retransmissions from 18 to 6, thus underscoring GDM's role in bolstering network security.