DRL-Driven Dynamic Resource Allocation for Task-Oriented Semantic Communication

Semantic communication has been regarded as a promising technology to serve upcoming intelligent applications. However, few studies have addressed the problem of resource allocation in semantic communication networks. Most resource allocation mechanisms act fairly to all original data, ignoring the meaning behind the transmitted bits. In this paper, a dynamic resource allocation scheme for the task-oriented semantic communication network (TOSCN) based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is proposed, which allows data with richer semantic information to preferentially occupy limited communication resources. This paper aims to design a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) agent at the micro base station to maximize the long-term transmission efficiency of tasks. Firstly, the relationship between semantic information and task performance is investigated. Subsequently, a novel wireless resource allocation model for TOSCN is proposed by taking the image classification task as an example. Then, a joint optimization problem of the semantic compression ratio, transmit power, and bandwidth of each user is formulated. The agent is trained in an interactive learning environment to obtain a decent trade-off between the amount of data delivered to the receiver and the accuracy of intelligent tasks. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves significant advantages in relieving communication pressure and improving task performance in resource-constrained wireless networks.