Toward Intelligent Resource Allocation on Task-Oriented Semantic Communication

Task-oriented semantic communication (TOSC) has significant advantages in reducing the amount of data transmission and alleviating the scarcity of spectrum resources. Unlike traditional communication, the resource allocation in semantic communication is tightly linked to target intelligent tasks and specific interaction requirements. In this article, the intelligent resource allocation in a task-oriented manner is investigated. To further improve spectrum utilization and energy sustainability, a communication network combining energy harvesting (EH), cognitive radio (CR), and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is considered. This article proposes a semantic-aware resource allocation scheme in the EH-CR-NOMA scenario, where the quality of experience (QoE) is adopted as the evaluation metric. To achieve the preferential occupation of resources by data with richer semantic information, a joint optimization problem of the transmit power, time slot division factor, and semantic compression ratio of the semantic communication user is formulated. With the goal of maximizing the long-term QoE of TOSC, a two-tier deep reinforcement learning framework is designed to solve the semantic-aware resource allocation problem. By striking a trade-off between semantic rate and semantic fidelity, the proposed scheme can better satisfy user intentions.