W9 – AI-driven Semantic Communications

Co-organizer: Zdenek Becvar, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
Co-organizer: Mehdi Bennis, University of Oulu, Finland
Co-organizer: Pietro Michiardi, EURECOM, France
Co-organizer: Emilio Calvanese Strinati, CEA-LETI, France

Abstract: The wireless networks applications evolve from traditional human-driven and consumed applications with objective of maximizing data rates to AI-based applications for interaction of intelligent autonomous agents including machines, vehicles, and robots. Unlike humans, the autonomous agents do not require a perfect delivery of all raw bits at high data rate but rather need a proper understanding of delivered messages in the context of performed task or mission to be accomplished. This motivates to reconsider the concept of communication from bit-oriented to meaning-oriented communication networks in a resource efficient manner. Thus, the workshop targets the emerging topic of semantic communications, which facilitates reduction of communicated data and information required for a correct completion of the task or mission of autonomous agents. The semantic communications enable radio, computing, and energy efficient communication focused on delivery of only meaningful information between communicating agents. The semantic communications is also beneficial for generic agents even with multiple sensors and sources of information allowing to take a multimodality of real-life environments into account. In such case, an extraction and combination of the task/mission-related information from different sources enable further reductions in the communication burden, aiming to operate only with data beneficial for different applications. This goes hand-in hand with latest developments in generative AI enabling to recover potentially missing information on the receiver side. The workshop targets all aspects of semantic communication ranging from theoretical foundation, via resource management, system and network aspects, to integration to AI-native future networks.

Program:

14:00   14:10   Welcome
14:10   14:50   Keynote – Paolo di Lorenzo – Semantic Bridges: Making AI-Native Communication Explainable and Interoperable
14:50   15:10   Paper 1 – Deep Reinforcement Learning for Intelligent UAV-assisted Secured Semantic Communications
15:10   15:30   Paper 2 – Computation offloading framework based on reconstruction-free semantic communication
15:30   16:00   Coffee break
16:00   16:20   Paper 3 – Large Language Model-Based Semantic Communication System for Image Transmission
16:20   16:40   Paper 4 – Toward a Unified Semantic Loss Model for Deep JSCC-based Transmission of EO Imagery
16:40   17:00   Paper 5 – Secure-SFBL: Authenticating Generative Semantic Streams for Autonomous Agents
17:00   17:20   Paper 6 – Spatial-Frequential Adaptive Learned Image Transmission for Precoded MIMO Systems

Co-organizer’s Bios:

Zdenek Becvar:

Zdenek Becvar received M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Telecommunication Engineering from the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), Czech Republic in 2005 and 2010, respectively. Now, he is the Full Professor at the Department of Telecommunication Engineering, CTU. From 2006 to 2007, he was with Sitronics R&D centre in Prague focusing on speech quality in VoIP. Furthermore, he was involved in research activities of Vodafone R&D center at CTU in 2009. He was on internships at Budapest Politechnic, Hungary (2007), CEA-Leti, France (2013), and EURECOM, France (2016, 2019, 2023). From 2013 to 2017, he was a representative of the CTU in Prague in ETSI and 3GPP standardization organizations. He serves as an Editor in IEEE Wireless Communications Letters and he also acts as a review for many prestigious journals. He is a member of more than 30 program committees at international conferences and workshops including flagship conferences, such as IEEE VTC, ICC, Globecom, WCNC, etc. He published more than 140 conference and journal papers and he is (co-)inventor of four US patents. He is recipient of the best paper award at European Wireless 2017, bronze medal at ACM Mobicom App contest 2015, and the Exemplary reviewer and the Best Editor awards from IEEE Wireless Communications Letters in 2020 and 2024, respectively.

Mehdi Bennis:

Dr. Mehdi Bennis is a full Professor at the Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland and head of the intelligent connectivity and networks/systems group (ICON). His main
research interests are at the intersection of communication and ML in 5G/6G networks. He has published 300+ research papers in international conferences, journals and book chapters. He has been the recipient of several prestigious awards including the 2015 Fred W. Ellersick Prize from the IEEE Communications Society, the 2016 Best Tutorial Prize from the IEEE Communications Society, the 2017 EURASIP Best paper Award for the Journal of Wireless Communications and Networks, the all-University of Oulu award for research, the 2019 IEEE ComSoc Radio Communications Committee Early Achievement Award and the 2020-2025 Clarviate Highly Cited Researcher by the Web of Science. Dr Bennis is a Specialty Chief Editor for Data Science for Communications in the Frontiers in Communications and Networks journal and an IEEE Fellow.

Pietro Michiardi:

Pietro Michiardi received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino and his M.S. in Computer Science from EURECOM. Pietro received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Telecom ParisTech, and his HDR (Habilitation) from UCA. Pietro is a Full Professor and head of the Data Science Department at EURECOM. In his work, Pietro focuses on methodological advances in machine learning, Bayesian Inference, generative modelling and representation learning. Pietro is interested in developing a theoretical understanding of methods that learn from data, in methodological aspects of computationally efficient inference approaches, and their application to industrial domains such as the automotive, telecommunication and financial industries. In the past, Pietro worked on a wide range of research topics, including: computer networks and their performance evaluation, applied cryptography, applied game theory, distributed systems, and data management systems. Pietro has published over 190 research papers to date.

Emilio Calvanese Strinati:

Dr. Emilio Calvanese Strinati obtained his Engineering Master degree in 2001 from the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and his Ph.D in Engineering Science in 2005 on Radio link control for
improving the QoS of wireless packet transmission. He then started working at Motorola Labs in Paris in 2002. Then in 2006 he joint CEA/LETI as a research engineer. From 2007, he becomes a PhD supervisor. From 2010 to 2012, Dr. Calvanese Strinati has been the co-chair of the wireless working group in GreenTouch Initiative which deals with design of future energy efficient communication networks. From 2011 to 2016 he was the Smart Devices & Telecommunications European collaborative strategic programs Director. Since December 2016 he is the Smart Devices & Telecommunications Scientific and Innovation Director. In December 2013 he has been elected as one of the five representatives of academia and research center in the Net!Works 5G PPP ETP. He is currently one of the three moderators of the 5G future network expert group. Since 2016 he is the coordinator of the H2020 joint Europe and South Korea 5G CHAMPION project. E. Calvanese Strinati has published around 100 papers in international conferences, journals and books chapters, given more than 50 international invited talks and keynotes and is the main inventor or co-inventor of more than 60 patents. He has organized more than 50 international conferences, workshops, panels and special sessions on green communications, heterogeneous networks and cloud computing hosted in international conferences as IEEE GLOBCOM, IEEE PIMRC, IEEE WCNC, IEEE VTC, EuCnC, IFIP, and European Wireless.

 

Paper submission deadline Extended: 8 February 2026
Acceptance notification: 18 March 2026
Final paper submission deadline Extended: 7 April 2026

Submission requirements: 5-page paper (without overlength charge) and up to 2 additional pages are allowed with the purchase of additional page charges in the amount of $100 USD per additional page at the time of registration and final paper submission.

Paper submission can be located here: https://vtc2026s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/