Reviewed by Lexie CornerMar 11 2025
A team of researchers led by Professor Ming Tang and Dr. Hao Wu from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, along with doctoral students Zheng Gao and Ting Jiang, have developed a new optical semantic communication system using multimode fiber (MMF) to enhance data transmission capacity and robustness.
Propagation of light pulses with intermodal dispersion in MMF. Words are mapped to different frequencies (different colors), and the optical pulses are stretched into different temporal dispersion curves. This allows for the identification of the pulse frequencies at the receiver, thereby enabling the reconstruction of the input words. Image Credit: Gao, Z., Jiang, T., Zhang, M. et al.
Conventional communication systems struggle to keep up with the increasing demand for communication capacity. A new technology, semantic communication, addresses this challenge by optimizing communication resources to transmit meaningful information, rather than just raw data.
The concept and results of their system are summarized by the researchers:
The researchers said, “We achieved high-dimensional semantic encoding and decoding in the frequency domain through leveraging intermodal dispersion in MMFs. By mapping symbols to distinct frequencies, we demonstrated a seven-fold increase in transmission capacity compared to conventional communication encoding methods. The system also integrates PAM-4 to enhance spectral efficiency, achieving 9.12 bits/s/Hz without decoding errors.”
“Beyond improving transmission capacity, we explored the application in sentiment analysis using the IMDb movie review dataset. By encoding semantically similar symbols to adjacent frequencies, the system's noise tolerance was effectively improved, facilitating accurate sentiment analysis even under high symbol error rate conditions,” they noted.
“This approach highlights the potential of MMF-based semantic communication to enhance both capacity and robustness in optical communication systems, offering promising applications in bandwidth-constrained and noisy environments,” they added.
“The innovative method of using MMFs for semantic communication presents a significant advancement in the field of optical communications. The capability to directly transmit semantic information via optical frequencies, along with the system's high capacity and robustness, makes it a promising solution for future communication technologies,” the scientists forecasted.
Journal Reference:
Gao, Z., et al. (2025) Optical semantic communication through multimode fiber: from symbol transmission to sentiment analysis. Light Science & Applications. doi.org/10.1038/s41377-024-01726-5.