arXiv subjects

Yinhuan Huang

Publications and source records attributed to Yinhuan Huang.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Gen2-IC: Bridging Generative Models and Image Codecs through Latent Transport

Diffusion-based image compression has achieved strong perceptual quality at ultra-low bitrates. However, existing codecs are often tied to specific backbones and specialized components, making diverse, rapidly evolving generative models difficult to reuse. This raises a natural question: Can modern generative foundation models be connected to image compression through a simple and extensible interface? Two insights guide our design: stronger generative priors make a simpler codec interface viable, and generation and compression can be intrinsically linked through latent transport. We therefore propose Gen2-IC with two stages: (1) Latent Compression maps clean image latents to entropy-constrained latents; and (2) Latent Transport refines them with one near-terminal update based on the pretrained model. Gen2-IC requires neither auxiliary conditioning signals nor task-specific backbone modifications. With lightweight adaptation and no distillation, it supports fast encoding and one-step decoding across multiple bitrates. We validate Gen2-IC on SD-2.1, SANA-1.5, FLUX.1-dev, and Qwen-Image-2512, spanning U-Net and Transformer architectures as well as diffusion and flow-matching formulations. With stronger priors, Gen2-IC delivers gains below 0.05 bpp: the Qwen variant leads diffusion-based generative codecs in reconstruction fidelity (PSNR), perceptual similarity (LPIPS and DISTS), and recognizer-based semantic fidelity (OCR CER/WER and face-ROI similarity) across four benchmarks.

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arXiv2026

Gen2-VC: Unlocking Generative Priors for Video Compression

Under stringent bitrate constraints, existing video codecs struggle to balance source fidelity and perceptual realism. Distortion-oriented codecs often oversmooth details, while generative codecs risk introducing content and structural deviations and rely on codec-specific designs. This motivates a question: Can existing codecs achieve a better distortion--perception trade-off through simple, reusable adaptation? Our insight is that native codec reconstructions provide a shared interface through which generative refinement is anchored to source content while remaining decoupled from codec-specific representations. We therefore propose Gen2-VC, a generative video compression framework that enhances the outputs of learned and conventional codecs with a pretrained video prior, leaving their bitstreams and reference update processes unchanged. With the codec, VAE, and generative backbone frozen, lightweight LoRA adapters refine codec reconstruction through single-frame spatial adaptation followed by multi-frame temporal adaptation with the video prior. Using Wan2.1-T2V-1.3B, Gen2-VC-DCVC-UF outperforms previous leading codecs in LPIPS/DISTS and, to our knowledge, is the first generative video codec to surpass VTM-23.0 in both PSNR and MS-SSIM at low bitrates, based on BD-rates averaged over six datasets. Compared to VTM-23.0, it reduces bitrate by an average of 86.65% and 94.24% at matched LPIPS and DISTS, respectively. Adapters trained only on DCVC-UF improve perceptual quality on DCVC-RT, ECM, VTM, and HM without retraining.

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arXiv2026

Distribution-Aware Constellation Learning for Image Transmission

Semantic communication has demonstrated significant potential for image transmission, especially in bandwidth-limited and low signal-to-noise ratio scenarios. However, most existing methods are based on analog transmission, which poses challenges to the compatibility with existing digital communication systems. Existing digital semantic communication methods commonly adopt conventional quadrature amplitude modulation constellations, which mismatch the empirical distribution of semantic features produced by the semantic encoder. This paper proposes a distribution-aware learnable modulation for semantic communication framework, which bridges semantic feature representations and discrete modulation through constellation learning. Specifically, a learnable constellation module, initialized with an amplitude phase shift keying geometric prior, is developed to refine the constellation geometry as a trainable codebook, enabling modulation symbols to better align with the distribution of semantic features. To enable end-to-end optimization, a two-stage training strategy is introduced, combining differentiable soft assignment with straight-through estimator. Simulation results show that the proposed framework consistently outperforms existing digital semantic communication schemes and achieves performance comparable to advanced analog methods.

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arXiv2026

Perception-Aware Video Semantic Communication

Ultra-high-resolution streaming and emerging immersive services are driving rapidly increasing wireless video traffic. However, perceptually pleasing video transmission over bandwidth-limited and latency-constrained wireless links remains challenging for conventional separated source-channel systems, which primarily target bit-level reliability and often suffer performance degradation under short-blocklength transmission. In addition, pixel-level distortion optimization does not necessarily align with human perception, while existing learned video codecs may incur high complexity and raise deployment issues. This paper proposes PVSC, a perception-aware video semantic communication framework for real-time wireless video transmission. PVSC eliminates explicit motion-vector transmission and exploits spatio-temporal feature coding to generate compact and channel-robust symbol streams. It also specifies side-information formatting, reference-buffer management, and lightweight rate control, enabling stable receiver-side reconstruction and bandwidth-adaptive inference with a single model. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PVSC achieves superior performance across diverse datasets, resolutions, GOP configurations, and channel conditions. Compared with the engineered ``VTM + 5G LDPC'' baseline, PVSC saves up to about 75% and 87% bandwidth at comparable LPIPS and DISTS, respectively, while enabling real-time inference on a single NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU.

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arXiv2025

Image Semantic Communication with Quadtree Partition-based Coding

Deep learning based semantic communication (DeepSC) system has emerged as a promising paradigm for efficient wireless transmission. However, existing image DeepSC methods, frequently encounter challenges in balancing rate-distortion performance and computational complexity, and often exhibit inferior performance compared to traditional schemes, especially on high-resolution datasets. To address these limitations, we propose a novel image DeepSC system, using quadtree partition-based joint semantic-channel coding, named Quad-DeepSC, which maintains low complexity while achieving state-of-the-art transmission performance. Based on maturing learned image compression technologies, we establish a unified DeepSC system design and training pipeline. The proposed Quad-DeepSC integrates quadtree partition-based entropy estimation and feature coding modules with lightweight feature extraction and reconstruction networks to form an end-to-end architecture. During training, all components except the feature coding modules are jointly optimized as a compact learned image codec, Quad-LIC, for source compression tasks. The pretrained Quad-LIC is then embedded into Quad-DeepSC and fine-tuned end-to-end over wireless channels. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that Quad-DeepSC is the first DeepSC system to surpass conventional communication systems, which employ VTM for source coding and adopt the optimal MCS index under 3GPP standards for channel coding and digital modulation, in performance across datasets of varying resolutions. Notably, both Quad-DeepSC and Quad-LIC exhibit minimal latency, rendering them well-suited for deployment in real-time wireless communication systems.

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