A Survey on Semantic Communications for Intelligent Wireless Networks

Research on intelligent wireless network aims at the development of a human society which is ubiquitous and mobile, simultaneously providing solutions to the coverage, capacity, and computing issues. These networks will focus on provisioning intelligent use-cases through higher data-rates over the millimeter waves and the Tera-Hertz frequency. However, at such high frequencies, multiple non-desired phenomena such as, atmospheric absorption and blocking occur which create a bottleneck owing to resource scarcity. Hence, existing trend of exactly reproducing transmitted data at the receiver will result in a constant need for higher bandwidth. A possible solution to such a challenge lies in semantic communications which focuses on meaning (relevance or context) of the received data. This article presents a detailed survey on the recent technological trends in regard to semantic communications for intelligent wireless networks. Initially, the article focuses on the semantic communications architecture including the model, and source and channel coding. Next, cross-layer interaction, and various goal-oriented communication applications are detailed. Further, overall semantic communications trends are presented following which, the key challenges and issues are detailed. Lastly, this survey article is an attempt to significantly contribute towards initiating future research in the area of semantic communications for the intelligent wireless networks.