This letter proposes a novel relaying framework, semantic-forward (SF), for cooperative communications towards the sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks. The SF relay extracts and transmits the semantic features, which reduces forwarding payload, and also improves the network robustness against intra-link errors. Based on the theoretical basis for cooperative communications with side information and the turbo principle, we design a joint source-channel coding algorithm to iteratively exchange the extrinsic information for enhancing the decoding gains at the destination. Surprisingly, simulation results indicate that even in bad channel conditions, SF relaying can still effectively improve the recovered information quality.

翻译：本文提出了一种面向第六代（6G）无线网络协作通信的新型中继框架——语义前向（SF）。SF中继提取并传输语义特征，不仅降低了转发负载，还提升了网络对链路内错误的鲁棒性。基于含边信息的协作通信理论基础及Turbo原理，我们设计了一种联合源信道编码算法，通过迭代交换外部信息来增强目的端的解码增益。令人意外的是，仿真结果表明，即使在恶劣信道条件下，SF中继仍能有效提升恢复信息质量。