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：本文提出了一种名为语义前向（SF）的新型中继框架，用于面向第六代（6G）无线网络的协作通信。SF中继提取并传输语义特征，从而减少转发负载，同时提升网络对抗链路内错误的鲁棒性。基于带边信息的协作通信理论基础和Turbo原理，我们设计了一种联合信源信道编码算法，通过迭代交换外部信息以增强目的端的解码增益。令人惊讶的是，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的质量。