5G has expanded the traditional focus of wireless systems to embrace two new connectivity types: ultra-reliable low latency and massive communication. The technology context at the dawn of 6G is different from the past one for 5G, primarily due to the growing intelligence at the communicating nodes. This has driven the set of relevant communication problems beyond reliable transmission towards semantic and pragmatic communication. This paper puts the evolution of low-latency and massive communication towards 6G in the perspective of these new developments. At first, semantic/pragmatic communication problems are presented by drawing parallels to linguistics. We elaborate upon the relation of semantic communication to the information-theoretic problems of source/channel coding, while generalized real-time communication is put in the context of cyber-physical systems and real-time inference. The evolution of massive access towards massive closed-loop communication is elaborated upon, enabling interactive communication, learning, and cooperation among wireless sensors and actuators.

翻译：5G将无线系统的传统关注点扩展至两种新型连接模式：超可靠低时延通信与大规模通信。6G时代的技术背景与5G时期存在本质差异，核心原因在于通信节点智能水平的持续提升。这一演进推动相关通信问题从可靠传输向语义通信与语用通信范畴发展。本文从这些新进展的视角审视低时延通信与大规模通信向6G的演进过程。首先通过借鉴语言学原理阐述语义/语用通信问题，深入剖析语义通信与信源/信道编码信息论问题的关联，并将泛化实时通信置于信息物理系统与实时推理的框架下进行探讨。最后详述大规模接入向大规模闭环通信的演进路径，从而赋能无线传感器与执行器间的交互式通信、学习与协作。