This article puts the spotlight on the receiver front-end (RFE), an integral part of any wireless device that information theory typically idealizes into a mere addition of noise. While this idealization was sound in the past, as operating frequencies, bandwidths, and antenna counts rise, a soaring amount of power is required for the RFE to behave accordingly. Containing this surge in power expenditure exposes a harsher behavior on the part of the RFE (more noise, nonlinearities, and coarse quantization), setting up a tradeoff between the spectral efficiency under such nonidealities and the efficiency in the use of energy by the RFE. With the urge for radically better power consumptions and energy efficiencies in 6G, this emerges as an issue on which information theory can cast light at a fundamental level. More broadly, this article advocates the interest of having information theory embrace the device power consumption in its analyses. In turn, this calls for new models and abstractions such as the ones herein put together for the RFE, and for a more holistic perspective.

翻译：本文聚焦于接收机前端（RFE）——这一无线设备的核心组成部分，在信息论中通常被理想化为简单的噪声叠加。这种理想化在过去是合理的，但随着工作频率、带宽和天线数量的提升，使RFE保持相应性能所需消耗的功率急剧增加。为控制这种功率消耗激增，RFE会表现出更严苛的行为（更高噪声、非线性效应和粗量化），从而在非理想条件下的频谱效率与RFE能量利用效率之间形成权衡。鉴于6G对功耗和能量效率的突破性需求，信息论可从基础层面为这一问题的解决提供启示。更广泛而言，本文主张将设备功耗纳入信息论分析框架的价值，这要求建立如本文所提出的RFE新模型与抽象方法，并采用更全局化的研究视角。