A Survey on Goal-Oriented Semantic Communication: Techniques, Challenges, and Future Directions

Although many proposals have been developed for the sixth-generation (6G) technology, realizing 6G is fraught with numerous fundamental interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary challenges. To mitigate some of these challenges, goal-oriented semantic communication (SemCom) has emerged as a promising 6G technology enabler. This enabler employs only semantically-relevant information for successful task execution while minimizing power usage, bandwidth consumption, and transmission delay. On the other hand, 6G is essential for realizing major goal-oriented SemCom use cases such as autonomous transportation. These paradigms of 6G for goal-oriented SemCom and goal-oriented SemCom for 6G call for a tighter integration of 6G and goal-oriented SemCom. To facilitate this purpose, this survey paper exposes the fundamental challenges of 6G; details the notion of goal-oriented SemCom and its state-of-the-art research landscape; presents state-of-the-art trends, use cases, and frameworks of goal-oriented SemCom; exposes the fundamental and major challenges of goal-oriented SemCom; and offers promising future research directions for goal-oriented SemCom. Consequently, this survey article stimulates numerous lines of research on goal-oriented SemCom theories, algorithms, and realization.