Semantic-Aware Multiple Access via Spatial Redundancy Exploitation for Uplink-Dominant 6G Use Cases

2026-06-30

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of wireless resource scarcity in dense 6G uplink scenarios caused by high-volume visual data. To this end, the authors propose a semantic-aware multiple access scheme that uniquely integrates spatial redundancy exploitation with semantic communication. By leveraging vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) links to share neighboring vehicles’ observational fragments, the approach jointly optimizes perception and transmission decisions, uploading only semantically salient and non-redundant image patches. Furthermore, it enables multi-user collaborative resource allocation at the semantic level. Simulation results in dense urban vehicular networks demonstrate that the proposed method significantly increases the proportion of users achieving high-fidelity reconstruction, thereby enhancing uplink energy efficiency and sustainability in 6G systems.

Abstract

Emerging uplink-dominant 6G use cases, such as cooperative vehicular streaming, require efficient transmission of high-volume visual data over limited wireless resources. While semantic communications can reduce traffic by prioritizing task-relevant content, most existing approaches treat users independently and therefore overlook spatial redundancy among nearby devices' observations. This paper proposes a semantic-aware multiple access scheme that exploits overlapping fields of view among vehicular users to reduce redundant uplink transmissions. We formulate a joint perception and transmission control problem in which users decide which image patches to transmit, when to transmit them, and over which channel, subject to communication constraints. To address the resulting complexity, we introduce a practical two-phase approach. First, nearby vehicles share selected observation patches over Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) links to calculate inter-user spatial redundancy. Second, users transmit only semantically important, non-redundant patches to the base station, where observations can be reconstructed using the received patches and complementary views from neighboring vehicles. Simulation results in a dense urban vehicular scenario demonstrate that our approach improves the proportion of users who achieve high-fidelity reconstruction, highlighting the potential of semantic-aware multiple access for sustainable and resource-efficient 6G uplink systems.

Problem

• semantic communications
• spatial redundancy
• multiple access
• uplink-dominant
• 6G

Innovation

• semantic-aware multiple access
• spatial redundancy exploitation
• uplink-dominant 6G
• V2V-assisted perception
• joint perception and transmission control