Abstract
Pushing artificial intelligence (AI) from central cloud to network edge has
reached board consensus in both industry and academia for materializing the
vision of artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) in the sixth-generation (6G)
era. This gives rise to an emerging research area known as edge intelligence,
which concerns the distillation of human-like intelligence from the huge amount
of data scattered at wireless network edge. In general, realizing edge
intelligence corresponds to the process of sensing, communication, and
computation, which are coupled ingredients for data generation, exchanging, and
processing, respectively. However, conventional wireless networks design the
sensing, communication, and computation separately in a task-agnostic manner,
which encounters difficulties in accommodating the stringent demands of
ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, and high capacity in emerging AI
applications such as auto-driving. This thus prompts a new design paradigm of
seamless integrated sensing, communication, and computation (ISCC) in a
task-oriented manner, which comprehensively accounts for the use of the data in
the downstream AI applications. In view of its growing interest, this article
provides a timely overview of ISCC for edge intelligence by introducing its
basic concept, design challenges, and enabling techniques, surveying the
state-of-the-art development, and shedding light on the road ahead.