  In the era of sixth-generation (6G) wireless communications, integrated
sensing and communications (ISAC) is recognized as a promising solution to
upgrade the physical system by endowing wireless communications with sensing
capability. Existing ISAC is mainly oriented to static scenarios with
radio-frequency (RF) sensors being the primary participants, thus lacking a
comprehensive environment feature characterization and facing a severe
performance bottleneck in dynamic environments. To date, extensive surveys on
ISAC have been conducted but are limited to summarizing RF-based radar sensing.
Currently, some research efforts have been devoted to exploring multi-modal
sensing-communication integration but still lack a comprehensive review.
Therefore, we generalize the concept of ISAC inspired by human synesthesia to
establish a unified framework of intelligent multi-modal sensing-communication
integration and provide a comprehensive review under such a framework in this
paper. The so-termed Synesthesia of Machines (SoM) gives the clearest cognition
of such intelligent integration and details its paradigm for the first time. We
commence by justifying the necessity of the new paradigm. Subsequently, we
offer a definition of SoM and zoom into the detailed paradigm, which is
summarized as three operation modes. To facilitate SoM research, we overview
the prerequisite of SoM research, i.e., mixed multi-modal (MMM) datasets. Then,
we introduce the mapping relationships between multi-modal sensing and
communications. Afterward, we cover the technological review on
SoM-enhance-based and SoM-concert-based applications. To corroborate the
superiority of SoM, we also present simulation results related to dual-function
waveform and predictive beamforming design. Finally, we propose some potential
directions to inspire future research efforts.
