Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for Next-Generation Wireless Systems and Networks

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for Next-Generation Wireless Systems and Networks

Point of contact

Alexis Aravanis, L2S-CentraleSupelec

Summary

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have recently emerged as the new wireless communication research frontier with the goal of realizing smart and reconfigurable radio propagation environments via passive and tunable signal transformations. Featured by orders of magnitude lower hardware and energy cost than traditional active antenna-arrays and yet superior performance, RISs are the new driving technology for future wireless networks, especially for enabling them to migrate to higher frequency bands. RISs have the inherent potential of fundamentally transforming the current wireless network with active nodes solely into a new hybrid network comprising active and passive components co-working in an intelligent way, so as to achieve a sustainable capacity growth with a low and affordable cost and power consumption. Therefore, RISs have the potential to change how wireless networks are currently designed, usher in that hoped-for wireless future, and are regarded as an enabling technology for realizing the emerging concept of smart radio environments (SREs). RIS-assisted SREs are an emerging and promising multidisciplinary research endeavor but are not well-understood.

Keywords

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, large intelligent surfaces, smart radio environments, material intelligence, metamaterials, electromagnetics, communication theory, information theory, optimization theory.

Researchers involved

Key References

  • M. Di Renzo, A. Zappone, M. Debbah, M.-S. Alouini, C. Yuen, J. de Rosny, and S. Tretyakov, “Smart Radio Environments Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: How it Works, State of Research, and Road Ahead”, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Nov. 2020.
  • M. Di Renzo et al., “Smart Radio Environments Empowered by AI Reconfigurable Meta-Surfaces: An Idea Whose Time Has Come,” EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, article 129, May 2019.
  • E. Basar, M. Di Renzo, J. de Rosny, M. Debbah, M.-S. Alouini, and R. Zhang, “Wireless Communications through Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 116 753–116 773, August 2019.
  • C. Huang, S. Hu, G. C. Alexandropoulos, A. Zappone, C. Yuen, R. Zhang, M. Di Renzo, and M. Debbah, “Holographic MIMO Surfaces for 6G Wireless Networks: Opportunities, Challenges, and Trends,” IEEE Wireless Communications, 2020.
  • Y. Liu, X. Liu, X. Mu, T. Hou, J. Xu, Z. Qin, M. Di Renzo, and N. Al-Dhahir, “Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: Principles and Opportunities”, arXiv, July 2020.

Further information