AI-Assisted MAC for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Aided Wireless Networks: Challenges and Opportunities

TL;DR

This paper reviews the challenges and opportunities in designing MAC protocols for RIS-aided wireless networks, proposing AI-assisted architectures and discussing future research directions.

Contribution

It introduces AI-assisted MAC architectures for RIS-enabled systems and highlights open issues and future perspectives in this emerging field.

Findings

Proposed centralized, distributed, and hybrid AI-assisted MAC schemes.

Identified key challenges in RIS-based MAC design.

Discussed potential applications and future research directions.

Abstract

Recently, significant research attention has been devoted to the study of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), which are capable of reconfiguring the wireless propagation environment by exploiting the unique properties of metamaterials-based integrated large arrays of inexpensive antennas. Existing research demonstrates that RISs significantly improve the physical layer performance, including the wireless coverage, achievable data rate and energy efficiency. However, the medium access control (MAC) of multiple users accessing an RIS-enabled channel is still in its infancy, while many open issues remain to be addressed. In this article, we present four typical RIS-aided multi-user scenarios with special emphasis on the MAC schemes. We then propose and elaborate upon centralized, distributed and hybrid artificial-intelligence (AI)-assisted MAC architectures in RIS-aided multi-user communications systems. Finally, we discuss some challenges, perspectives and potential applications of RISs as they are related to MAC design.