Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for Wireless Communications: Overview of Hardware Designs, Channel Models, and Estimation Techniques

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), including hardware designs, channel models, estimation techniques, and their potential role in future 6G wireless networks.

Contribution

It offers a detailed taxonomy of RIS hardware architectures, modeling approaches, and channel estimation methods, highlighting their importance for 6G wireless communication advancements.

Findings

RIS hardware architectures and unit element models are evolving rapidly.

Channel estimation techniques are crucial for RIS integration in wireless systems.

RIS technology is increasingly aligned with future wireless standards and standardization efforts.

Abstract

The demanding objectives for the future sixth generation (6G) of wireless communication networks have spurred recent research efforts on novel materials and radio-frequency front-end architectures for wireless connectivity, as well as revolutionary communication and computing paradigms. Among the pioneering candidate technologies for 6G belong the reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), which are artificial planar structures with integrated electronic circuits that can be programmed to manipulate the incoming electromagnetic field in a wide variety of functionalities. Incorporating RISs in wireless networks has been recently advocated as a revolutionary means to transform any wireless signal propagation environment to a dynamically programmable one, intended for various networking objectives, such as coverage extension and capacity boosting, spatiotemporal focusing with benefits in energy efficiency and secrecy, and low electromagnetic field exposure. Motivated by the recent increasing interests in the field of RISs and the consequent pioneering concept of the RIS-enabled smart wireless environments, in this paper, we overview and taxonomize the latest advances in RIS hardware architectures as well as the most recent developments in the modeling of RIS unit elements and RIS-empowered wireless signal propagation. We also present a thorough overview of the channel estimation approaches for RIS-empowered communications systems, which constitute a prerequisite step for the optimized incorporation of RISs in future wireless networks. Finally, we discuss the relevance of the RIS technology in the latest wireless communication standards, and highlight the current and future standardization activities for the RIS technology and the consequent RIS-empowered wireless networking approaches.