Perceptive, Resilient, and Efficient Networks assisted by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

TL;DR

This paper explores how reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) can be used for advanced wavefront engineering to create more resilient, efficient, and perceptive wireless networks, extending beyond traditional beamforming capabilities.

Contribution

It demonstrates novel wavefront engineering techniques with RISs, enabling functionalities like focusing, bending, and self-healing beams for improved network performance.

Findings

RISs can perform advanced wavefront shaping beyond traditional beamforming.

A hybrid beam-forming/beam-focusing localization technique is demonstrated.

RIS-enabled wavefront engineering enhances network resilience and efficiency.

Abstract

Wireless communications are nowadays shifting to higher operation frequencies with the aim to meet the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth. While reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are usually envisioned to restore the line-of-sight of blocked links and to efficiently counteract the increased pathloss, their functionalities can extend far beyond these basic operations. Owing to their large surface and the multitude of scatterers, RISs can be exploited to perform advanced wavefront engineering, essentially transforming the incident beam into a non-trivial reflected beam that is able to address the challenges of high frequencies more efficiently than conventional beam-forming. In this paper it is demonstrated how advanced wavefront engineering with RISs enables beam profiles that are able to focus, bend and self-heal, thus offering functionalities beyond the current state-of-the-art. Their potential as enablers of perceptive, resilient, and efficient networks is discussed, and a localization technique based on a hybrid beam-forming/beam-focusing scheme is demonstrated.