Sustainable Wireless Networks via Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs): Overview of the ETSI ISG RIS

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development and standardization efforts of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs), highlighting their potential to enhance wireless communication through programmable, energy-efficient metasurfaces and discussing future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the ETSI ISG RIS work, including deployment scenarios, hardware architectures, use cases, and future directions for RIS technology.

Findings

RISs can significantly improve data rates and coverage.

ETSI ISG RIS is working towards standardization.

Emerging hardware architectures enable versatile RIS deployment.

Abstract

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) are a novel form of ultra-low power devices that are capable to increase the communication data rates as well as the cell coverage in a cost- and energy-efficient way. This is attributed to their programmable operation that enables them to dynamically manipulate the wireless propagation environment, a feature that has lately inspired numerous research investigations and applications. To pave the way to the formal standardization of RISs, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) launched the Industry Specification Group (ISG) on the RIS technology in September 2021. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the status of the work conducted by the ETSI ISG RIS, covering typical deployment scenarios of reconfigurable metasurfaces, use cases and operating applications, requirements, emerging hardware architectures and operating modes, as well as the latest insights regarding future directions of RISs and the resulting smart wireless environments.