Recent advances in the fabrication and experimentation of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) have motivated the concept of the smart radio environment, according to which the propagation of information-bearing waveforms in the wireless medium is amenable to programmability. Although the vast majority of recent experimental research on RIS-empowered wireless communications gravitates around narrowband beamforming in quasi-free space, RISs are foreseen to revolutionize wideband wireless connectivity in dense urban as well as indoor scenarios, which are usually characterized as strongly reverberant environments exhibiting severe multipath conditions. In this article, capitalizing on recent physics-driven experimental explorations of RIS-empowered wave propagation control in complex scattering cavities, we identify the potential of the spatiotemporal control offered by RISs to boost wireless communications in rich scattering channels via two case studies. First, an RIS is deployed to shape the multipath channel impulse response, which is shown to enable higher achievable communication rates. Second, the RIS-tunable propagation environment is leveraged as an analog multiplexer to localize non-cooperative objects using wave fingerprints, even when they are outside the line of sight. Future research challenges and opportunities in the algorithmic design and experimentation of smart rich scattering wireless environments enabled by RISs for sixth Generation (6G) wireless communications are discussed.
翻译:重新配置智能表面(RIS)的制造和实验最近的进展激发了智能无线电环境的概念,根据这一概念,在无线介质中传播带有信息的波形可以进行编程。虽然最近对在准自由空间中以窄带波束成形的窄带光束周围的RIS光化无线通信的绝大多数实验性研究,预计RIS将在密集城市和室内情景中实现宽带无线连接革命性,通常被描述为具有严重多病情的强烈反常环境。在本篇文章中,利用最近物理驱动的实验探索,在复杂的散布空洞中传播带有RIS-光电波的波传播控制,我们通过两个案例研究查明了RIS提供的巨大时空控制的潜力,以便在富饶的分散的频道中促进无线通信。首先,设置了RIS来影响多病道频道的动力反应,这表现为能够提高可实现的通信速度。第二,在利用未来智能智能智能智能智能智能智能定位环境进行模拟多氧通信化的地方性通信,在利用未来智能智能智能智能智能研究时,它们成为了利用智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能智能空间空间空间空间环境的模拟研究的模拟研究。