A new ETSI report looks at intelligent surfaces’ potential uses to boost telecom networks
Intelligent surfaces are one of the use cases being floated for potential ways that as-yet-unstandardized 6G could be. A new report from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) delves deeper into how, exactly, such Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) could be used.
ETSI lays out several ways in which RIS could be used, but all of them focus on RIS as a “new enabling candidate wireless technology for the control of the radio signals between a
transmitter and a receiver in a dynamic and goal-oriented way, turning the wireless environment into a service.” Essentially, RIS would be part of the overall wireless network system, in ETSI’s discussion, rather than some type of end-user device meant for humans or machines to interact with.
Such surfaces could be either passive or active, with passive RIS not requiring high-cost active components or much in the way of energy consumption or eletromagnetic emissions, according to ETSI—which would make them “easy and flexible” to deploy and that they could be integrated into anything from “building facades, room and factory ceilings, laptop cases, or even human clothing.” Passive RIS could be compared to a metal mirror, the paper says, while active RIS would essentially be an iteration on massive MIMO systems.
ETSI lays out several ways in which RIS could be used, but mostly focusing on RIS as a “new enabling candidate wireless technology for the control of the radio signals between a
transmitter and a receiver in a dynamic and goal-oriented way, turning the wireless environment into a service.” Essentially, RIS would be part of the overall wireless network system, in ETSI’s discussion, rather than some type of end-user device meant for humans or machines to interact with.
Some of the ways that ETSI says RIS could be used include:
–Boosting network coverage by providing a “low-cost and easy-to-implement” boost to line-of-sight paths between base stations and devices, either via simple signal reflection or more expensive RIS implementation that results in active enhancement of transmission and reception.
–Increasing spectral efficiency, both through increasing the received signal power as outlined above, or through the possibility that a RIS could be used for “signal nulling” to suppress interference.
–Improving physical layer security. One potential security weakness of wireless systems is uncontrolled signal propagation, ETSI said. RIS could help improve wireless system security by helping to avoid “leakage of confidential signals” to potential eavesdroppers, by redirecting reflections to “trusted” areas. However, there’s a flip side to this, the paper noted—where RIS could also be used maliciously to get a stronger link in order to eavesdrop on wireless signals.
–Providing better positioning accuracy, indoors or outdoors, at a lower cost than deploying additional base stations.
–Improving power efficiency. The ETSI report says RIS is a “promising component in self-sustained wireless networks because RIS can enhance both information and energy transfer performance.” A RIS could, for example, be partitioned so that part of it aids communication and another part collects RF energy—leading to the possibility that, say, a RIS could directly power something like an IoT device.
Read more details from the ETSI paper here (pdf).
