Understand
Future wireless networks are expected to constitute a distributed intelligent wireless communications, sensing, and computing platform, which will have the challenging requirement of interconnecting the physical and digital worlds in a seamless and sustainable manner.
- Currently, two main factors prevent wireless network operators from building such networks: 1) the lack of control of the wireless environment, whose impact on the radio waves cannot be customized, and 2) the current operation of wireless radios, which consume a lot of power because new signals are generated whenever data has to be transmitted.
- In this paper, we challenge the usual "more data needs more power and emission of radio waves" status quo, and motivate that future wireless networks necessitate a smart radio environment: A transformative wireless concept, where the environmental objects are coated with artificial thin films of electromagnetic and reconfigurable material (that are referred to as intelligent reconfigurable meta-surfaces), which are capable of sensing the environment and of applying customized transformations to the radio waves.
- Smart radio environments have the potential to provide future wireless networks with uninterrupted wireless connectivity, and with the capability of transmitting data without generating new signals but recycling existing radio waves.