Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for 5G and beyond Wireless Communications: A Comprehensive Survey

Energies

Abdellah Chehri¹  Teena Sharma¹  Paul Fortier² 

[1] Departement des Sciences Appliquées, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi, QC G7H 2B1, Canada;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Laval University, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada;

关键词: meta-surfaces;    5G;    line-of-sight;    reconfigurable intelligent surfaces;    liquid crystal;    field programmable gate arrays;   

DOI  :  10.3390/en14248219

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

With possible new use cases and demanding requirements of future 5th generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks, the future of mobile communications sounds promising. However, the propagation medium has been considered a randomly acting agent between the transmitter and the receiver. With the advent of the digital age of wireless communications, the received signal quality is degrading due to the uncontrollable interactions of the transmitted radio waves with the surrounding artifacts. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review on reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) and assisted application areas. With the RIS, the network operators can control radio waves’ scattering, reflection, and refraction characteristics by resolving the harmful properties of environmental wireless propagation. Further, the RIS can effectively control the wavefront, such as amplitude, phase, frequency, and even polarization, without requiring complex encoding, decoding, or radio wave processing techniques. Motivated by technological advances, the metasurfaces, reflectarrays, phase shift, and liquid crystals are potential candidates for implementing RIS. Thus, they can be considered the front runner for realizing the 5G and beyond network. Furthermore, the current research activities in the evolving field of wireless networks operated by RIS are reviewed and discussed thoroughly. Finally, to fully explore the potential of RISs in wireless networks, the fundamental research issues to be addressed have been discussed.

【 授权许可】

Unknown