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Future Wireless Communications Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Meta-Materials (META WIRELESS)

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - META WIRELESS (Future Wireless Communications Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Meta-Materials (META WIRELESS))

Reporting period: 2020-12-01 to 2022-11-30

The overall objective of the META WIRELESS project is to develop a new technology that enables to control and shape the propagation of electromagnetic waves.According to our vision, the META WIRELESS technology will combine meta materials, antennas and software such that a real time fine granularity control of the environment for wireless communications becomes possible. This capability can then be used to design and deploy much more energy and spectral efficient wireless networks than today's wireless networks, providing the foundations of connected digital services. META WIRELESS results, contributing to the development of the next generation of wireless networks, will help increasing the quality of life and the wellbeing of people.
The scientific objectives of META WIRELESS are:
Objective 1 - Developing Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs). Bring to light the third generation of meta-materials technology by developing RISs that can be reconfigured in real-time.
Objective 2 - Theoretical frameworks. Develop new mathematical techniques to introduce a novel communication theory that overcomes conventional Shannon’s theory.
Objective 3 - Algorithmic frameworks. Develop new communication schemes, optimization protocols, and algorithms for RIS-based networks.
Objective 4 – System-level simulator. Develop RIS-tailored ray tracing modules and build the first open access simulation (software) platform to analyze, optimize, and test large-scale RIS-based wireless networks.
ESR-8 (LE HAO) developed novel routines to add support for metasurfaces to the Vienna system-level simulator available at TUW and has started working jointly with ESR-8 to the integration with ray-tracing modules in simple network setups.
ESR-14 (VLADIMIR LENETS) has developed new metasurface architectures for operation at millimeter waves, with reduced complexity and simplified control. The developed designs have been validated by experimental measurements.
ESR-5 (MOHAMMAD JAVAD SHABANPOUR) has developed new metasurface solutions that provide a better angular stability than competing alternatives, while at the same time allowing to reflect both TE and TM incident polarizations, and operating over a broader frequency spectrum.
ESR-10 (DOGA GURGUNOGLU) has developed practical techniques for joint channel estimation and design of wireless networks employing reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. All methods are able to work without requiring any signal processing and transmission at the reconfigurable intelligent surfaces.
ESR-6 (MOSTAFA MOVAHEDIQOMI) has developed new electromagnetic-compliant models for wireless networks employing reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. The considered approach is based on the introduction of equivalent surface impedance, assuming the reconfigurable intelligent surface can be considered a bi-dimensional object.
ESR-15 (JOAQUIN GARCIA FERNANDEZ) has developed new designs for low-complexity metasurface structures that can be used to implement transmit modulation schemes thanks to limited complexity required to change their electromagnetic configuration in real-time. Reconfiguration latencies of tens or hundreds of nanoseconds have been achieved.
ESR-12 (SRAVAN KUMAR REDDY VUYYURU) developed new ray-tracing modules to account for the presence of metasurfaces in simple wireless environments and has started working jointly with ESR-1 to integrate them in the system-level simulator developed by ESR-1.
ESR-11 (GUILLERMO ENCINAS LAGO) has developed deployment techniques for large-scale wireless networks empowered by reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. A simulation environment has been produced to emulate the network deployment and operation in a realistic wireless environment.
ESR-3 (MUHAMMAD WASIF SHABIR) has developed new electromagnetic model for signal propagation with reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. Transmitters and receivers are modeled as distributed sources of electrical/magnetic charges that emit waves, which electromagnetically interact with the surrounding objects.
ESR-7 (MASOUD SADEGHIAN) has developed novel SNR models that are tailored to the presence of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces in a wireless environment. This is the basis for the derivation of a mathematical expression of achievable rate, energy efficiency, latency, and reliability in networks employing reconfigurable intelligent surfaces.
ESR-1 (ROBERT KUKU FOTOCK) has developed novel radio resource optimization techniques for the maximization of the achievable rate and energy efficiency of wireless networks employing reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. The achieved results have provided the optimized energy efficiency and rate that can be attained in wireless networks with reconfigurable intelligent surfaces.
ESR-4 (SHUMIN WANG) has developed a new analytical framework to quantify the performance of wireless networks with reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. The framework leverages machine learning tools and is able to provide the optimized reflection coefficients of a reconfigurable intelligent surface.
ESR-2 (GEORGIOS MYLONOPOULOS)has developed novel techniques for user localization in wireless networks employing reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. The developed techniques make use of active metasurfaces to boost the localization accuracy, outperforming the use of passive metasurfaces.
ESR-9 (FAHAD AHMED) has developed innovative metasurface designs which operate above the sub 6GHz bands that is commonly used for wireless communications. The developed designs can support the use of carrier frequencies that are over twice as large as traditional carrier frequencies.
META WIRELESS will develop a novel optimization framework to perform optimal radio resource allocation in RIS-based networks at an affordable computational complexity. Similarly, META WIRELESS will develop new information-theoretic tools to account for the possibility of optimizing wireless channels.

Innovative channel estimation algorithms that account for the passive nature of RISs will be developed, along with algorithms and protocols for RIS re-configuration.

META WIRELESS aims at developing efficient system-level simulators for RIS-based wireless networks, enhanced with specific modules for network orchestration, capitalizing on RIS-sensed data to optimize the network operation.

The interdisciplinary nature of META WIRELESS will make the ESRs the first researchers worldwide to receive a holistic interdisciplinary training on all aspects of RIS-based wireless networks at their inception in the community. This unique expertise will significantly boost their career prospects, both in academia and industry. Moreover, the availability of META WIRELESS technology will constitute a unique opportunity for the leadership of EU on future 6G wireless communications and networks.

The project so far has already had a considerable impact, with all the recruited ESRs that have presented their work to at least a conference and with almost half of them that have already submitted the results of their work to a technical journal.
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A typical environment where meta-surfaces increase the performance of wireless networks