Research on reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) has predominantly focused on purely physical (PHY)-layer aspects, particularly, on how signals are dynamically shaped by a controllable wireless propagation environment. However, integrating RISs as system-level network elements requires the development of an RIS-compatible control plane. In this article, we explore design options for such a control plane across two key dimensions: i) the allocation of spectral resources for the control plane (in- or out-of-band), and ii) the rate selection for the data plane (multiplexing or diversity). While our analysis is necessarily simplified, it reveals the fundamental trade-offs inherent in these design choices, which are crucial for integrating RIS technology into future networks.
@article{arxiv.2603.01790,
title = {Control Plane for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces},
author = {Fabio Saggese and Victor Croisfelt and Kyriakos Stylianopoulos and George C. Alexandropoulos and Petar Popovski},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.01790},
year = {2026}
}