Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) constitute the enabler for programmable propagation of electromagnetic signals, and are lately being considered as a candidate physical-layer technology for the demanding connectivity, reliability, localization, and sustainability requirements of next generation wireless communications networks. In this paper, we present various deployment scenarios for RIS-enabled smart wireless environments that have been recently designed by the ongoing EU H2020 RISE-6G project. The scenarios are taxonomized according to performance objectives, in particular, connectivity and reliability, localization and sensing, as well as sustainability and secrecy. We identify various deployment strategies and sketch the core architectural requirements in terms of RIS control and signaling, depending on the RIS hardware architectures and their respective capabilities. Furthermore, we introduce and discuss, via preliminary simulation results and reflectarray measurements, two key novel challenges with RIS-enabled smart wireless environments, namely, the area of influence and the bandwidth of influence of RISs, which corroborate the need for careful deployment and planning of this new technology.
@article{arxiv.2203.13478,
title = {Smart Wireless Environments Enabled by RISs: Deployment Scenarios and Two Key Challenges},
author = {George C. Alexandropoulos and Maurizio Crozzoli and Dinh-Thuy Phan-Huy and Konstantinos D. Katsanos and Henk Wymeersch and Petar Popovski and Philippe Ratajczak and Yohann Bénédic and Marie-Helene Hamon and Sebastien Herraiz Gonzalez and Raffaele D'Errico and Emilio Calvanese Strinati},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.13478},
year = {2022}
}