Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for Smart Cities: Research Challenges and Opportunities Show others and affiliations
2020 (English) In: IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, ISSN 2644125X, Vol. 1, p. 1781-1797Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The concept of Smart Cities has been introduced as a way to benefit from the digitization of various ecosystems at a city level. To support this concept, future communication networks need to be carefully designed with respect to the city infrastructure and utilization of resources. Recently, the idea of 'smart' environment, which takes advantage of the infrastructure in order to enable better performance of wireless networks, has been proposed. This idea is aligned with the recent advances in design of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), which are planar structures with the capability to reflect impinging electromagnetic waves toward preferred directions. Thus, RISs are expected to provide the necessary flexibility for the design of the 'smart' communication environment, which can be optimally shaped to enable cost- A nd energy-efficient signal transmissions where needed. Upon deployment of RISs, the ecosystem of the Smart Cities would become even more controllable and adaptable, which would subsequently ease the implementation of future communication networks in urban areas and boost the interconnection among private households and public services. In this article, we provide our vision on RIS integration into future Smart Cities by pointing out some forward-looking new application scenarios and use cases and by highlighting the potential advantages of RIS deployment. To this end, we identify the most promising research directions and opportunities. The respective design problems are formulated mathematically. Moreover, we focus the discussion on the key enabling aspects for RIS-assisted Smart Cities, which require substantial research efforts such as pilot decontamination, precoding for large multiuser networks, distributed operation and control of RISs. These contributions pave the road to a systematic design of RIS-assisted communication networks for Smart Cities in the years to come.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) , 2020. Vol. 1, p. 1781-1797
Keywords [en]
channel estimation, Internet of Things, precoding, Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, relaying, research challenges, smart cities, unmanned aerial vehicles, vehicular communications
National Category
Signal Processing
Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-312632 DOI: 10.1109/OJCOMS.2020.3036839 ISI: 000723372400118 Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85104003418 OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-312632 DiVA, id: diva2:1659450
Note QC 20220601
2022-05-192022-05-192023-07-31 Bibliographically approved