Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) are considered one of the key disruptive technologies towards future 6G networks.
RISs are revolutionizing the traditional wireless communication paradigm by controlling the electromagnetic waves propagation properties of impinging signals at will. A major roadblock for RIS is though the need for a fast and complex control channel to continuously adapt to the ever-changing wireless channel conditions.
In our work, we asked ourselves the question: Would it be feasible to remove the need for control channels for RISs? We analyzed the feasibility of devising Self-Configuring Smart Surfaces that can be easily and seamlessly installed throughout the environment without requiring any modifications to deployed mobile networks.
To this aim we designed MARISA, a self-configuring metasurfaces absorption and reflection solution.
Our results show that surprisingly, MARISA achieves outstanding performance, rivaling with state-of- the-art smart surfaces solutions comprising control channel-driven RISs solutions, but without the need of such control channel.
If successful in the marketplace, self-configuring smart surfaces would significatly drop their deployment barrier for 6G networks with the potential of becoming the most energy saving to date to mobile networks densification.
