Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RISE-6G (Reconfigurable Intelligent Sustainable Environments for 6G Wireless Networks)
Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2022-06-30
RISE-6G is intended to design, prototype, and trial radical technological advances based on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) to forge a new generation of dynamically programmable wireless propagation environments. This supports dynamic adaptation to future stringent and highly varying B5G/6G service requirements in terms of Electromagnetic Field (EMF) emissions, localisation accuracy, Energy Efficiency (EE), secrecy guarantees, as well as legislation and regulation changes, while incurring minimal connect-compute network redesign and reconfiguration costs.
The main goals for an RIS rollout are to be able to dimension the reflector/transmitter array and implement ways to direct the propagation inthe right direction, to develop specific building blocks that takes these into account for efficient protocols, and to maintain a high level of exposure knowledge and propagation effetivness.
RISE-6G aims at studying each part of RIS implementation, antenna with beam-forming, localization of emitters, sinks and users, protocol RIS enhancement, and finally some demonstrations of the developed concepts.
The main goals for an RIS rollout are to be able to dimension the reflector/transmitter array and implement ways to direct the propagation inthe right direction, to develop specific building blocks that takes these into account for efficient protocols, and to maintain a high level of exposure knowledge and propagation effetivness.
RISE-6G aims at studying each part of RIS implementation, antenna with beam-forming, localization of emitters, sinks and users, protocol RIS enhancement, and finally some demonstrations of the developed concepts.
This period ends the first 18 months of RISE-6G, that is splitted into 5 thematic technical WPs, plus a demonstration WP.
WP2 has investigated significant use cases for better exploiting RIS technology in the main areas of enhanced connectivity and reliability scenarios, enhanced localisation and sensing scenarios, enhanced sustainability and security scenarios, has also identified and defined relevant performance metrics and KPIs to be used by the technical WPs in order to assess the performance of RISE wireless systems for the three types of scenarios, and has performed a first analysis of RISE network architectures and deployment strat-egies analysis which allowed to come to initial RISE-6G proposals.
WP3 has developed RIS models, design and optimize the RIS prototype and perform characterization in controlled environments, e.g. anechoic chamber or reverbera-tion chamber, or realistic scenarios, that creates the foundations for the technical, application oriented, work packages. Preliminary RIS model based on different approaches were proposed and validated, and these models have been successfully employed mainly in WP4. Also the unit cell characteris-tics of different RIS prototypes were employed to create lookup tables to evaluate them in the framework of WP4-5-6. Consumption models were also delivered to WP6. Finally, RIS prototyping has been started.
WP4 has made progress defining various algorithms and paradigm of communication for RIS systems. Preliminary control methods and deployment strategies for communication have been proposed, taking into account differences in hardware capabilities of the RISs, and the various kind of control channels available to control the RIS. Focusing on multi-user communication, WP4 has developed a range of algorithms related to optimization of the communication param-eters and procedures. In particular, on the fundamentals of multi-user connectivity, different techniques of phase-shift optimization of the RIS have been developed for different scenarios and hardware capabilities. Furthermore, analytical frameworks for analysing the achievable performance of RIS-aided multi-user networks and their limits have been developed. Aldo, advanced multi-user techniques have been investigated. These techniques focus on fast and reliable channel estimation and tracking, multi-beam optimization of the RIS, and RIS orchestration using machine learning approaches. An important line of work within that task are RIS-aware scheduling and resource allocation algorithms. Finally, different procedures for RIS-enhanced mobile edge computing have been proposed. In this area, the contri-bution focused on joint optimization of the network resources by dynamically allocating trans-mission and computational parameters as well as the RIS reflectivity parameters.
WP5 has made progress on its two parallel tasks. Preliminary system architectures and RIS deployment strategies for localisation and sensing have been proposed. WP5 has also developed several methods for practical localisation and sensing problems. Concrete collaborations between multiple WP5 partners have been executed on key focused research questions. Combined, the work conducted so-far is in good agreement with the planned work and WP5 has made significant progress in all consid-ered areas related to localisation and sensing.
WP6 has propose deployments and architectures of RIS networks (i.e. including RISs, BSs, terminals and relays) and innovative PHY-MAC technical enablers to boost the performance of wireless networks in terms of Energy Efficiency (EE), electromagnetic field exposure (EMFE) efficiency (EMFEE) or Utility (EMFEU), with tasks breakdown into Network Architectures & Deployment Strategies with RIS for Enhanced EE, EMFEE and SSE, Sustainable RIS Solutions Design for EE, EMFEE and SSE, Assessment of EE, EMFEE (or EMFEU) and SSE Improvements.
WP7 activities have been started in M13. The main objective of WP7 is to validate and finally establish a novel technology by means of novel hardware design. This will be followed up by a validation phase that will detail an integration plan of different available PoCs among the partners. Planned field-trials will analyze available PoCs and select the suitable ones to be adopted, installed and configured to achieve expected network performance.
WP2 has investigated significant use cases for better exploiting RIS technology in the main areas of enhanced connectivity and reliability scenarios, enhanced localisation and sensing scenarios, enhanced sustainability and security scenarios, has also identified and defined relevant performance metrics and KPIs to be used by the technical WPs in order to assess the performance of RISE wireless systems for the three types of scenarios, and has performed a first analysis of RISE network architectures and deployment strat-egies analysis which allowed to come to initial RISE-6G proposals.
WP3 has developed RIS models, design and optimize the RIS prototype and perform characterization in controlled environments, e.g. anechoic chamber or reverbera-tion chamber, or realistic scenarios, that creates the foundations for the technical, application oriented, work packages. Preliminary RIS model based on different approaches were proposed and validated, and these models have been successfully employed mainly in WP4. Also the unit cell characteris-tics of different RIS prototypes were employed to create lookup tables to evaluate them in the framework of WP4-5-6. Consumption models were also delivered to WP6. Finally, RIS prototyping has been started.
WP4 has made progress defining various algorithms and paradigm of communication for RIS systems. Preliminary control methods and deployment strategies for communication have been proposed, taking into account differences in hardware capabilities of the RISs, and the various kind of control channels available to control the RIS. Focusing on multi-user communication, WP4 has developed a range of algorithms related to optimization of the communication param-eters and procedures. In particular, on the fundamentals of multi-user connectivity, different techniques of phase-shift optimization of the RIS have been developed for different scenarios and hardware capabilities. Furthermore, analytical frameworks for analysing the achievable performance of RIS-aided multi-user networks and their limits have been developed. Aldo, advanced multi-user techniques have been investigated. These techniques focus on fast and reliable channel estimation and tracking, multi-beam optimization of the RIS, and RIS orchestration using machine learning approaches. An important line of work within that task are RIS-aware scheduling and resource allocation algorithms. Finally, different procedures for RIS-enhanced mobile edge computing have been proposed. In this area, the contri-bution focused on joint optimization of the network resources by dynamically allocating trans-mission and computational parameters as well as the RIS reflectivity parameters.
WP5 has made progress on its two parallel tasks. Preliminary system architectures and RIS deployment strategies for localisation and sensing have been proposed. WP5 has also developed several methods for practical localisation and sensing problems. Concrete collaborations between multiple WP5 partners have been executed on key focused research questions. Combined, the work conducted so-far is in good agreement with the planned work and WP5 has made significant progress in all consid-ered areas related to localisation and sensing.
WP6 has propose deployments and architectures of RIS networks (i.e. including RISs, BSs, terminals and relays) and innovative PHY-MAC technical enablers to boost the performance of wireless networks in terms of Energy Efficiency (EE), electromagnetic field exposure (EMFE) efficiency (EMFEE) or Utility (EMFEU), with tasks breakdown into Network Architectures & Deployment Strategies with RIS for Enhanced EE, EMFEE and SSE, Sustainable RIS Solutions Design for EE, EMFEE and SSE, Assessment of EE, EMFEE (or EMFEU) and SSE Improvements.
WP7 activities have been started in M13. The main objective of WP7 is to validate and finally establish a novel technology by means of novel hardware design. This will be followed up by a validation phase that will detail an integration plan of different available PoCs among the partners. Planned field-trials will analyze available PoCs and select the suitable ones to be adopted, installed and configured to achieve expected network performance.
RISE-6G partners have been able to produce numerous publications to major conferences, that describe in detail sthe advance of the project. All WP from 2 to 6 have been able to disseminate outcomes of the studies. In addition, RISE-6G has also been able to propose specific propagation models to ETSI.