META WIRELESS — Future Wireless Communications Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Meta-Materials (META WIRELESS)

Results in brief

Future Wireless Communications Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Meta-Materials (META WIRELESS)

The META WIRELESS project has investigated the use of meta materials in wireless communications. The project was organized around two complementary pillars: technical research objectives and dedicated training objectives. On the research side, the focus was on exploring the potential of metamaterials in wireless networks. Key results include the development of both theoretical models and algorithmic solutions for metasurface-empowered wireless communications, and of an open-source simulator. The META WIRELESS project has combined meta materials, antennas and software such that a real time fine granularity control of the environment for wireless communications becomes possible. This capability has been used to design and much more energy and spectral efficient wireless networks than today's wireless networks, providing the foundations of connected digital services. META WIRELESS results, contributing to the development of the next generation of wireless networks, and to increasing the quality of life and the wellbeing of people. On the training side, great emphasis was placed on preparing a new generation of researchers to lead this emerging field. The training program combined highly technical doctoral schools with complementary courses aimed at building broader professional skills. The project lasted four and a half years: slightly more than one year was devoted to recruiting 15 researchers, followed by three years of intensive research and training. The outcome has been very positive: all participants are now employed, with several currently completing their PhDs, and others already working either in industry or in academia as postdoctoral researchers. Importantly, the majority have remained in Europe, contributing to strengthening the region’s leadership in wireless communications.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Wireless connectivity has become a pillar of our society. The growth of wireless traffic is relentless, forecast to reach a staggering worldwide aggregate of 5,016 exabytes by 2030, along with bit rates of 1 Tb/s and new services related to sensing, localization, low-latency, and ultra-reliability.While the performance of wireless networks has improved phenomenally over the last decades, progress is by now pushing against fundamental limits and the mechanisms that have sustained these huge improvements are starting to falter. New evolutionary leaps are called for in order to ensure that the aforementioned forecasts can become a reality. To date, every wireless system has abided by the premise that the propagation radio channel is fixed by nature and cannot be tampered with, but only compensated through ever more sophisticated transmission/reception schemes. A potential evolutionary leap for 6G-and-beyond networks is to break free from the postulate that channels are uncontrollable factors. Serving such a vision, META WIRELESS pursues the disruptive idea of designing wireless networks by treating the environment itself as a quantity to be controlled and optimized. Precisely, the manipulation of the wireless environment can be made possible by incorporating reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. These are planar structures, made of meta-materials and electromagnetically discontinuous, which do not adhere to conventional reflection and diffraction laws; rather, they can modify in a controllable fashion the phase and wavefront of impinging radio waves. If deployed to coat objects, walls, or building facades, they could allow customizing in real time the electromagnetic response of environments.Making this vision a reality requires the training of a new generation of researchers and a multidisciplinary effort involving wireless communications, physics, electromagnetic theory, and computational learning, which are the ingredients that define the META WIRELESS project.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

CONSORZIO NAZIONALE INTERUNIVERSITARIO PER LE TELECOMUNICAZIONI (CNIT) · ParmaCoordinatorItaly
AALTO KORKEAKOULUSAATIO SR · EspooFinland
CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS · ParisFrance
GREENERWAVE · ParisFrance
KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN · StockholmSweden
NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ""DEMOKRITOS"""" · Agia ParaskeviGreece
NEC LABORATORIES EUROPE GMBH · HeidelbergGermany
NOKIA SOLUTIONS AND NETWORKS OY · EspooFinland
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET WIEN · WienAustria
TELEFONICA INNOVACION DIGITAL SL · MADRIDSpain
UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA · BarcelonaSpain
WAVE UP SRL · SIENAItaly

META WIRELESS · Future Wireless Communications Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Meta-Materials (META WIRELESS)

Results in brief

Future Wireless Communications Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Meta-Materials (META WIRELESS)

Project objective

Participants

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