Enabling Future Communication Systems Through Time Varying Computational Electromagnetics

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) represent one of the key enabling technologies for the next-generation wireless communication systems, making it possible to create an intelligent electromagnetic environment.

Specifically, RISs are almost-planar structures engineered to dynamically control reflections and refractions of impinging electromagnetic waves.

Therefore, the use of RISs allows for making the wireless propagation environment part of the network design parameters that can be optimized to gracefully integrate RIS with fundamental enabling technologies such as MIMO and NOMA, in both indoor and outdoor applications, and also in non-terrestrial networks.

While so far the control of the electromagnetic (EM) field has been achieved by discrete linear and nonlinear lumped elements distributed over an almost planar structure, this project aims to investigate the use of time-varying materials to this purpose, that is materials whose physical properties can be changed with time to achieve the desired control of the reflected/refracted EM fields.

However, very few studies have been performed so far on this topic.

To fill this gap, we aim to develop a systematic EM formulation for handling time-varying materials in RISs and integrate them into the modeling framework of the next-generation wireless communication channels, including transmitters, receivers, RISs, and unintentional scatterers.