Prof. George C. Alexandropoulos, Principal Researcher at our AI and Digital Science Research Center (AIDRC) delivered a technical keynote presentation at the industry’s RIS Technical Alliance (RISTA) cutting-edge forum on October 12, 2022. The virtual presentation entitled ‘Hybrid reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: Current hardware architectures, orchestration, and future directions’ focused on his team’s efforts in driving research on simultaneous reflecting and sensing metasurface architecture and presented the latest advances in the technology for efficient wireless communications/localization/sensing applications.
The RISTA, of which TII is a member, is a cross-industry, open, and non-profit social organization that brings together enterprises, public institutions, associations, colleges and universities, as well as scientific research institutes related to the technology of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) on a voluntary basis, offering equal and mutual membership benefits. Through bringing together various entities in the RIS ecosystem to deepen their exchange and cooperation, RISTA is committed to promoting the research, standardization, and industrialization of RIS-related technologies.
In his presentation attracting around 20000 remote attendees, Prof. Alexandropoulos advocated the development of the connected things paradigm within 5G wireless communications that has enabled various sophisticated applications. He explained how their evolution is paving the way for the notion of the connected intelligence of everything in 6G networks. He also pointed out that recent speculations about the upcoming new generation have pushed the 5G performance indicators to unprecedented levels, predicting wireless operations in THz frequency bands, devices with embedded sensing capabilities, and native AI.
All those capabilities are expected to become a reality around 2030, and most importantly, demonstrating a strong green footprint. Prof. Alexandropoulos added that the emerging technology of RISs is set to become an enabler of smart wireless environments, offering a highly scalable, low-cost, hardware-efficient, and almost energy-neutral solution for the dynamic control of the propagation of electromagnetic signals.
