The 5G roll-out phase already started with a number of innovations and new features, such as point-of-access densification, massive Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) and millimeter-wave communications, that would help deliver new advanced services. However, the ever-increasing user quality demand calls in question whether such technologies are enough to properly handle the envisioned upcoming applications, i.e., multisensory augmented and virtual reality applications, wireless brain computer interactions, and fully autonomous systems due to their increased complexity and huge demands on high data rates.

Additionally, we are experiencing a paradigm shift as the network design is rapidly evolving towards software-based and reconfigurable solutions. Therefore, many researchers have started tackling the problem from a different perspective: the wireless environment. It is an uncontrollable black-box that impairs communication quality due to unwanted reflections, refractions and/or unexpected interferences. There is a need for a technology that can control the propagation environment while making communications stable, reliable and efficient in both indoor and outdoor environments. Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) have been proposed to provide full control of the wave propagation effects and thus improve the quality of classical communication channels by utilizing the novel concept of Smart Radio Environment.

RIS can transform the inherently stochastic nature of the wireless environment - in a fundamentally passive manner - into a programmable channel that plays an active role in determining how wireless signals propagate. This concept was recently proposed for a variety of applications, ranging from secure communications, single/multi-user multiple-input multiple-output systems, non-orthogonal multiple access, millimeter-wave and terahertz communications, vehicular/aerial communications, and over-the-air-computation to improve the energy efficiency and capacity of cellular networks. Specifically, RIS, which apply controllable transformations into impinging radio waves (without using power amplifiers, mixers, filters and active RF signal processing), create a plethora of opportunities for the optimization of wireless systems at low cost and with low energy footprint.

This Feature Topic (FT) focuses on the design and implementation of RIS. Submissions are invited in all areas related to this scope including, but not limited to the following:

• RIS-based architectures and interfaces;
• Proposal of use cases, application scenarios, and techno-economic analysis;
• Communication-theoretic foundations of RIS-empowered wireless networks;
• Fundamental performance limits of RIS-empowered wireless networks;
• Algorithms and protocol design/optimization for RIS-empowered wireless networks
• Physics- and electromagnetics-based modeling of RISs;
• Experimental results and testbed implementations of RISs;
• Indoor/outdoor localization solutions in RIS-empowered wireless networks;
• Seamless control of RIS-empowered massive access IoT networks;
• Distributed configuration and deployment of RIS-empowered wireless networks;
• Integration of RISs with state-of-the-art wireless technologies (e.g., small cells, massive MIMO, millimeter-wave communications, free space optics, drones-aided communications, energy harvesting, etc.).

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the Information for Authors section of the IEEE Communications Magazine’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines. Please, check these guidelines carefully before submitting since submissions not complying with them will be administratively rejected without review.

All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through Manuscript Central. Select the “June 2021/RIS-Communications” topic from the drop-down menu of Topic/Series titles. Please observe the dates specified here below noting that there will be no extension of the submission deadline.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 8 December 2020, 3:00 pm US Eastern time
Decision Notification: 1 March 2021
Final Manuscript Due: 15 April 2021
Publication Date: June 2021

Guest Editors

Vincenzo Sciancalepore
NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH, Germany

Ertugrul Basar
Koç University, Turkey

Naofal Al-Dhahir
The University of Texas at Dallas, USA

Ying-Chang Liang
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China