‘Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces key to success of 6G’

With the fifth-generation (5G), at last, gaining commercial traction, the debate about the sixth-generation (6G) is now looking at what it might offer in practical terms. Attention is turning towards how the industry can ensure that 6G, unlike some other transformational technologies, is not a triumph of hype over reality.
  
Hitherto, scientists and engineers have spent decades developing ever more efficient transmitters and receivers and working out ways to mitigate the inevitable signal loss at the endpoints of a radio channel as they turned to higher and higher frequencies to obviate bandwidth congestion.
  

Some of those teams are working in-house for equipment vendors, some are working in university laboratories and yet more are employed by big network operators.
   
Among the companies known to be involved in the research are BT, China Mobile, China Telecom, Huawei, Ericsson, NEC, Nokia, NTT Docomo, Orange, Samsung and ZTE.
  
Interestingly, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) reports and papers show that scientists in Asia, in particular, are concentrating on extending in-building wireless coverage indoors by affixing transparent RIS film to windows, allowing 6G signals to be refracted and increased in strength as they pass through a film and into a building.