SMART

Main Goals of the Project

The project was motivated by the vision of Smart Radio Environments (SREs) as a fundamental enabling technology for the emerging Gigabit society. To this end, it brought together research groups with complementary and interdisciplinary expertise spanning information theory, signal processing, electronics, metamaterials, and electromagnetic engineering.

The overall goal was to gain a deep physical understanding of smart electromagnetic structures for SREs, establish their fundamental limits, develop the tools needed to design them, and ultimately implement and experimentally assess them. A first line of work focused on building a common language between the electromagnetic and wireless communication communities, fostering mutual understanding and cross-fertilization across the disciplines involved. Building on this foundation, the project developed new models, design tools, algorithms, and protocols for smart nodes grounded in the integration of information and electromagnetic theories, targeting communications, localization, sensing, and their combinations. In parallel, it investigated new strategies and materials for energy harvesting, self-powered components, and green solutions, as well as for enabling metasurface reconfigurability.

These efforts culminated in lab-scale demonstrations of SREs for well-defined use cases, advancing the technology from TRL 1 to TRL 3-4. The ultimate aim was to help meet 6G key performance indicators (KPI) through low-complexity, cost-effective, energy-efficient, and sustainable solutions.

CIRA Activities in the Project

Within the project, CIRA investigated the use of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) to enhance radio technologies, with the aim of making better use of transmitted power and reducing the number of antennas required in both indoor and outdoor scenarios. CIRA's contribution mainly focused on aeronautical applications through the following activities:

• Communication for unmanned platforms in civil applications: a case study on the use of RISs for drone communications, for instance RIS-based backscattering in drone-assisted IoT networks, aimed at strengthening physical-layer security.
• Spectral and energy efficiency: assessment of how RISs can improve the spectral and energy efficiency of future wireless communication systems.
• Path loss and BLOS mitigation: study of RIS-based solutions to mitigate path loss and Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) limitations in aeronautical applications, such as single drones or drone teams/swarms in U-Space scenarios.
• Electromagnetic self-protection: investigation of RISs as an enabler of self-protection systems for platforms against electromagnetic threats in security-critical contexts.

General Project Information

Funding Programme: PNRR

Start Date: 04/11/2024; End Date: 31/12/2025

Coordinating Organization: Roma Tre University

Partners: University of Siena, University of Trento, University of Pisa, University of Brescia, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, University of Sannio, University of Calabria, NEC Italia, Alma Sistemi, Mantid

CIRA Contact: Ivan Iudice, i.iudice@cira.it