ENabling Intelligent Omni-surfaces for Smart and efficient wireless communication

Wireless technology has become a fundamental component of human daily life in societies. It is expected that by 2030, the demand for data rates will reach 1 Tb/s due to the increase in simultaneous wireless connections: almost 1000 times more than 5G technology. Although 5G wireless networks are now a reality and, undoubtedly, a transformative factor for both society and the economy by delivering an unprecedented fabric of massive connectivity to millions of users and interconnected devices, they cannot efficiently support such high data traffic in the future due to their limited spectral efficiency (around 30 bps/Hz). To tackle this issue, 6G technology is envisioned to attain spectral efficiencies of around 100 bps/Hz with ultra-low latency to support diverse applications. One of the most promising approaches to enable true Smart Radio Environments with 360 coverage is based on the concept of simultaneous transmitting and reflecting intelligent omni-surfaces (STAR-IOSs). In STAR-IOSs, the incident wireless signals on a patch-array or a metasurface-based structure can be (at the same time) reflected by and transmitted through the STAR-IOS. While STAR-IOS technology has the potential to be a key enabler for new use cases in 6G, it is yet to be understood how its true electromagnetic nature will affect the fundamental limits of STAR-IOS communications and impact their practical applications.The key goal of ENIOS project is to create and validate physically-motivated mathematical models and tools for STAR-IOS communications, that can be used for realistic system design in 6G communications. This will be accomplished by integrating tools from multivariate statistics, electromagnetics, and information theory. Aspects like (i) Accurate modeling for practical STAR-IOS communications;(ii) Mathematical tools for performance analysis and system design of practical STAR-IOS communications; and (iii) New architectures for STAR-IOS communication, will be addressed in ENIOS.