SurfOS: Towards an Operating System for Programmable Radio Environments

Programmable radio environments with metasurfaces introduce signal-level programmability to wireless networks, providing various services such as connectivity enhancement, coverage extension, sensing, security protection, and wireless powering. Next-generation wireless networks are set to widely deploy metasurfaces. However, the current one-system-per-use-case approach cannot scale with wide-ranging hardware designs and surface-aided applications. This paper presents a vision, SurfOS, a metasurface operating system for programmable radio environments. SurfOS aims to orchestrate heterogeneous surface hardware and provide diverse services for user-level applications. We discuss the challenges of building such a system, potential abstraction layers, and open research problems. Our early-stage implementation demonstrates the feasibility and benefits of this approach.