Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for industrial applications: Challenges and Opportunities

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) or Intelligent Reflective Surface (IRS) are sometimes used as synonyms in the literature and refer to the same technology. RIS refers to a material whose physical properties of reflection and transmission can be controlled in order to optimize the path taken by the electromagnetic waves incident upon them. This technology is beginning to gain attention in the context of smart industries and can potentially be a major asset. These surfaces can be manufactured using metasurfaces, which act like arrays of small mirrors that are individually controlled, thus resulting in the capability to reshape the beam incident on the surface to reflect it and redirect it along the desired direction to improve the transmission performance in terms of coverage or quality improvement, such as the bit error rate (BER). With the upcoming 6G, many factories and industries are making the shift towards up to date technologies to make their processes more efficient and more robotized. The goal of this paper is to present how these metasurfaces can be used for industrial applications and where lies the challenges and opportunities that they bring.