6G Communications Gap in the Market Called RIS

Antidotes to the sharply increasing power consumption, heat generation, ugliness and cost of successive wireless infrastructure generations are now envisaged. They include making them self-powered, often transparent and even vanishing into the fabric of society such as high-altitude pseudo satellites HAPS, “towers in the sky” and the new, massive UM-MIMO base stations hidden in the structure of a high-rise building.

Attention turns to such things as 6G smart windows and all-round simultaneous transmission and reflection reconfigurable intelligent surfaces “STAR RIS”. Both are transparent and STAR RIS give 360-degree coverage so you need less of them. RIS technology will enhance those base stations. The big picture is that RIS are a huge opportunity currently receiving too little attention. Indeed 6G research above the physical layer is three times larger.

RIS will be essential due to the feebleness of  the high frequency emissions necessitated for much better performance over 5G such as100-300GHz.  RIS are a gap in the market for you to address, because the 6G physical layer only gets about one quarter of the research effort, and, of that, RIS is only a small part. Worse, the RIS mostly researched are at 5G not 6G frequencies. With a pivot to outdoor 6G using not 0.3-1 THz originally envisaged but near infrared and some visible frequencies, the RIS researched for that are mainly arrays of moving micro-mirrors unlikely to hit the required price, size or performance points. Solid state optical RIS based on materials such as vanadium dioxide, germanium selenium telluride, graphene and indium tin oxide can lead to the solid state, often transparent optical RIS really required.      

Although it was thought that most RIS would almost all be “semi-passive” taking only a whisper of electricity, they need to be very large to provide the required reach and security and they suffer from multiplicative fading effect, all minimised or eliminated by fully-powered active RIS. It is therefore now realised that we shall need a lot of fully active RIS to focus and amplify beams not just because security, range and reach are so challenging at all 6G frequencies. Indeed active RIS can incorporate sensing and other desired functions such as the dream of simultaneous wireless information and power transfer where the amplified beam can operate such things as battery-free internet of things nodes. Active RIS can be smaller and therefore easier to deploy and even semi-passive RIS often need an active tile so, “the system knows the RIS”.   Consequently, you should get involved in the neglected field of active RIS and its attendant needs such as self-powering, self-healing, self-cooling, self-cleaning, self-configuring  and/or transparency.

The potential is very large. For example, RIS may become the world’s largest use of metamaterials and Zhar Research sees demand reaching $12 billion, around 40% of that value being for active versions.  The seminal report on the subject is Zhar Research, "6G Communications: Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface RIS and Reflect-array Materials and Hardware Markets, Technology 2025-2045."

Find our reports on Zhar Research or GII Research.