RIMSA: Reconfigurable Intelligent Metasurface Antenna for 6G Communications and Sensing

The upcoming era of 6G wireless technology will see base stations (BS) employing an immense array of antennas for communications and sensing. A cutting-edge approach to achieving these massive antenna arrays in a cost-effective, power-efficient, and scalable manner involves the use of metasurfaces embedded with radiating metamaterial elements. Traditionally, metasurfaces have been employed as passive reflectors in wireless networks, enhancing the capabilities of standard transceivers via manipulating the propagation environment. Leveraging the tunability and programmability of metamaterials, the reconfigurable intelligent metasurface antenna (RIMSA) array, which consists of many metamaterial-based radiating elements, is emerging as a viable solution to meet those ambitious goals. In this article, we introduce a RIMSA system including hardware structure, design principle, manner of beam control and RIMSA equipped transceiver. We further discuss the applications of RIMSA array for wireless communications and sensing, respectively. Finally, we identify several research challenges and future directions to fully exploit this RIMSA system.