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Future Wireless Communications Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Meta-Materials (META WIRELESS)

Project description

Paving the way for a new generation of connectivity

Wireless networks have evolved extraordinarily, from the discovery of radio waves in 1880 to the 5G networks of the 21st century. Today, wireless connectivity – from mobile telecommunications and Wi-Fi to Bluetooth and IoT communications – is continuously expanding and evolving. The EU-funded META WIRELESS project is helping to pave the way for 6G-and-beyond networks. To meet the requirements of future wireless networks, the project will treat the environment as a quantity to be controlled and optimised. It will incorporate reconfigurable intelligent surfaces to enable the manipulation of the wireless environment. Made from electromagnetically discontinuous meta-materials, these surfaces are planar structures that can be used to modify the phase and wavefront of impinging radio waves.

Objective

Wireless connectivity has become a pillar of our society. The growth of wireless traffic is relentless, forecast to reach a staggering worldwide aggregate of 5,016 exabytes by 2030, along with bit rates of 1 Tb/s and new services related to sensing, localization, low-latency, and ultra-reliability.

While the performance of wireless networks has improved phenomenally over the last decades, progress is by now pushing against fundamental limits and the mechanisms that have sustained these huge improvements are starting to falter. New evolutionary leaps are called for in order to ensure that the aforementioned forecasts can become a reality.

To date, every wireless system has abided by the premise that the propagation radio channel is fixed by nature and cannot be tampered with, but only compensated through ever more sophisticated transmission/reception schemes. A potential evolutionary leap for 6G-and-beyond networks is to break free from the postulate that channels are uncontrollable factors. Serving such a vision, META WIRELESS pursues the disruptive idea of designing wireless networks by treating the environment itself as a quantity to be controlled and optimized. Precisely, the manipulation of the wireless environment can be made possible by incorporating reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. These are planar structures, made of meta-materials and electromagnetically discontinuous, which do not adhere to conventional reflection and diffraction laws; rather, they can modify in a controllable fashion the phase and wavefront of impinging radio waves. If deployed to coat objects, walls, or building facades, they could allow customizing in real time the electromagnetic response of environments.

Making this vision a reality requires the training of a new generation of researchers and a multidisciplinary effort involving wireless communications, physics, electromagnetic theory, and computational learning, which are the ingredients that define the META WIRELESS project.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MSCA-ITN - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN)

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-ITN-2020

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Coordinator

CONSORZIO NAZIONALE INTERUNIVERSITARIO PER LE TELECOMUNICAZIONI
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 522 999,36
Address
VIALE G. P. USBERTI 181A
43124 Parma
Italy

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Region
Nord-Est Emilia-Romagna Parma
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 522 999,36

Participants (11)

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