Edited by:
George C. Alexandropoulos: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Chongwen Huang: College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, China
Chau Yuen: School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Submission Status: Open | Submission Deadline: 1 April 2024
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking is inviting submissions for our collection on Holographic MIMO Systems and Applications.
The 5G NR has brough the massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) paradigm, which is currently deployed in various places around the world. In addition, 5G-Advanced, under the latest discussions for 3GPP Release 18, is expected to set the basis for novel technologies, systems, and use cases for 6G wireless networks. One of the recent technological trends for future wireless networking is envisioning the programmability of the radio wave propagation environment in frequencies ranging from sub6GHz to THz through smart repeaters, enabling low-power, massively-connectÂed, and ultra-low-latency wireless applications, as well as triggering ultra-large-scale environmental sensing. This sensing potential is expected to have a critical dual role: 1) to expedite the design of communications and localization algorithms, and 2) to foster novel sensing applications, like 3D radio mapping, holograms, and digital twins. The technological enabler for the smart wireless connectivity paradigm is the holographic MIMO concept, which encompasses both extreme massive MIMO antenna arrays as well as smart reflectors (mainly known as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces). This concept is lately gaining increasing research and industrial attention (in terms of hardware architectures, signal processing and protocols designs, as well as novel wireless considerations such as near-field communications) due to its potential for relatively low-power, low-cost, and reduced hardware footprint implementation, mainly leveraging the technologies of metamaterials and metasurfaces, as well as antenna packaging.
An HMIMO structure is an ultra-thin and nearly continuous aperture that incorporates reconfigurable and sub-wavelength-spaced antennas and/or metamaterials. Such surfaces comprising dense Electro-Magnetic (EM) excited elements are capable of recording and manipulating impinging fields with utmost flexibility and precision, as well as with reduced cost and power consumption, thereby shaping arbitrary-intended EM waves with high energy efficiency. The powerful EM processing capability of HMIMOS opens the possibility of wireless applications of holographic imaging level, paving the way for signal processing techniques realized in the EM domain, possibly in conjunction with their digital-domain counterparts. This special issue aims to collect top quality research works on this emerging topic, and in particular on the modeling, analysis, and optimization of multi-functional HMIMO structures (for reconfigurable transmission, reception, and reflection).