Metasurfaces as 6G Enabling Technology: A discussion on RIS applicability to Industrial IoT scenarios

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are envisioned as keys enabling technologies for the future 6th generation (6G) to fulfil the extremely stringent requirements that Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications impose in terms of throughput, latency, and reliability. This paper discusses the real development and applicability of RIS in IIoT scenarios considering a trade-off between costs and performance improvement. The key performance indicators (KPIs) exploited to investigate the effectiveness of RIS planning are the path loss exponent (PLE) and the percentage of reachable nodes. The considered IIoT scenarios are corridors of different shape and elementary industrial plants.