Guest Editorial Smart Electromagnetic Environment

The exponential growth of mobile data traffic in the last decades is expected to continue in the forthcoming years, and multi-gigabit-per-second connections will soon be experienced by the users at any place and time. Next-generation communication systems will have to sustain a highly immersive and interconnected world (e.g., the
metaverse
) in which both physical items/persons and their digital twins will have to continuously exchange massive amounts of high-resolution data. Therefore, the wireless infrastructures will have to guarantee unprecedented link performance levels, while minimizing the complexity, the power consumption, and the costs. Towards this end, alternative solutions to the traditional approach “more information and data through more power and more emissions of electromagnetic (EM) waves” will be mandatory because of the current EM congestion.