InterDigital’s Arman Shojaeifard Elected Chair of New ETSI Industry Specification Group on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

InterDigital proposal drives creation of new industry specification group

InterDigital, Inc., a mobile and video technology research and development company, today announced that Arman Shojaeifard, Research and Innovation Lead Researcher, has been elected Chair of ETSI’s newly developed Industry Specification Group (ISG) on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS).

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The Chair election was held at the inaugural ETSI ISG RIS meeting on September 30, and also saw the election of Vice Chairs Richie Leo from ZTE and Professor Marco Di Renzo from CNRS. The group features diverse participating members from across industry and academia, including BT, Orange, CNRS, University of Oulu, Sony, Motorola, ZTE and Huawei, and will focus on defining use cases, covering identified scenarios, and clearly documenting the relevant requirements around the implementation of this new technology.

RIS corresponds to an entirely new type of system node that utilizes smart radio surfaces that may have properties of electromagnetic reflection, refraction, and absorption through small antennas or metamaterial elements. Made up of a large number of sub-wavelength cells that can be controlled using a programmable controller, RIS applications turn the wireless environment into a service and drive enhancements to various wireless KPIs. The chair election follows on the ETSI Director General approval of the establishment of the new RIS ISG proposal, spearheaded by InterDigital.

“I’m honored to lead this new and important research endeavor, especially as it represents the first time InterDigital has driven the creation of an ETSI research group,” said InterDigital’s Arman Shojaeifard, the new elected ETSI RIS ISG Chair. “RIS will create innovation opportunities and progressively impact the evolution of wireless system architecture, access technologies, and networking protocols, especially for 6G.”

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“We are thrilled to start this new group in ETSI,” said David Boswarthick, Director New Technologies at ETSI. “ETSI works at the forefront of emerging and developing technologies and RIS is considered as one potential building block technology for 6G. It is excellent to welcome such a wide community of members from research, academia and industry in the new ISG.”

“We congratulate Arman for this esteemed leadership position, and the important work this new group will lead to make RIS viable and impactful future wireless technologies,” said InterDigital Chief Technology Officer Henry Tirri. “There are many technical issues that must be adequately addressed before RIS can be adopted into future standards, and the ETSI ISG RIS is equipped to address these challenges.”

Using real-time control signaling, RIS technology can adapt to the environment in a dynamic and goal-oriented way. Critical for 6G, RIS can be deployed for both indoor and outdoor usage, including offices, airports, shopping centers, lamp posts, and advertising billboards, and take any shape or be integrated onto objects. Using mostly passive components with low energy consumption and hardware costs, RIS are both cost-effective and environment friendly, and will improve systems KPIs and enable new services and an array of new applications in wireless 6G networks.

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