Smart Wireless Environment Enhanced Telecommunications: A Network Stabilisation Paradigm for Mobile Operators

Due to the uncontrolled and complex real-life radio propagation environments, Claude Shannon's information theory of communications describes fundamental limits to state-of-the-art 5G radio access network (RAN) capacity, with respect to fixed radio resource usage. Fortunately, recent research has found that a holographic metasurface-based new physical layer architecture may hold the key to overcome these fundamental limits of current mobile networks under a new paradigm, smart wireless environment (SWE), where the long-standing challenge of mobile communications, fading channel hostility, may be solved, leading to a step-change boost in network performance and user experience. Despite recent research activities in SWE, the best way to implement it as a network operator remains an open challenge. In this industrial review, we adopt a novel yet realistic mobile channel stabilisation perspective for network operators to understand this paradigm shift. More specifically, we provide a technical analysis of the synergy between key next-gen mobile network enablers, e.g., holographic metasurface, wireless sensing, and machine intelligence, as well as of how this synergy leads to a robust future RAN architecture. Against the as yet unclear theoretical boundaries and low technology readiness level (TRL) of SWE enhanced telecommunications, we conclude by identifying critical challenges in future commercial deployments.