Transmissive Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Enabled Transceiver Systems: Architecture, Design Issues, and Opportunities

The evolution of mobile communication has led to an increase in both the power consumption and cost of conventional base stations (BSs). Specifically, in 5G networks, the signal propagation loss is exacerbated due to higher frequency-band operating characteristics compared to 4G networks. Consequently, achieving comparable coverage capabilities requires several times more BSs. Furthermore, the extensive deployment of multiple-input, multiple-output mandates a proportional augmentation in the quantity of signal processing modules and active radio-frequency (RF) chains to be deployed on the BS. This inevitably results in higher power consumption of the 5G networks compared to their 4G counterparts [1]. Thus, one of the prevailing concerns with current 5G BSs is their high power consumption, design cost, and deployment cost compared to 4G BSs. Hence, it is imperative to devise an innovative transceiver architecture that is suited for future beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G networks and capable of attaining reduced power consumption and cost.