Description
Smart Electromagnetic Skins (SESs) are planar or conformal surfaces able to perform controlled manipulation of an incident field, such as anomalous reflection (or transmission), in which the field is redirected in a pre-defined direction or it covers a desired area. SESs are proposed for 5G and beyond-5G and in other emerging applications like IoT and Industry 4.0. They could be completely passive surfaces able to redirect the incident field in a fixed direction or to provide a predefined coverage, while a second alternative consists in using reconfigurable configurations, generally named Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs), in which it is possible to change the direction of re-radiation just adjusting the behavior of the surface itself realized with the introduction of elements that could be reconfigured.
In both cases, a suitable approach for the efficient design of SESs and the introduction of innovative configurations with improved performance are necessary. Technological aspects must also be considered, investigating for instance the possibility of realizing the SESs with a suitable additive manufacturing technique or using flexible substrates.