WALLPAPER: Intelligent wallpaper – Enabling sustainable wireless systems with organic electronics

(Academy of Finland, ICT Call 2023)

WALLPAPER aims to develop a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to improve the energy efficiency of existing and future wireless systems and, at the same time, offer a sustainable solution for being manufactured with organic and recyclable materials, thus reducing the impact on the worldwide e-waste.

Scattering is a physical phenomenon in which an electromagnetic wave reflects back at many angles from an obstacle. This can be exploited, for instance, in back- or re-scattering communication which is a promising candidate for future IoT and 6G applications. The back- and re-scattering phenomena can be used also for other than communication purposes, such as sensing, imaging and monitoring of environment, localization and navigation, health and biomedical monitoring, and in smart buildings, industrial automation, wearable devices, self-driving cars, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

Our goal is to demonstrate and develop zero-power and -waste (i.e., environmental-friendly organic components on cellulosic or recyclable thermoplastic substrates with the additive manufacturing technologies) hardware and software solutions for advanced reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) being able to transmit and receive RF and visible light. The control channel for dynamic reconfiguration of the RIS is realized with visible light communications instead of commonly used wired connection or power-hungry and complex RF wireless.

This three-year project will be carried out among multidisciplinary teams of Aalto University. The core competences of the research teams are radio-frequency electronics (microwave and antenna engineering), wireless (RF/optical) communications engineering, organic electronics and materials science. The Electronics-ICT and cleanroom infrastructures of Aalto University enable versatile testing of the assumed end-products, consisting of printed demonstrators of RIS and related transceiver nodes with dedicated software. The developed solutions make it possible to achieve a radical increase in energy efficiency in communications and sensing, and to connect a huge number of devices to the internet in an ecologically sustainable way. The proposed technology platform has many uses in ICT sector beyond wireless communications and sensing, with a clear benefit for society, when it comes to overall reduced material and energy consumption and reduction of e-waste.

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