A Survey on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Assisted Orthogonal Time Frequency Space Systems

The vision for 6th-generation (6G) wireless communication systems emphasizes the need for robust and reliable communication in extremely high-mobility scenarios, while also addressing critical demands for energy and spectral efficiency. Under such scenarios, doubly time-frequency selective fading channels often significantly degrade the performance of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based systems due to the impact of large delay and Doppler shifts. Recently, orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation has emerged as a promising alternative. By processing signals in the delay-Doppler (DD) domain, OTFS offers several advantages, including quasi-static channel characteristics, full-time-frequency diversity, and low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), making it a promising candidate for high-mobility communications. Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) are being further integrated to enhance the performance of OTFS systems cost-effectively. With their ability to dynamically reconfigure the wireless environment, the integration of RIS can offer significant performance improvements for OTFS systems. This survey offers a comprehensive review of RIS-assisted OTFS systems, including the fundamental principles, recent advances, and future research directions. Specifically, we first introduce the background of RIS-assisted OTFS systems, outlining the opportunities and challenges of their integration. To ensure the survey is self-contained, we provide a brief overview of the fundamental principles of OTFS and RIS technologies. Building on these foundations, we present a general input-output relationship and capacity characterization for RIS-assited MIMO-OTFS systems. Then, this survey further explores cutting-edge research in areas such as input-output analysis, RIS phase shift design, channel estimation, detection techniques, RIS-assisted integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), and other novel technologies. Finally, we outline some future research directions.