Resource Management for Programmable Metasurfaces: Concept, Prospects and Challenges

Sixth generation (6G) communications are expected to enable to the fusion of the digital world with the physical world, possible unprecedented requirements on the timely and efficient management of communication and computing resources. Programmable metasurfaces (PMs) are a key 6G enabler, which allow programmatic control over the propagation of wireless waves in a space. In this article we treat the problem of unifying existing resource management systems with PMs as communication resources. Specifically, we propose the virtualization of PMs (VPMs), yielding their representation as a cloud resource which can interfaced with existing resource-slicing multi-tenancy systems. We analyze how VPMs enable the dynamic deployment of end-to-end services toward clients in heterogeneous networks, promoting the isolation of performance concerns among different performance objectives. Use cases and open challenges and open questions are highlighted.