Active Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: Expanding the Frontiers of Wireless Communication-A Survey

The swift progress of metasurface technology, enabling meticulous manipulation of the propagation environment, is anticipated to bring a transformative impact on sixth-generation (6G) wireless communications efficiency. Utilizing metasurface elements presents a promising opportunity for achieving passive scattering at sub-wavelength scales, facilitating intelligent radio settings’ advancement. Active Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (ARIS) have gained significant interest in emergent metasurface technology. In contrast to passive RIS, which exhibits a certain degree of performance enhancement but encounters restrictions arising from the “double fading" phenomenon in the phase response, ARIS emerges as a highly promising alternative to counter such restrictions. This study provides a complete examination of ARIS, particularly emphasizing current improvements and its various uses within the context of 6G wireless networks. The review commences by laying a robust foundation in RIS technology, covering the various types and modes of RIS. Following this, we will explore the benefits and practical implementations of ARIS. Through a systematic examination, we categorize different approaches within ARIS-enabled use cases. These scenarios include optimizing the sum rate and signal-to-noise ratio, attaining maximum secrecy rate, energy minimization, and ensuring channel estimation. Additionally, we provide a summary and lessons learned along with a summary table for each category to describe, contrast, and evaluate the existing literature regarding setup, channel characteristics, methodologies, and objectives. We highlight the crucial role of ARIS in defining the landscape of wireless communications in the 6G era by outlining the open research problems in this emerging area and exploring the attractive future prospects.