Modeling, Simulating and Configuring Programmable Wireless Environments for Multi-User Multi-Objective Networking

Programmable wireless environments enable the software-defined propagation of waves within them, yielding exceptional performance potential. Several building-block technologies have been implemented and evaluated at the physical layer. The present work contributes a network-layer scheme to configure such environments for multiple users and objectives, and for any physical-layer technology. Supported objectives include any combination of Quality of Service and power transfer optimization, eavesdropping and Doppler effect mitigation, in multi-cast or uni-cast settings. Additionally, a graph-based model of programmable environments is proposed, which incorporates core physical observations and efficiently separates physical and networking concerns. Evaluation takes place in a specially developed, free simulation tool, and in a variety of environments. Performance gains over regular propagation are highlighted, reaching important insights on the user capacity of programmable environments.