IEEE ComSoc ETI on ESIT Websites: 

https://esiteti.committees.comsoc.org 

https://www.comsoc.org/about/committees/emerging-technologies-initiatives/electromagnetic-signal-and-information-theory  

The ITU-R adopted IMT-2030/6G framework and 3GPP’s latest Release 19 indicate the growth of wireless standards tending towards enhanced intelligent and automated approaches, sustainability, hyper-reliability, resilient and secure networking, ubiquitous connectivity, integrated (AI, sensing, communications) solutions and low latency communications. In order to meet the immensely higher data rate, reliability, and traffic demands in the 5G-Advanced/6G era, novel communication frameworks are rapidly emerging to fully utilize the electromagnetic waves, including reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, holographic MIMO, extremely large antenna arrays, metaprism, etc. In this direction, Electromagnetic Signal and Information Theory (ESIT) has emerged as an interdisciplinary framework to evaluate the fundamental limits of wireless communications by integrating deterministic electromagnetic wave (EM) theory, signal processing and statistical information theory. The industry and academia researchers have recently shown significant interest in the emerging electromagnetic information theory, i.e., based on electromagnetics principles and information theory concepts, intertwined with signal processing approaches, which is jointly termed as ESIT. This integration will lead to a paradigm shift to the future of how we picture our wireless communications and networking. ESIT is able to build a more physically consistent communication model and establish more fundamental limitations on the communication systems.

The mobile service providers would require next generation of wireless communication standards that can exploit electromagnetic waves, multi-function architectures such as integrated sensing-communications-localization, dynamic spectrum sharing, high frequency spectrums such as millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz), hardware aspects, efficient multiple access such as power-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), nonterrestrial networks (NTNs), intelligent metasurfaces surfaces such as conformal metasurfaces, etc. There may be a mismatch between the system design and the realistic propagation environment since current design and performance analysis methods are usually based on the scalar-quantity, far-field, planar-wavefront, monochromatic and other non physically-consistent assumptions. ESIT will play a vital role in advancements of next generation technical solutions and overcoming these issues. Unlike traditional wireless communication frameworks, physically large antenna arrays, RF lens antenna arrays, and/or continuous-aperture MIMO will be used and analyzed more effectively with the ESIT framework. At the same time, the non-diffraction properties of the Bessel beam, and/or the acceleration properties of the Airy beam will open up new opportunities of under the ESIT framework. It is expected that ESIT will bring new theoretical analysis and system design paradigms to the future wireless communications. While research into ESIT based theoretical analysis, channel modeling, antenna design, and standardization for the future wireless communications are starting to gain momentum creating a plethora of opportunities for sustainable and resilient solutions, also aligning with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. 

ETI Objectives

It becomes more than essential for industrial stakeholders and academic researchers to generate state-of-the-art approaches that make use of the ESIT system designs and standardizations which will have large impact on 6G and beyond communications. Our ESIT seeks activities from industry fellows and academic colleagues on the following topics in the realm of ESIT:

• ESIT channel capacity analysis, degree of freedom of the time, frequency, and spatial domain, characteristic mode analysis, performance evaluation

• ESIT physics consistent channel modeling, computational electromagnetics-based channel modeling, circuit theory-based channel modeling, reactive near field, radiating near field and far field channel modeling, wave-domain signalling

• ESIT beamforming and channel estimation for both near and far field communications, interference cancelation, joint system optimization, joint system optimization

• ESIT based extremely large antenna arrays, large intelligent surfaces, reconfigurable antennas, stacked intelligent metasurfaces, metaprism, fully-passive non reconfigurable EM models (smart skin), holographic MIMO, continuous-aperture MIMO, wave manipulation, exploitation of physical properties of Bessel, and Airy beams

• ESIT based vision, outlook, new challenges, and opportunities of ESIT towards 5G-Advanced/6G, ESIT based network, new use cases, performance evaluation, experimentation, hardware prototypes and testbed findings network security, privacy and semantic communication

The “ETI on ESIT” provides platform to the researchers seeking to explore key enabling solutions and system designs in realizing ESIT, enhance the performance in terms of energy and spectral efficiencies using the principles of ESIT, near-field communications and reconfigurable antennas, etc., and will provide insights with “ComSoc Best Readings on ESIT” as part of the initiative into latest research trends, challenges and future prospects which align with the latest industry activities, standardization efforts and research on the important topic of ESIT for 6G and beyond. This ETI's aim is to bring together both the industry and academic peers likewise the amalgamation of electromagnetic wave principles with information theory and signal processing tools. The lifespan is expected to be eternal since we are surrounded by EM waves and several of our communication devices will be based on these waves signaling intertwined with advanced techniques. A selected list of published papers will be featured in the "ComSoc Best Readings on ESIT”, and as well as contributions to new wireless standards will be part of this ETI as we approach the advancements in the field of ESIT. 

Besides ETI Chairs and Officers, we are also establishing a list of active contributors so do join us by contacting the Chairs. 

Upcoming Books

• Aryan Kaushik and Marco Di Renzo (Editors), Electromagnetic Signal and Information Theory: From Synergizing Three Realms to Evolution of Next Generation Communications, Elsevier (2026 Edition).

• Aryan Kaushik (Editor), Intelligent Metasurfaces for 6G and Beyond: Recent Advancements and New Opportunities using Electromagnetic Signal and Information Theory, Wiley (2025 Edition).