BD-RIS-Enhanced Physical Layer Network Slicing for URLLC and eMBB Services

This paper investigates the use of Beyond-Diagonal Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (BD-RIS) in 6G networks to support the coexistence of enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) services, based on network slicing. Three BD-RIS architectures, Single-, Group-, and Fully-Connected, are evaluated under Heterogeneous Orthogonal Multiple Access (H-OMA) and Heterogeneous Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (H-NOMA) schemes. The results show that the Group- and Fully-Connected architectures, when combined with optimal phase configuration, significantly expand the rate region and outperform conventional RIS.