  Intelligent surfaces (ISs) have emerged as a key technology to empower a wide
range of appealing applications for wireless networks, due to their low cost,
high energy efficiency, flexibility of deployment and capability of
constructing favorable wireless channels/radio environments. Moreover, the
recent advent of several new IS architectures further expanded their
electromagnetic functionalities from passive reflection to active
amplification, simultaneous reflection and refraction, as well as holographic
beamforming. However, the research on ISs is still in rapid progress and there
have been recent technological advances in ISs and their emerging applications
that are worthy of a timely review. Thus, we provide in this paper a
comprehensive survey on the recent development and advances of ISs aided
wireless networks. Specifically, we start with an overview on the anticipated
use cases of ISs in future wireless networks such as 6G, followed by a summary
of the recent standardization activities related to ISs. Then, the main design
issues of the commonly adopted reflection-based IS and their state-of-the-art
solutions are presented in detail, including reflection optimization,
deployment, signal modulation, wireless sensing, and integrated sensing and
communications. Finally, recent progress and new challenges in advanced IS
architectures are discussed to inspire futrue research.
