Autonomous Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface based on Highly-Efficient Solar Cells

Abstract

The power consumption of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) has not been addressed enough in the state-of-theart. This paper proposes a paradigm for converting RISs into ecofriendly structures that generate their needed power by the highefficiency multiple junctions (MJ) solar cells. This work considers the impact of adding solar cells to the RIS and investigates the amount of generated power. Moreover, the inclination angle of the solar irradiance is considered as well as the needed batteries and converters. Since the introduced RIS can be a potential candidate for the 5G-and-beyond-communications, two ranges of frequencies will be discussed in this work: sub-6GHz and 5G Millimeter wave (mmWave).

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“…There are places though where the power grid cannot reach to for reasons of heavy planning/maintenance costs and aesthetics. In such scenarios it is much more preferable to use RISs that may not even need to be connected to the power grid if they are supplied by alternative sources of energy such as solar radiation through solar panels attached to the RISs in outdoor scenarios [152]. This would of course be feasible due to the much lower consumption of RISs compared with active nodes.…”