On the Enabling of Multi-Receiver Communications With Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

Abstract

The reconfigurable intelligent surface is a promising technology for the manipulation and control of wireless electromagnetic signals. In particular, it has the potential to provide significant performance improvements for wireless networks. However, to do so, a proper reconfiguration of the reflection coefficients of unit cells is required, which often leads to complex and expensive devices. To amortize the cost, one may share the system resources among multiple transmitters and receivers. In this paper, we propose an efficient reconfiguration technique providing control over multiple beams independently. Compared to time-consuming optimization techniques, the proposed strategy utilizes an analytical method to configure the surface for multibeam radiation. This method is easy to implement, effective and efficient since it only requires phase reconfiguration. We analyze the performance for indoor and outdoor scenarios, given the broadcast mode of operation. The aforesaid scenarios encompass some of the most challenging scenarios that wireless networks encounter. We show that our proposed technique provisions sufficient improvements in the observed channel capacity when the receivers are close to the surface in the indoor office environment scenario. Further, we report a considerable increase in the system throughput given the outdoor environment.

Enabling Cooperative Autonomous Driving through mmWave and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

“…where G T , G RIS and G R denote the transmitter gain, the RIS gain and the receiver gain, respectively. The gain of the surface can then be expressed as follows [24]:…”

Intelligent Beam Steering for Wireless Communication Using Programmable Metasurfaces

“…) This method has proven to be accurate in evaluating the far field of a metasurface for beam steering by comparing the results with full-wave simulations [67], [68], [70] and has been used extensively in a number of recent studies [46], [47], [67], [68], [70], [71], [72]. The approximations made have a small impact on the radiation pattern.…”

“…Beam training in the presence of RIS has been recently addressed in [44], [45], [46], and [47] for single and multiuser cases. The approaches therein, however, are generic without reference to the underlying RIS technology.…”

Multi‐user beamforming with a reconfigurable intelligent surface using stereo camera images

“…Instead of utilizing CSI, phase control of an RIS for multiple users can be executed based on the polar and azimuth angles between the RIS and the users [6,7]. Such methods involve calculating the total phase of the RIS by averaging the phases for multiple users, enabling simple and fast calculation of the phase of the RIS and achieving signal strength increments at multiple users to some extent.…”

“…However, these approaches [6,7] have been unable to achieve uniform received signal strength (RSS) for each user because previous studies have not considered the difference in path loss and angle attenuation for each user from the RIS. Overlooking these factors leads to a scenario where, while some users might experience high-quality communication, others are likely to be subjected to inferior communication quality.…”