CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 553Advanced Wireless Communication TechnologiesAdvanced Antenna and Metasurface TechnologiesMillimeter-Wave Propagation and Modeling

RIS-Aided Wireless Communications: Prototyping, Adaptive Beamforming, and Indoor/Outdoor Field Trials

Open access
Pei, Xilong, Yin, Haifan, Tan, Li, Cao, Lin, Li, Zhanpeng, Wang, Kai, Zhang, Kun, Bjornson, Emil·2021·IEEE Transactions on Communications
DOI 10.1109/tcomm.2021.3116151
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

The prospects of using a Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) to aid wireless communication systems have recently received much attention from academia and industry. Most papers make theoretical studies based on elementary models, while the prototyping of RIS-aided wireless communication and real-world field trials are scarce. In this paper, we describe a new RIS prototype consisting of 1100 controllable elements working at 5.8 GHz band. We propose an efficient algorithm for configuring the RIS over the air by exploiting the geometrical array properties and a practical receiver-RIS feedback link. In our indoor test, where the transmitter and receiver are separated by a 30 cm thick concrete wall, our RIS prototype provides a 26 dB power gain compared to the baseline case where the RIS is replaced by a copper plate. A 27 dB power gain was observed in the short-distance outdoor measurement. We also carried out long-distance measurements and successfully transmitted a 32 Mbps data stream over 500 m. A 1080p video was live-streamed and it only played smoothly when the RIS was utilized. The power consumption of the RIS is around 1 W. Our paper is vivid proof that the RIS is a very promising technology for future wireless communications.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1109/tcomm.2021.3116151

Cites

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • A RIS prototype with 1,100 individually controllable elements operating at 5.8 GHz provides a power gain of 26 dB compared to using a copper surface alone in an indoor test where transmitter and receiver are separated by a 30 cm concrete wall.

    “In [35], a RIS prototype with 1 , 100 individually controllable elements operating at 5 . 8 GHz was presented. In an indoor test scenario where the transmitter and receiver are separated by a 30 cm concrete wall, the RIS provides a power gain of 26 dB compared to using a copper surface alone.”

    From Emerging Technologies in Intelligent Metasurfaces: Shaping the Future of Wireless Communications (2026) · cites this paper as [35]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

No references could be resolved yet.

Research works printed but not linked: 37

  1. [1][1] T. L. Marzetta, 'Noncooperative cellular wireless with unlimited numbers of base station antennas,' IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. , vol. 9, no. 11, pp. 3590-3600, Nov. 2010. -
  2. [2][2] E. G. Larsson, O. Edfors, F. Tufvesson, and T. L. Marzetta, 'Massive MIMO for next generation wireless systems,' IEEE Commun. Mag. , vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 186-195, Feb. 2014. -
  3. [3][3] E. Bj¨ ornson, J. Hoydis, and L. Sanguinetti, 'Massive MIMO networks: Spectral, energy, and hardware efficiency,' Found Trends® Signal Process. , vol. 11, no. 3-4, pp. 154-655, 2017. -
  4. [4][4] H. Asplund, D. Astely, P. von Butovitsch, T. Chapman, M. Frenne, F. Ghasemzadeh, M. Hagstr¨ om, B. Hogan, G. J¨ ongren, J. Karlsson, F. Kronestedt, and E. Larsson, Advanced Antenna Systems for 5G Network Deployments . Academic Press, 2020. -
  5. [5][5] M. Dohler and Y. Li, Cooperative Communications: Hardware, Channel and PHY . John Wiley & Sons, 2010. -
  6. [6][6] C. Liaskos, S. Nie, A. Tsioliaridou, A. Pitsillides, S. Ioannidis, and I. Akyildiz, 'A new wireless communication paradigm through softwarecontrolled metasurfaces,' IEEE Commun. Mag. , vol. 56, no. 9, pp. 162169, Sep. 2018. -
  7. [7][7] M. D. Renzo et al. , 'Smart radio environments empowered by reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: How it works, state of research, and road ahead,' IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. , vol. 38, no. 11, pp. 2450-2525, Nov. 2020. -
  8. [8][8] E. Bj¨ ornson, ¨ O. ¨ Ozdogan, and E. G. Larsson, 'Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: Three myths and two critical questions,' IEEE Commun. Mag. , vol. 58, no. 12, pp. 90-96, Dec. 2020. -
  9. [9][9] Q. Wu, S. Zhang, B. Zheng, C. You, and R. Zhang, 'Intelligent reflecting surface aided wireless communications: A tutorial,' IEEE Trans. Commun. , vol. 69, no. 5, pp. 3313-3351, 2021. -
  10. [10][10] C. Huang, A. Zappone, G. C. Alexandropoulos, M. Debbah, and C. Yuen, 'Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces for energy efficiency in wireless communication,' IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. , vol. 18, no. 8, pp. 4157-4170, Aug. 2019. -
  11. [11][11] Q. Wu and R. Zhang, 'Intelligent reflecting surface enhanced wireless network via joint active and passive beamforming,' IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. , vol. 18, no. 11, pp. 5394-5409, Nov. 2019. -
  12. [12][12] E. Bj¨ ornson, H. Wymeersch, B. Matthiesen, P. Popovski, L. Sanguinetti, and E. de Carvalho, 'Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: A signal processing perspective with wireless applications,' arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.00742 , 2021. - · arXiv
  13. [13][13] T. J. Cui, D. Smith, and R. P. Liu, Metamaterials: Theory, Design, and Applications . Springer, Jan. 2010. -
  14. [14][14] T. J. Cui, S. Liu, and L. Zhang, 'Information metamaterials and metasurfaces,' J. Mater. Chem. C , vol. 5, no. 15, pp. 3644-3668, 2017. -
  15. [15][15] R. A. Shelby, D. R. Smith, and S. Schultz, 'Experimental verification of a negative index of refraction,' Science , vol. 292, no. 5514, pp. 77-79, 2001. -
  16. [16][16] Y. Liang, R. Long, Q. Zhang, J. Chen, H. V. Cheng, and H. Guo, 'Large intelligent surface/antennas (LISA): Making reflective radios smart,' J. Commun. Inf. Netw. , vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 40-50, Jun. 2019. -
  17. [18][18] Q. Wu and R. Zhang, 'Beamforming optimization for wireless network aided by intelligent reflecting surface with discrete phase shifts,' IEEE Trans. Commun. , vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 1838-1851, Mar. 2020. -
  18. [21][21] W. Tang, M. Z. Chen, J. Y. Dai, Y. Zeng, X. Zhao, S. Jin, Q. Cheng, and T. J. Cui, 'Wireless communications with programmable metasurface: New paradigms, opportunities, and challenges on transceiver design,' IEEE Wireless Commun. , vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 180-187, Apr. 2020. -
  19. [22][22] L. Dai, B. Wang, M. Wang, X. Yang, J. Tan, S. Bi, S. Xu, F. Yang, Z. Chen, M. D. Renzo, C.-B. Chae, and L. Hanzo, 'Reconfigurable intelligent surface-based wireless communications: Antenna design, prototyping, and experimental results,' IEEE Access , vol. 8, pp. 45 91345 923, 2020. -
  20. [23][23] V. Arun and H. Balakrishnan, 'RFocus: Beamforming using thousands of passive antennas,' in 17th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 20) . USENIX Association, Feb. 2020, pp. 1047-1061. -
  21. [24][24] O. Ozdemir, F. Erden, I. Guvenc, T. Yekan, and T. Zarian, '28 GHz mmWave channel measurements: A comparison of horn and phased array antennas and coverage enhancement using passive and active repeaters,' arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.00121 , 2020. - · arXiv
  22. [25][25] J. Y. Dai, W. K. Tang, J. Zhao, X. Li, Q. Cheng, J. C. Ke, M. Z. Chen, S. Jin, and T. J. Cui, 'Wireless communications through a simplified architecture based on time-domain digital coding metasurface,' Adv. Mater. Technol. , vol. 4, no. 7, p. 1900044, 2019. -
  23. [27][27] X. Tan, Z. Sun, J. M. Jornet, and D. Pados, 'Increasing indoor spectrum sharing capacity using smart reflect-array,' in 2016 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) , May. 2016, pp. 1-6. -
  24. [28][28] H. Yang, F. Yang, S. Xu, M. Li, X. Cao, J. Gao, and Y. Zheng, 'A study of phase quantization effects for reconfigurable reflectarray antennas,' IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett. , vol. 16, pp. 302-305, Feb. 2017. -
  25. [29][29] H. Liu, X. Yuan, and Y.-J. A. Zhang, 'Matrix-calibration-based cascaded channel estimation for reconfigurable intelligent surface assisted multiuser MIMO,' IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. , vol. 38, no. 11, pp. 2621-2636, Nov. 2020. -
  26. [30][30] L. Wei, C. Huang, G. C. Alexandropoulos, and C. Yuen, 'Parallel factor decomposition channel estimation in RIS-assisted multi-user MISO communication,' in 2020 IEEE 11th Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop (SAM) , Jun. 2020, pp. 1-5. -
  27. [31][31] A. Taha, M. Alrabeiah, and A. Alkhateeb, 'Enabling large intelligent surfaces with compressive sensing and deep learning,' CoRR , vol. abs/1904.10136, 2019. - · arXiv
  28. [32][32] B. Zheng and R. Zhang, 'Intelligent reflecting surface-enhanced OFDM: Channel estimation and reflection optimization,' IEEE Wireless Commun. Lett. , vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 518-522, Apr. 2020. -
  29. [33][33] Z. Wang, L. Liu, and S. Cui, 'Channel estimation for intelligent reflecting surface assisted multiuser communications: Framework, algorithms, and analysis,' IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. , vol. 19, no. 10, pp. 66076620, Oct. 2020. -
  30. [34][34] E. Bj¨ ornson and L. Sanguinetti, 'Power scaling laws and near-field behaviors of massive MIMO and intelligent reflecting surfaces,' IEEE Open J. Commun. Soc. , vol. 1, pp. 1306-1324, 2020. -
  31. [36][36] H. Yin, H. Wang, Y. Liu, and D. Gesbert, 'Addressing the curse of mobility in massive MIMO with Prony-based angular-delay domain channel predictions,' IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. , vol. 38, no. 12, pp. 2903-2917, Dec. 2020. -
  32. [37][37] H. Yin, D. Gesbert, M. Filippou, and Y. Liu, 'A coordinated approach to channel estimation in large-scale multiple-antenna systems,' IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. , vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 264-273, Feb. 2013. -
  33. [38][38] A. Adhikary, J. Nam, J.-Y. Ahn, and G. Caire, 'Joint spatial division and multiplexing - the large-scale array regime,' IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory , vol. 59, no. 10, pp. 6441-6463, Oct. 2013. -
  34. [39][39] W. Tang, M. Z. Chen, X. Chen, J. Y. Dai, Y. Han, M. Di Renzo, Y. Zeng, S. Jin, Q. Cheng, and T. J. Cui, 'Wireless communications with reconfigurable intelligent surface: Path loss modeling and experimental measurement,' IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. , vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 421439, Jan. 2021. -
  35. [40][40] X. Zhang, Q. Li, F. Liu, M. Qiu, S. Sun, Q. He, and L. Zhou, 'Controlling angular dispersions in optical metasurfaces,' Light: Sci. Appl. , vol. 9, no. 76, p. 76, May. 2020. -
  36. [41][41] K. Ntontin, A.-A. A. Boulogeorgos, D. G. Selimis, F. I. Lazarakis, A. Alexiou, and S. Chatzinotas, 'Reconfigurable intelligent surface optimal placement in millimeter-wave networks,' IEEE Open J. Commun. Soc. , vol. 2, pp. 704-718, Mar. 2021. -
  37. [42][42] Z. Wang, L. Tan, H. Yin, W. Kai, X. Pei, and D. Gesbert, 'A received power model for reconfigurable intelligent surface and measurementbased validations,' in IEEE 22nd Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, SPAWC 2021 , Lucca, Italy, Sept. 2021, pp. 1-5.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Pei, X., Yin, H., Tan, L., Cao, L., Li, Z., Wang, K., Zhang, K., & Bjornson, E.
Affiliations
Huazhong University of Science and Technology (CN)
ORCID
Venue
IEEE Transactions on Communications
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Published
2021-12
Volume
69
Issue
12
Pages
8627-8640
ISSN
  • 0090-6778 (ISSN-L)
  • 1558-0857
DOI
10.1109/tcomm.2021.3116151
OpenAlex
W3203630573
Cited by
553
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 83 · 2025: 129 · 2024: 138 · 2023: 119 · 2022: 70 · 2021: 14
FWCI
25.07
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • IEEE Transactions on Communications (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
Funders
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (62071191, 62071192)
  • Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (FFL18-0277)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Advanced Wireless Communication Technologies
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Aerospace Engineering › Advanced Antenna and Metasurface Technologies
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Millimeter-Wave Propagation and Modeling
Keywords
reconfigurable intelligent surface, adaptive beamforming, 5.8 GHz, live streaming, power consumption

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review