RIS-Aware Indoor Network Planning: The Rennes Railway Station Case

TL;DR

This paper investigates the optimal placement of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) in indoor environments, specifically at Rennes railway station, to enhance wireless communication performance and address dead zones.

Contribution

It presents a theoretical framework for RIS placement and validates it through a large-scale simulation and a realistic indoor case study.

Findings

Improved communication coverage with RIS deployment.

Effective mitigation of dead zones in indoor environments.

Validated approach in a complex real-world scenario.

Abstract

Future generations of wireless networks will offer newfangled performance via unprecedented solutions: the metasurface innovation will drive such a revolution by posing control onto the surrounding propagation environment, always portrayed as a tamper-proof black-box. The RIS technology, envisioned as the discrete version of a metasurface, can be dynamically configured to alter the propagation properties of the impinging signals by, e.g., steering the corresponding beams towards defined directions. This will unlock new application opportunities and deliver advanced end-user services. However, this fascinating solution comes at not negligible costs: RIS require ad-hoc design, deployment and management operations to be fully exploited. In this paper, we tackle the RIS placement problem from a theoretical viewpoint, showcasing a large-scale solution on synthetic topologies to improve communication performance while solving the "dead-zone" problem. Additionally, our mathematical framework is empirically validated within a realistic indoor scenario, the Rennes railway station, showing how a complex indoor propagation environment can be fully disciplined by an advanced RIS installation.