Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface: MIMO or radiating sheet?

TL;DR

This paper explores the theoretical connection between modeling Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces as discrete antenna-like elements and as continuous radiating sheets, providing insights into their design and efficiency.

Contribution

It analytically derives the conditions under which the antenna-based and surface-based models of RIS are equivalent, bridging two prevalent design perspectives.

Findings

Derived a factor for model equivalence

Demonstrated with antenna radiation pattern examples

Analyzed design implications for gain and directivity

Abstract

A Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) redirects and possibly modifies the properties of incident waves, with the aim to restore non-line-of-sight communication links. Composed of elementary scatterers, the RIS has been so far treated as a collection of point scatterers with properties similar to antennas in an equivalent massive MIMO communication link. Despite the discrete nature of the RIS, current design approaches often treat the RIS as a continuous radiating surface, which is subsequently discretized. Here, we investigate the connection between the two approaches in an attempt to bridge the two different perspectives. We analytically find the factor that renders the two approaches equivalent and we demonstrate our findings with examples of RIS elements modeled as antennas with commonly used radiation patterns and properties consistent with antenna theory. We analyze the equivalence between the two theoretical approaches with respect to design aspects of the RIS elements, such as gain, directivity and coupling between elements, with the aim to provide insight into the observed discrepancies, the understanding of which is crucial for assessing the RIS efficiency.