A Wideband Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for 5G Millimeter-Wave Applications

TL;DR

This paper presents a practical wideband reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) design for 5G millimeter-wave bands, demonstrating experimental results covering the entire n257 and n258 bands with stable phase and reflection properties.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel wideband RIS unit cell design with experimental validation, covering the full 5G mm-wave bands n257 and n258, which was not previously demonstrated.

Findings

Achieved 22.7-30.5 GHz bandwidth with stable phase difference and reflection magnitude.

Designed and fabricated a 20x20 RIS array with stable gain and beam steering capabilities.

Experimental results confirm the RIS's suitability for 5G mm-wave applications.

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) bands, and the considerable theoretical work reported by the communication community, there is a limited number of published works demonstrating practical implementations and experimental results. To the authors' knowledge, no published literature has reported experimental results for RISs covering the n257 and n258 mm-wave bands. In this work, we propose a novel wideband RIS design that covers the entire mm-wave 5G n257 and n258 bands. In simulations, the unit cell can maintain a phase difference of 180{\deg} +- 20{\deg} and a reflection magnitude greater than -2.8 dB within 22.7 to 30.5 GHz (29.3% bandwidth) using one-bit PIN switches. The proposed unit cell design with four circular cutouts and long vias could realize wideband performance by exciting two adjacent high-order resonances (2.5f and 3.5f). The periodic unit cells can maintain an angular stability of 30{\deg}. Based on the proposed unit cell, a 20 by 20 RIS array is designed and fabricated with a size of 7.1{\lambda} by 7.1{\lambda}. The measurement results demonstrate that the proposed RIS could maintain a 3 dB peak gain variation bandwidth among various array configurations within 22.5 to 29.5 GHz (26.9%) and with a beam scanning capability of 50{\deg}, making this design a good candidate for 5G mm-wave applications.