Open Source Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for the Frequency Range of 5 GHz WiFi

TL;DR

This paper presents a cost-effective, open-source reconfigurable intelligent surface designed for 5 GHz WiFi, including detailed design, fabrication data, and firmware to facilitate practical deployment and research.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, low-cost, open-source RIS prototype optimized for 5 GHz WiFi with detailed design and accessible resources for reproduction.

Findings

Optimized RIS unit cell for 5 GHz WiFi

Measured reflection coefficient of prototype

Open-source fabrication data and firmware

Abstract

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) have been identified as a potential ingredient to enhance the performance of contemporary wireless communication and sensing systems. Yet, most of the existing devices are either costly or not available for reproduction. To close this gap, a Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for the frequency range of 5 GHz WiFi is presented in this work. We describe the designed unit cell, which is optimized for the full frequency range of 5.15 to 5.875 GHz. Standard FR4 substrate is used for cost optimization. The measured reflection coefficient of a rectangular RIS prototype with 256 elements is used for RF performance evaluation. Fabrication data and firmware source code are made open source, which makes RIS more available in real measurement setups.