A Fully Screen-Printed Vanadium-Dioxide Switches Based Wideband Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for 5G Bands

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-cost, fully screen-printed reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with vanadium dioxide switches for 5G, enabling wideband reconfigurability and simplified manufacturing without multilayer complexity.

Contribution

It presents the first fully screen-printed VO2-based RIS for 5G, integrating switches directly on metal patterns and achieving wideband phase control with simplified fabrication.

Findings

Achieved 220 to 170-degree phase shift from 23.5 to 29.5 GHz.

Maximum ON reflection magnitude of 74%, OFF magnitude of 94%.

Validated performance through simulations and measurements.

Abstract

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) is attracting more and more research interest because of its ability to reprogram the radio environment. Designing and implementing the RIS, however, is challenging because of limitations of printed circuit board (PCB) technology related to manufacturing of large sizes as well as the cost of switches. Thus, a low-cost manufacturing process suitable for large size and volume of devices, such as screen-printing is necessary. In this paper, for the first time, a fully screen-printed reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with vanadium dioxide (VO2) switches for 5G and beyond communications is proposed. A VO2 ink has been prepared and batches of switches have been printed and integrated with the resonator elements. These switches are a fraction of the cost of commercial switches. Furthermore, the printing of these switches directly on metal patterns negates the need of any minute soldering of the switches. To avoid the complications of multilayer printing and realizing the RIS without vias, the resonators and the biasing lines are realized on a single layer. However, this introduces the challenge of interference between the biasing lines and the resonators, which is tackled in this work by designing the bias lines as part of the resonator. By adjusting the unit cell periodicity and the dimension of the H-shaped resonator, we achieve a 220 to 170{\deg} phase shift from 23.5 GHz to 29.5 GHz covering both n257 and n258 bands. Inside the wide bandwidth, the maximum ON reflection magnitude is 74%, and the maximum OFF magnitude is 94%. The RIS array comprises 20x20 unit cells (4.54x4.54{\lambda}^2 at 29.5 GHz). Each column of unit cells is serially connected to a current biasing circuit. To validate the array's performance, we conduct full-wave simulations as well as near-field and far-field measurements.