A Practical Validation of RIS Detection and Identification

TL;DR

This paper presents a practical validation of a new method for detecting and identifying reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) in wireless networks, using a simplified modulation technique validated through real-world experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a simpler RIS modulation method and experimentally validates the RIS detection and identification (RIS-ID) concept in real-world scenarios.

Findings

RIS-ID is effective across various scenarios

The proposed modulation improves detection accuracy

Experimental results confirm the feasibility of RIS identification

Abstract

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted communication is a key enabling technology for next-generation wireless communication networks, allowing for the reshaping of wireless channels without requiring traditional radio frequency (RF) active components. While their passive nature makes RISs highly attractive, it also presents a challenge: RISs cannot actively identify themselves to user equipments (UEs). Recently, a new method has been proposed to detect and identify RISs by letting them modulate their identities in the signals reflected from their surfaces. In this letter, we first propose a new and simpler modulation method for RISs and then validate the concept of RIS detection and identification (RIS-ID) using a real-world experimental setup. The obtained results validate the RIS-ID concept and show the effectiveness of our proposed modulation method over different operating scenarios and systems settings.