Experimental Validation of Reflective Near-Field Beamfocusing using a b-bit RIS

TL;DR

This paper experimentally validates near-field beamfocusing using a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), demonstrating its practical viability and confirming theoretical models through indoor measurements at 28 GHz.

Contribution

First experimental validation of near-field beamfocusing with a RIS, including analytical modeling and real-world measurements at 28 GHz.

Findings

Beamfocusing can be dynamically achieved with RIS.

The simplified analytical model accurately predicts beamfocusing.

Near-field beamfocusing is robust despite hardware imperfections.

Abstract

This paper presents the first experimental validation of reflective near-field beamfocusing using a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). While beamfocusing has been theoretically established as a key feature of large-aperture RISs, its practical realization has remained unexplored. We derive new analytical expressions for the array gain achieved with a $b$-bit RIS in near-field line-of-sight scenarios, characterizing both the finite depth and angular width of the focal region. The theoretical results are validated through a series of measurements in an indoor office environment at 28 GHz using a one-bit 1024-element RIS. The experiments confirm that beamfocusing can be dynamically achieved and accurately predicted by the proposed simplified analytical model, despite the presence of hardware imperfections and multipath propagation. These findings demonstrate that near-field beamfocusing is a robust and practically viable feature of RIS-assisted wireless communications.