Passive Beam Shaping via Binary-Coded Apertures

TL;DR

This paper introduces a passive, binary-coded aperture reflector for indoor mmWave coverage enhancement, demonstrating significant non-specular power gains through low-cost fabrication and simple binary control methods.

Contribution

The paper develops and validates a novel binary-coded passive aperture design for beam shaping, offering a practical, low-cost alternative to reconfigurable surfaces for static indoor mmWave links.

Findings

Achieved +14-20 dB non-specular power enhancement in measurements.

Developed fabrication-friendly binary (1-bit) spatial coding methods.

Validated beam control with rapid, low-cost manufacturing.

Abstract

This paper presents a coded-aperture reflector for indoor mmWave coverage enhancement in obstructed or blocked LoS settings. We model the reflecting aperture using an equivalent array-factor formulation, where each passive reflecting cell contributes a reradiated field with phase set by the incident and departure directions. Building on this model, we develop two fabrication-friendly passive synthesis methods: (i) binary (1-bit) spatial coding that enables deterministic non-specular beam formation and multibeam patterns by selecting cell participation on a dense {\lambda}/2 lattice via an ON/OFF metallization mask, and (ii) diffraction-order (periodic) steering that exploits aperture periodicity to place selected diffraction orders at prescribed angles. We analytically characterize the proposed cosine-threshold quantization rule, including its asymptotic activation ratio and a distribution-free lower bound on non-specular gain relative to ideal continuous-phase control. To validate the proposed designs, we fabricate and metallize low-cost prototypes in-house using a copper-backed 3D-printed "inkwell" substrate with stencil-guided conductive ink deposition. 60 GHz over-the-air measurements show non-specular power enhancements on the order of +14-20 dB relative to passive, non-engineered (all-ON) reflector baselines. Results also demonstrate that fully passive, binary-coded apertures can deliver beam control with rapid in-lab manufacturability and offer a practical alternative to power-consuming reconfigurable surfaces for static indoor mmWave links.