Computer Vision-Aided Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Based Beam Tracking: Prototyping and Experimental Results

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel computer vision-based approach to aid reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) for dynamic beam tracking and implement the corresponding prototype verification system. A camera is attached at the RIS to obtain the visual information about the surroundings, with which RIS identifies the incident beam direction and the desired reflected beam direction, and then adjusts the reflection coefficients according to the pre-designed codebooks. We build a 20-by-20 RIS running at 5.4 GHz and develop a high-speed control board to ensure the real-time refresh of the reflection coefficients. Meanwhile we implement an independent peer-to-peer communications system to simulate the physical link between the base station and the user equipment. The vision-aided RIS prototype system is tested in two mobile scenarios: RIS works in near-field conditions as a passive array antenna of the base station; RIS works in far-field conditions to assist the communication between the base station and the user equipment. The experimental results show that RIS can quickly adjust the reflection coefficients for dynamic beam tracking with the help of visual information.