Distributed Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces Assisted Indoor Positioning

Abstract

Recently, communications with the aid of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), which operates with the aim of enhancing the system communication performance, have aroused extensive researches. Furthermore, the use of RIS for positioning has been considered. Therefore, we focus on a practical structure of indoor positioning assisted by distributed RISs through utilizing their ability to manipulate multipath signals, through the developed quasi-static and dynamic modes. Specifically, in the quasi-static mode, for reducing the implementation cost, the reflection coefficients for each RIS are preset and remain constant. In the dynamic mode, the reflection coefficients can be timely updated with a two-step positioning approach toward more accurate positioning performance. Furthermore, the Cramér-Rao lower bound of the developed positioning scheme is quantified through theoretical analysis. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that RIS has the potential to realize accurate positioning even with a single access point, due to its ability to mark the channel and replace traditional active positioning anchors. Meanwhile, we also show that the developed two-step positioning scheme can achieve considerable performance gain in accurate positioning.