Intelligent Beam Steering for Wireless Communication Using Programmable Metasurfaces

Abstract

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) are well established as a promising solution to the blockage problem in millimeter-wave (mm-wave) and terahertz (THz) communications, envisioned to serve demanding networking applications, such as 6G and vehicular. HyperSurfaces (HSF) is a revolutionary enabling technology for RIS, complementing Software Defined Metasurfaces (SDM) with an embedded network of controllers to enhance intelligence and autonomous operation in wireless networks. In this work, we consider feedback-based autonomous reconfiguration of the HSF controller states to establish a reliable communication channel between a transmitter and a receiver via programmable reflection on the HSF when Line-of-sight (LoS) between them is absent. The problem is to regulate the angle of reflection on the metasurface such that the power at the receiver is maximized. Extremum Seeking Control (ESC) is employed with the control signals generated mapped into appropriate metasurface coding signals which are communicated to the controllers via the embedded controller network (CN). This information dissemination process incurs delays which can compromise the stability of the feedback system and are thus accounted for in the performance evaluation. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method to maximize the power at the receiver within a reasonable time even when the latter is mobile. The spatiotemporal nature of the traffic for different sampling periods is also characterized.