3D Localization With a Single Partially-Connected Receiving RIS: Positioning Error Analysis and Algorithmic Design

In this article, we introduce the concept of partially-connected receiving reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (R-RISs), which refers to metasurfaces designed to efficiently sense electromagnetic waveforms impinging on them, and perform localization of the users emitting them. The presented R-RIS hardware architecture comprises subarrays of meta-atoms, with each of them incorporating a waveguide assigned to direct the waveforms reaching its meta-atoms to a reception radio-frequency (RF) chain, enabling signal/channel parameter estimation. We particularly focus on the scenarios where the user is located in the far-field of all the R-RIS subarrays, and present a three-dimensional (3D) localization method which is based on narrowband signaling and angle of arrival (AoA) estimates of the impinging signals at each single-receive-RF R-RIS subarray. For the AoA estimation, which relies on spatially sampled versions of the received signals via each subarray's phase configuration of meta-atoms, we devise an off-grid atomic norm minimization approach, which is followed by subspace-based root multiple signal classification (MUSIC). The AoA estimates are finally combined via a least-squared line intersection method to obtain the position coordinates of a user emitting synchronized localization pilots. Our derived theoretical Cramér Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) on the estimation parameters, which are compared with extensive computer simulation results of our localization approach, verify the effectiveness of the proposed R-RIS-empowered 3D localization system, which is showcased to offer cm-level positioning accuracy. Our comprehensive performance evaluations also demonstrate the impact of various system parameters on the localization performance, namely the training overhead and the distance between the R-RIS and the user, as well as the spacing among the R-RIS's subarrays and its partitioning patterns.