Feasibility of RFID-Based Control of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) for Wireless Communication Systems

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) are a class of artificial structures that can manipulate wireless signals to modify the propagation environment, composed of sub-wavelength scatterers embedded with tunable electronic circuits. Typically, to control RIS elements, a bias voltage is applied to each element through dedicated hardware platforms which, unfortunately, have some limitations in terms of high cost, high power consumption, and limited wireless connectivity. Thus, an alternative solution can be Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology since it is a low-cost, and low-power solution that can provide wireless connectivity. In this paper, we study the feasibility of an RFID-based reconfiguration of a RIS. As a preliminary evidence, we show how an RFID antenna is able to control the response of a similar device, exploiting the switching capabilities of a PIN diode. For the sake of simplicity, the early proposed model is made up of two RFID antennas: the first one is equipped with an RFID Integrated Circuit (IC) capable of powering external devices, while the second one with a standard commercially available IC and a PIN diode. The diode is required to modify the impedance matching of the second IC, thus enabling ID modulation. The concept can be easily extended to more than two elements for achieving reconfigurable ID responses, radiation patterns and eventually sensing activity.