Modeling RIS From Electromagnetic Principles to Communication Systems—Part I: Synthesis and Characterization of a Scalable Anomalous Reflector

This work aims to build connections between the electromagnetic (EM) and communication aspects of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) by proposing a methodology to combine outputs from EM RIS design into an RIS-tailored system-level simulator and a ray tracer. In this first part of the contribution, a periodic anomalous reflector is designed using an algebraic array antenna scattering synthesis technique that enables electromagnetically accurate modeling of scattering surfaces with both static and reconfigurable scattering characteristics. The multimode periodic structure, capable of scattering into several anomalous angles through manipulation of reactive loads, is then cropped into finite-sized arrays, and the quantization effects of the load reactances on the array scattering are analyzed. An experimental anomalous reflector is demonstrated with a comparison between simulated and measured scattering performance. In the second part, the simulated receiving and transmitting scattering patterns of the anomalous reflector are utilized to build an electromagnetically consistent path loss model of an RIS into a system-level simulator. Large-scale fading is analyzed in simple scenarios of RIS-assisted wireless networks to verify the communication model, and an indoor scenario measurement using the manufactured anomalous reflector sample to support the simulation analysis. After verifying the connections between EM and communication aspects through simulations and measurements, the proposed communication model can be used for a broad range of RIS designs to perform large-scale system-level and ray-tracing simulations in realistic scenarios.