Simulating Engineered Electromagnetic Surfaces in Ray-Tracing Software

Engineered electromagnetic surfaces (EES) are surfaces which can be fabricated on a thin layer of plastic using a low-cost printed electronics technology. These surfaces can be installed at strategic locations in indoor and outdoor propagation environments to improve the coverage or mitigate interference at millimeter-wave bands for 5G applications. Two methods used to embed uniform and non-uniform EESs into ray-tracing software tools are introduced along with a propagation prediction example for an outdoor scenario that incorporates EESs.