Controlling Microwave and Millimeter Wave Massive MIMO Uplink Channel Capacity Using Reconfigurable FSS Structures

In this paper, we investigate the effect of reconfigurable frequency-selective surfaces (FSS) on the massive MIMO uplink channel properties, in particular the sum-rate channel capacity, using an FDTD based full-wave simulation paradigm. Two types of wire-grid FSS, in the form of wall and screen are considered in the vicinity of a 64-element massive MIMO base- station (BS) array, serving a cluster of four fixed user equipments (UEs). Using electromagnetic insight from Poynting flow analysis on the BS array aperture, we demonstrate systematic variation of uplink channel capacity by switching states of the nearby reconfigurable FSS ("intellingent surface").