Propagation Study of Vision-Based RIS Beam Tracking for mmWave Communications

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces have emerged as a technology with the potential to enhance wireless communication performance for 5G and beyond. This paper focuses on analyzing the multipath components that arise from the insertion of such a device into the wireless channel. A computer vision-based beam tracking algorithm was used for continuously steering the reconfigurable intelligent surface towards the target. The results show that a reconfigurable intelligent surface can provide additional multipath components whose corresponding power contribution could be crucial to overcome blockage situations. A received power boost of up to 3 dB can be perceived in both line-of-sight and non line-of-sight regions.