Design of a High-Resolution Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for Slowly Time-Varying Scenarios

Abstract

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are emerging as a key enabling technology to engineer the wireless propagation environment in 5G/6G systems. This paper presents the design, characterization, and control of a high-resolution RIS targeting slowly time-varying scenarios, in which fine-grained and stable phase control is more valuable than fast reconfiguration. Starting from the OpenRIS unit-cell layout, the cell is re-optimized for single-polarization operation and continuous phase tuning through a single varactor diode, exploiting the full tuning range enabled by a high-resolution DAC infrastructure rather than multi-bit quantization. The unit cell is analyzed via full-wave 3D FEM simulation in COMSOL Multiphysics and optimized to maximize the reflection-phase excursion while limiting amplitude modulation across the 5G N78 band (3.60–3.78 GHz). The design is experimentally validated in a WR-284 waveguide fixture, exhibiting a phase excursion approaching the full 360∘ near resonance, with an amplitude variation below 1 dB over the bias sweep at any given frequency, while the average reflection level decreases by about 2 dB from the center to the upper band edge. A fifth-order polynomial phase–voltage calibration feeds a lookup table driving a layered control system based on a Python HMI, a server, and STM32-driven 16-bit DACs. Experimental measurements confirm that the control chain delivers the commanded bias voltages to the addressed unit cells within measurement uncertainty; the array-level beamforming is assessed at simulation level under idealized (unit-magnitude) assumptions, while the experimental characterization of the assembled surface is left to future work.