Beamforming Design for RIS-Aided THz Wideband Communication Systems

Abstract: Benefiting from tens of GHz of bandwidth, terahertz (THz) communications has become a promising technology for future 6G networks. However, the conventional hybrid beamforming architecture based on frequency-independent phase-shifters is not able to cope with the beam split effect (BSE) in THz massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Despite some work introducing the frequency-dependent phase shifts via the time delay network to mitigate the beam splitting in THz wideband communications, the corresponding issue in reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided communications has not been well investigated. In this paper, the BSE in THz massive MIMO is quantified by analyzing the array gain loss. A new beamforming architecture has been proposed to mitigate this effect under RIS-aided communications scenarios. Simulations are performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system architecture in combating the array gain loss.