Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface & Edge -- An Introduction of an EM manipulation structure on obstacles' edge

Abstract: Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) or metasurface is one of the important enabling technologies in mobile cellular networks that can effectively enhance the signal coverage performance in obstructed regions, and it is generally deployed on surfaces different from obstacles to redirect electromagnetic (EM) waves by reflection, or covered on objects' surfaces to manipulate EM waves by refraction. In this paper, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface & Edge (RISE) is proposed to extend RIS' abilities of reflection and refraction over surfaces to diffraction around obstacles' edge for better adaptation to specific coverage scenarios. Based on that, this paper analyzes the performance of several different deployment locations and EM manipulation structure designs for different coverage scenarios. Then a novel EM manipulation structure deployed at the obstacles' edge is proposed to achieve static EM environment modification. Simulations validate the preference of the schemes for different scenarios and the new structure achieves better coverage performance than other typical structures in the static scheme.