NSF U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership Project

U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership: Smart Radio Environments with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces – Communications Through Blockage in Millimeter-wave Systems (REFLECT-MMWAVE) (09/01/2022 to 08/31/2025)

The emergence of new generation of services and applications in future networks set out many challenging requirements such as high reliability of wireless links, high data rates and support for a large number of users. These challenges become more critical as we move to millimeter wave (mmWave) bands in the quest for very high data rates. While mmWave communication is a major technology for future generations of wireless systems, it suffers from severe signal blockage, attenuation, and mmWave channels easily become time-varying with small movements. These significantly limit the link reliability and communication performance of such systems. To tackle these challenges, this project develops an innovative Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS)-aided system for mm-Wave communication, termed as Smart Radio Environments with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces – Communications through Blockage in Millimeter wave Systems (REFLECT-MMWAVE).

The proposed project develops new technologies and methodologies to build smart radio environments that utilize RIS to manipulate the propagation of incident electromagnetic waves in a programmable manner to actively alter the channel realization. This turns the wireless channel into a controllable system block that can be optimized to improve overall system performance. The novel and innovative aspects of this proposal include: (i) Implementation of a modular RIS radio hardware that can achieve the best phase control performance for unit cells of RIS at mm-Wave frequencies. (ii) Development of advanced signal processing algorithms for practical RIS-aided mmWave transceivers, (iii) Machine learning enhanced beamforming and RIS phase shift design. (iv) Optimal design of distributed multiple access control (MAC) for mmWave RIS-aided communication networks.

Project Page on NSF Website: here.

PIs:

• University of Utah: Drs. Rong-Rong Chen and Mingyue Ji

• Trinity College Dublin: Dr. Arman Farhang

• Queen's University Belfast: Drs. Dmitry Zelenchuk and Muhammad Ali Babar Abbasi

Research Topics and Publications:

• Implementation of modular RIS radio hardware

  • TBD.

• Practical transceiver designs for RIS-aided communication

  • TBD.

• Machine learning enhanced beamforming and RIS phase shift design

  • TBD.

• Optimal distributed cross-layer MAC design in RIS Networks

  • TBD