Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Assisted Antenna Design with Enhanced Beam Steering and Performance Benchmarking
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper presents a high-gain wide-band planar antenna with a Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) for modern wireless communication applications. The antenna consists of two main parts, a basic antenna part with cross-line slots and two light-dependent resistor switches, and a second part based on the RIS layer for beam steering. The RIS is constructed from 5 × 5-unit cells with two sides, forming a square geometry. The antenna substrate is a dielectric layer of FR4 epoxy glass with a thickness of 1.6 mm. The RIS inclusions are designed and tested numerically to achieve the desired electromagnetic properties at the frequency band of interest. The fabricated prototype shows a wide band covering frequencies from 0.9 GHz to 3.5 GHz with S11 below −10 dB, achieving an antenna gain varying from 10.5 dBi up to 16.8 dBi. Experimental measurements show effective aperture usage in all configurations, and beam steering from +22° to −22° is accomplished without degrading side-lobe levels. The proposed antenna performance is tested against real-world measurements to evaluate channel performance in terms of bit error rate (BER) and channel capacity (CC). The proposed LDR-controlled design achieves compact beam steering with minimal insertion loss, unlike conventional RIS-assisted antennas that rely on PIN or varactor switches.
Source: Electronics
Authors: Mustafa Adnan Abed, Osman Nuri Uçan
Institution: Altınbaş University
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
OpenAlex ID: W4415188506