T10: Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces 2.0: Beyond Diagonal Phase Shift Matrices

Co-organizer: Bruno Clerckx, Imperial College of London, UK
Co-organizer: Mohammed El-Hajjar, University of Southampton, UK
Co-organizer: Hongyu Li, Imperial College of London, UK

 

Abstract: Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has gained much traction due to its potential to manipulate the propagation environment via nearly-passive reconfigurable elements. Attention has been drawn to the use of RIS 1.0 architectures based on diagonal phase shift matrices where each element of the RIS is connected to a load disconnected from the other elements. This enables simple RIS architectures to control the phase of the impinging phase to reflect the wave in the desired direction. This tutorial argues that to truly exploit the benefits of RIS, RIS need to depart from this conventional approach based on diagonal phase shift matrices. We introduce the attendance to RIS 2.0 based on non-diagonal phase matrices and show the benefits of such architectures in terms of controlling both phases and magnitudes of reflected waves, enabling simultaneous transmission and reflection, increasing reflected power, boosting sum-rate, flexibility in various deployments, and enabling omnidirectional transmission and reflection, etc. To design RIS 2.0, the tutorial bridges microwave network theory, wireless communications, and optimization and is pitched to the typical audience attending VTC.

 

Co-organizer’s bios:

Bruno Clerckx

Bio: Bruno Clerckx is a (Full) Professor, the Head of the Wireless Communications and Signal Processing Lab, and the Deputy Head of the Communications and Signal Processing Group, within the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Imperial College London, London, U.K. He received the MSc and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, in 2000 and 2005, respectively, and the Doctor of Science (DSc) degree from Imperial College London, U.K. in 2022. From 2006 to 2011, he was with Samsung Electronics, Suwon, South Korea, where he actively contributed to 4G (3GPP LTE/LTE-A and IEEE 802.16m) and acted as the Rapporteur for the 3GPP Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) Study Item. Since 2011, he has been with Imperial College London as a Full Professor. From 2014 to 2016, he also was an Associate Professor with Korea University, South Korea, and from 2021 to 2022, he is a visiting Professor at Seoul National University, South Korea. He also held various long or short-term visiting research appointments at Stanford University, EURECOM, National University of Singapore, The University of Hong Kong, Princeton University, The University of Edinburgh, The University of New South Wales, and Tsinghua University.

He has authored two books on “MIMO Wireless Communications” and “MIMO Wireless Networks”, 250 peer-reviewed international research papers, and 150 standards contributions, and is the inventor of 80 issued or pending patents among which 15 have been adopted in the specifications of 4G standards and are used by billions of devices worldwide. His research spans the general area of wireless communications and signal processing for wireless networks. He has been a TPC member, a symposium chair, or a TPC chair of many symposia on communication theory, signal processing for communication and wireless communication for several leading international IEEE conferences. He was an Elected Member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society “Signal Processing for Communications and Networking” (SPCOM) Technical Committee. He served as an Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, and the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING. He has also been a (lead) guest editor for special issues of the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, IEEE ACCESS, the IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, the IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN SIGNAL PROCESSING, and the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE. He was an Editor for the 3GPP LTE-Advanced Standard Technical Report on CoMP. He received the prestigious Blondel Medal 2021 from France for exceptional work contributing to the progress of Science and Electrical and Electronic Industries and the EURASIP (European Association for Signal Processing) best paper award 2022. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the IET, and an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer 2021-2022.

 

Mohammed El-Hajjar

Bio: Mohammed El-Hajjar is an Associate Professor and the MSc Director of Programmes in the School of Electronics and Computer Science in the University of Southampton, U.K. He Received his BEng from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon in 2004 and then his MSc and PhD from the University of Southampton in 2005 and 2008, respectively. Following his Ph.D., he joined Imagination Technologies as a Design Engineer, where he was leading a team designing and developing a multi-standard communications platform, generating intellectual property (IP), which is currently used in many consumer electronics products. Since 2012, he has been with the school of Electronics and Computer Science in the University of Southampton, where he is leading a research team working on several aspects of wireless communications and signal processing, funded by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering, the Defence Science and Technology lab (Dstl) and many industry partners. He is the recipient of several academic awards (including several best paper awards) and has published a Wiley–IEEE book and in excess of 100 IEEE journal papers. His collaboration with industry has resulted in many patents, which are being actively considered for beyond 5G standardisation. Finally, he has contributed to many conferences as TPC member, workshop co-chair and has been editor and guest editor in journals and editor special issues.