Recent Advances in Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) and Backscatter Communication

Prof. Tentzeris will touch on the state-of-the-art area of fully-integrated printable Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) taking advantage of additive manufacturing and ambient energy harvesting up to 5G+/mm-wave frequency range. After introducing the fundamental RIS principles along with most major challenges in terms of range, power, area, frequency range, IC integrability and scalability, Prof. Tentzeris will refer to multiple RIS examples being enabled by newly reported fully printed planar lenses (Rotman, Van Atta,…) and dielectric reflectarrays enabling ultra-long interrogation ranges when combined with “zero-power” backscattering interrogation techniques. This talk will address major challenges of flexible hybrid electronic implementations as well as ultra-low-power printable structures for self-diagnostic and anti-counterfeiting packages. Prof. Tentzeris will discuss issues concerning the power sources of “near-perpetual” RF modules, including flexible miniaturized batteries as well as power-scavenging approaches involving thermal, EM, vibration and solar energy forms for RIS implementations with signal modulation capabilities. The final step of the presentation will involve examples from shape-changing 4D-printed (origami) RIS for mm-wave wearable (eg biomonitoring) and Smart City applications. Special attention will be paid to the integration of ultra-broadband (Gb/sec) inkjet-printed nanotechnology-based backscattering communication modules as well as massively scalable “tile-by-tile” RFID-enabled reconfigurable intelligent surfaces.