Over the air testing and performance evaluation of RIS panels at mmWave band

The Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRS, or RIS), have gained a lot of attraction among the research community as one of the possible evolutionary pillars of 5G technology, mainly when applied to frequencies above 6 GHz. Nevertheless, the practical implementation of RIS panels limits their theoretical performance, and so does the range of applicability in radio access networks. This thesis is dedicated to verifying the performance of RIS panels at the mmWave band (25-31 GHz). The expected results start with the definition of the testing procedures that better determine the performance indicators (KPIs) of these panels, the measurement of prototypes of RIS panels in the laboratory and in outdoor scenarios, and the comparison with the published theoretical and simulated results in the current literature. Since there is no standardised testing procedure for the RIS validation, and a scarce number of RF performance measurements have been published so far for the RIS SoA panels, this work may reach relevant conclusions about the applicability of RIS in practical RANs.