Design and Practical Validation of a Novel Modulation Scheme for RIS Detection and Identification

2026-05-16

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of unreliable detection and identification of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) at base stations, which often leads to high miss-detection and false alarm rates. To tackle this issue, the authors propose an over-the-air modulation scheme that leverages the passive beamforming gain of RISs to embed identity information directly into reflected signals—a first in the field. By integrating passive beam sweeping, the approach extends angular coverage, enhancing detectability across a broader spatial domain. The design jointly optimizes hardware and software components to enable efficient modulation and robust detection of identity signatures. Both simulations and prototype-based experiments demonstrate that the proposed method significantly reduces miss-detection and false alarm rates in RIS identification, confirming its effectiveness and practical viability.

Abstract

The reconfigurable intelligent surfaces detection and identification (RISs-ID) is a critical process that enables a base station (BS) to adaptively assign the appropriate RIS to a given user equipment (UE). This work proposes a novel modulation scheme to enhance the reliability of RIS-ID by reducing the miss detection and false-alarm probabilities. Specifically, we leverage the RIS's passive beamforming gain to enable over-the-air modulation of the RIS ID, combined with passive beam sweeping to extend detection coverage in angular space. The proposed modulation scheme is validated through computer simulations and prototype experiments, demonstrating its effectiveness in reducing miss-detection and false-alarm probabilities.

Problem

• Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces
• Detection and Identification
• Miss Detection
• False Alarm
• RIS-ID

Innovation

• RIS detection and identification
• passive beamforming
• over-the-air modulation
• beam sweeping
• false-alarm reduction