On the Control of Binary RIS Under User Mobility: Structural Results and Implications
Shubhika Mishra, Arzad Alam Kherani · IEEE Wireless Communications Letters · 2025
We investigate the control of Binary (ON/OFF) RIS elements deployed to assist transmission towards a mobile user in an indoor environment. For a given user location, the problem is posed as that of maximizing the received signal power. The complexity of solving this maximization problem increases exponentially with number of RIS elements. In order to arrive at practically workable approaches, we consider configuring RIS states using: a genetic-algorithm, a heuristic-based sub-optimal approach (contribution of this letter), and random configuration. We provide analytical and simulation-based results, demonstrating that a sub-optimal heuristic-based configuration can achieve near-optimal performance with significantly lower complexity. The heuristic approach proposed in this letter provides significant insights into the underlying structure of the system.