NR-Surface: NextG-ready µW-reconfigurable mmWave Metasurface

Authors: 

Minseok Kim, Namjo Ahn, and Song Min Kim, KAIST

Abstract: 

Metasurface has recently emerged as an economic solution to expand mmWave coverage. However, their pervasive deployment remains a challenge, mainly due to the difficulty in reaching the tight 260ns NR synchronization requirement and real-time wireless reconfiguration while maintaining multi-year battery life. This paper presents NR-Surface, the first real-time reconfigurable metasurface fully compliant with the NR standard, operating at 242.7 µW for a 2.1-year lifetime on an AA battery. NR-Surface incorporates (i) a new extremely low-power (14KHz sampling) reconfiguration interface, NarrowBand Packet Unit (NBPU), for synchronization and real-time reconfiguration, and (ii) a highly responsive and low-leakage metasurface designed for low-duty cycled operation, by carefully leveraging the structure and the periodicity of the NR beam management procedure in the NR standard. NR-Surface is prototyped and evaluated end-to-end with NR BS built on srsRAN to demonstrate diverse usage scenarios including multiple NR-Surface per BS, multiple UE per NR-Surface, and 3D beamforming. Around-the-corner UE evaluations showcase NR-Surface efficacy under different user mobility patterns (20.3dB gain) and dynamic blockage (22.2dB gain).

NSDI '24 Open Access Sponsored by
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Open Access Media

USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.

BibTeX
@inproceedings {295673,
author = {Minseok Kim and Namjo Ahn and Song Min Kim},
title = {{NR-Surface}: {NextG-ready} {{\textmu}W-reconfigurable} {mmWave} Metasurface},
booktitle = {21st USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 24)},
year = {2024},
isbn = {978-1-939133-39-7},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
pages = {1641--1657},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi24/presentation/kim},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = apr
}

Presentation Video