Investigation of Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces Using Lumped Elements for 5G Wireless Communication Networks

In this study, an Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) has been designed to operate at 3.5 GHz, featuring a compact unit cell measuring 42 mm x 42 mm with a Circular Patch and Ring configuration. The metasurface utilizes an FR-4 substrate with a dielectric constant of 4.3, a loss tangent of 0.008, and copper as the ground plane. A lumped element is incorporated into the unit cell to function as a switch in both ON (1) and OFF (0) states. Four positions have been identified for the ON OFF resulting to 16 bits configurations. The S-Parameter is the primary focus of the analysis. At 3.5 GHz, for a unit cell using Floquet port simulation indicated that the 0000-bit configuration exhibited the highest reflection efficiency with an S11 magnitude of -0.7534 dB and a phase shift of -16.7°. This result suggests that the unit cell design with lumped elements perform well as a reflector, with the S11 magnitude approaching 0 dB indicating effective gain.