On the features of curved, passive reconfigurable smart electromagnetic skins

This paper investigates the potential of incorporating a reconfigurable, curved, passive Smart Electromagnetic Skin (SES) into a streetlight or traffic light pole to enhance the coverage of a 5G Base Station operating in the millimeter-wave frequency band. The study specifically explores the possibility of achieving beam scanning performance without using active components through an innovative design of the SES that allows the change of the pointing direction of the reflected beam simply by its rotation around the pole. Moreover, a novel Unit Cell (UC) incorporating the radome is introduced to provide a more compact and practical solution from a manufacturing perspective. Numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach and the feasibility of a smart skin that provides reconfigurability while maintaining high simplicity and reduced cost.