Active and Passive Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces at Mm-Wave and THz Bands Enabled by CMOS Integrated Chips

Though the initial deployment of 5G millimeter-Wave (mmWave) networks has demonstrated multi-Gb/s wireless links, they are often highly susceptible to blockages, channel disruptions, and fading due to the nature of their directive beams. To overcome this major impediment, the next generation of communication systems will have to be resilient, which encompasses security, adaptability, and autonomy. Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) have emerged as a potential candidate to address these challenges and have the capability to dynamically reconfigure the radio propagation channels on-the-fly. In this invited article, we present two reconfigurable intelligent electromagnetic surface designs enabled through CMOS ICs namely, a) mm-Wave 57–64 GHz active reconfigurable reflector array b) THz dynamically programmable passive holographic metasurface enabled through CMOS IC tiling approach.