Wireless Communication Using Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: Fundamentals, Challenges and Use-Cases

Speaker:

Dr. Qurrat-Ul-Ain Nadeem  
University of British Columbia, Canada

Title:

"Wireless Communication Using Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: Fundamentals, Challenges and Use-Cases "

Abstract:

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) assisted wireless communication has emerged as a promising paradigm for 6G networks that leverages a large number of low-cost passive reflecting elements with independently controllable reflection amplitudes and/or phases to smartly reconfigure the wireless channels. By dynamically adapting the reflection coefficients of all elements, we can realize desired communication objectives without generating additional signals and therefore without consuming any significant additional power. In this talk, we highlight the need for RISs in existing 5G communication frameworks, discuss how RISs are related to conventional relaying technologies, and present the signal model and channel estimation protocols for RIS-assisted systems by taking into account the hardware constraints of the RISs. We then illustrate the main functions and applications of RISs, providing recent insights into the best use cases of this technology. We also present our results on a recently developed RIS prototype for a wide-band communication system, before concluding with discussion on the future of this technology.

Bio:

Qurrat-Ul-Ain Nadeem received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia in 2015 and 2018 respectively. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. Concurrently, she holds the Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow position at UBC, and teaches both undergraduate and graduate level engineering courses. Her research focus is on the modeling, design and performance analysis of next-generation wireless communication systems, and her expertise lies in the areas of communication theory, random matrix theory, optimization theory, signal processing, and electromagnetics and antenna theory. Dr. Nadeem was the recipient of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Award in 2021. She received the Paul Baron Young Scholar Award from The Marconi Society in 2018 for her work on full-dimension massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Dr Nadeem is a member of IEEE since 2019, and serves as the General Chair of the workshop on Reconfigurable Intelligent and Holographic surfaces in IEEE PIMRC 2023. She was an exemplary reviewer for the IEEE Transactions on Communications and the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications several times, and has served as a technical program committee member of multiple conferences.