Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Aided Wireless Localization

Abstract: The advantages of millimeter-wave and large antenna arrays technologies for accurate wireless localization received extensive attentions recently. However, how to further improve the accuracy of wireless localization, even in the case of obstructed line-of-sight, is largely undiscovered. In this paper, the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is introduced into the system to make the positioning more accurate. First, we establish the three-dimensional RIS-assisted wireless localization channel model. After that, we derive the Fisher information matrix and the Cramer-Rao lower bound for evaluating the estimation of absolute mobile station position. Finally, we propose an alternative optimization method and a gradient decent method to optimize the reflect beamforming, which aims to minimize the Cramer-Rao lower bound to obtain a more accurate estimation. Our results show that the proposed methods significantly improve the accuracy of positioning, and decimeter-level or even centimeter-level positioning can be achieved by utilizing the RIS with a large number of reflecting elements.