RITTER, J. An easily scalable reconfigurable intelligent surface prototype [online]. Brno: Vysoké učení technické v Brně. Fakulta elektrotechniky a komunikačních technologií. 2025.
I am pleased to inform you that Bc. John Ritter has successfully completed his Master thesis “AN EASILY SCALED RECONFIGURABLE INTELLIGENT SURFACE PROTOTYPE” Under the guidance of Dr. Robert Langwieser and me at the Institute of Telecommunications in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien), Vienna Austria. The thesis is well-written and nicely structured in four chapters including the introduction, conclusion, as well as several appendices. In his thesis, John Ritter designed, manufactured, and characterized an improved and scalable RIS module by measurements based on previous work carried out at the institute of telecommunications, related references are provided in the thesis. The realized RIS module supports side-by-side installation to construct an up-scaled RIS. Side-by-side installation is enabled by a borderless RIS module geometry. To make the RIS module borderless, the biasing network and mounting adapters were placed on the module’s backside. The unit cells were redesigned to accommodate a new four-layer stackup of the RIS module PCB. The resulting RIS module with 6 x 6 unit cells is easily mounted in many different configurations. All unit cells can be biased individually. Two RIS modules were manufactured, tested, and shown to be fully operational. At operation frequency 5 GHz, the reflection phase is tunable over 326 of range. An up-scaled RIS consisting of two RIS modules side-by-side was also constructed and measured. The up-scaled RIS has approximately the same characteristics as a single module, except for a much larger magnitude of steerable reflection. The up-scaled surface area leads to an almost doubled magnitude of the reflected signal. In this way, the present RIS design shows significant improvements over the previous design. He presented his Master thesis results on Monday May 26, 2025 at the institute of telecommunications. We give the Master thesis the following grade according to the grading system at TU Wien: Very good (1). Let me propose to translate this to the grading system used at TU Brno as follows: This matches an “A” at TU Brno with achieved 95 points. The evaluation was prepared by the theses consultants at TU Wien: Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Robert Langwieser, Prof. Ing. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.-Ing. Christoph Mecklenbräuker
The review is inclosed in a pdf file.
eVSKP id 167767