RIS-Assisted Rank Enhancement With Commodity WiFi Transceivers: Real-World Experiments

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are a promising enabling technology for the sixth-generation ($6$G) of wireless communications. RISs, thanks to their intelligent design, can reshape the wireless channel to provide favorable propagation conditions for information transfer. In this work, we experimentally investigate the potential of RISs to enhance the effective rank of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels, thereby improving spatial multiplexing capabilities. In our experiment, commodity WiFi transceivers are used, representing a practical MIMO system. In this context, we propose a passive beam-focusing technique to manipulate the propagation channel between each transmit-receive antenna pair and achieve a favorable propagation condition for rank improvement. The proposed algorithm is tested in two different channel scenarios: low and medium ranks. Experimental results show that, when the channel is rank-deficient, the RIS can significantly increase the rank by $112\%$ from its default value without the RIS, providing a rank increment of $1.5$. When the rank has a medium value, a maximum of $61\%$ enhancement can be achieved, corresponding to a rank increment of $1$. These results provide the first experimental evidence of RIS-driven rank manipulation with off-the-shelf WiFi hardware, offering practical insights into RIS deployment for spatial multiplexing gains.