A Universal Framework for Multiport Network Analysis of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is an emerging paradigm able to control the propagation environment in wireless systems. Most of the research on RIS has been dedicated to system-level optimization and, with the advent of beyond diagonal RIS (BD-RIS), to RIS architecture design. However, developing general and unified electromagnetic (EM)-compliant models for RIS-aided systems remains an open problem. In this study, we propose a universal framework for the multiport network analysis of RIS-aided systems. With our framework, we model RIS-aided systems and RIS architectures through impedance, admittance, and scattering parameter analysis. Based on these analyses, three equivalent models are derived accounting for the effects of impedance mismatching and mutual coupling. The three models are then simplified by assuming large transmission distances, perfect matching, and no mutual coupling to understand the role of the RIS in the communication model. The derived simplified models are consistent with the model used in related literature, although we show that an additional approximation is commonly considered in the literature. We discuss the benefits of each analysis in characterizing and optimizing the RIS and how to select the most suitable parameters according to the needs. Numerical results provide additional evidence of the equivalence of the three analyses.