Performance Analysis of Systems with Coupled and Decoupled RISs

We analyze and compare different methods for handling the mutual coupling in reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided communication systems. A new mutual coupling aware algorithm is derived where the reactance of each element is updated successively with a closed-form solution. In comparison to existing element-wise methods, this approach leads to a considerably reduced computational complexity. Furthermore, we introduce decoupling networks for the RIS array as a potential solution for handling mutual coupling. With these networks, the system model reduces to the same structure as when no mutual coupling were present. Including decoupling networks, we can optimize the channel gain of a RIS-aided single-input single-output (SISO) system in closed-form which allows to analyze the scenario under mutual coupling analytically and to draw connections to the conventional transmit array gain. In particular, a super-quadratic channel gain can be achieved which scales as N⁴ where N is the number of RIS elements.