Communication Between Holographic Surfaces in Multipath Environments

Abstract

Communication rates are predicted using the propagation of ray densities, which provide the only feasible means of directly modeling system geometry in large and multireflective environments. The output is a prediction of channel strengths using a ray-based signal-to-noise ratio that is resolved in angle of arrival and in position. The formalism generalizes results that have been established for line-of-sight (LoS) scenarios to complex and/or enclosed geometries. It furthermore extends these calculations to provide quantitative, fine-grained predictions of the distribution of channel strengths. The theory provides a self-consistent method to estimate the degrees of freedom (DoFs) of holographic surfaces interacting with complex propagation environments. An important motivation for this work is to establish a generalized physics-based framework for channel modeling in emerging electromagnetics and signal information theory.