Enhancing reconfigurable intelligent surface security with angle of arrival and angle of departure based full path integrity validation

A non-transitory machine-readable medium, comprising executable instructions that, when executed by at least one processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising:

• receiving, via a receive antenna connected to a reconfigurable intelligent surface, an uplink communication originating from a user device;
• determining, based on differential delay data of different delay values experienced by a group of unit cells of the reconfigurable intelligent surface with respect to the uplink communication, first information representative of an uplink angle of arrival associated with the uplink communication;
• determining whether an uplink difference value, based on the first information representative of the uplink angle of arrival and second information representative of an expected uplink angle of arrival, corresponding to at least one of:
• a pre-configured or expected uplink angle of departure from the user device, satisfies a threshold uplink difference value;
• in response to the uplink difference value being determined not to satisfy the threshold uplink difference value, outputting uplink anomaly information that indicates that the uplink communication arrived at the reconfigurable intelligent surface via an invalid uplink path;
• and
• detecting, via respective reconfigurable delay detection network equipment coupled to respective cells of the group of the unit cells of the reconfigurable intelligent surface, respective changes in capacitance values corresponding to respective delay values of the different delay values experienced by the group of the unit cells, wherein the differential delay data is based on the respective delay values.

A method, comprising:

• receiving, by network equipment comprising at least one processor, via a receive antenna coupled to a reconfigurable intelligent surface of the network equipment, an uplink communication originating from a user equipment;
• determining, by the network equipment based on differential delay data of different delay values experienced by a group of unit cells of the reconfigurable intelligent surface with respect to the uplink communication, first information representative of an uplink angle of arrival associated with the uplink communication;
• determining, by the network equipment, whether an uplink difference value, based on the first information representative of the uplink angle of arrival and second information representative of an expected uplink angle of arrival, corresponding to at least one of:
• a pre-configured or expected uplink angle of departure from the user equipment, satisfies a threshold uplink difference value;
• and
• in response to the uplink difference value being determined not to satisfy the threshold uplink difference value, outputting, by the network equipment, uplink anomaly information that indicates that the uplink communication arrived at the reconfigurable intelligent surface via an invalid uplink path,
• wherein the network equipment comprises a software defined metasurface controller and a tile controller associated with the reconfigurable intelligent surface, and wherein the method further comprises:
• in response to the uplink difference value being determined not to satisfy the threshold uplink difference value, communicating, by the network equipment, uplink delay information from the software defined metasurface controller to the tile controller.