RIS Channel Coding Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing peaked in 2023 at 11 families and has not returned to that level since — the field is past its first filing wave, not mid-climb.
- H04B carries 33 of 38 records while H04L appears in 21, showing that most claims still sit inside transmission hardware rather than pure digital-signal-processing framing.
- No assignee shows growth in the latest year every tracked filer, including Qualcomm and InterDigital, logged zero or a decline — a sign the leaders are consolidating rather than racing.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (9) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 38 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) channel coding covers the estimation and signalling methods that let a wireless system learn the cascaded channel created when a passive or semi-passive reflecting surface sits between transmitter and receiver. Because the surface itself has no RF chain, conventional channel estimation does not apply directly — filings in this set cover reflection-coefficient estimation, cascaded channel state acquisition, and the feedback formats needed to report RIS-shaped channel state information back to the network. The search scope is narrow by design: 38 families across roughly a decade, concentrated in transmission and digital-signalling IPC classes.
Publication lags filing by around 18 months, so the 2025–2026 counts in the trend chart are undercounts of what has actually been filed; treat the most recent bar as a floor, not a ceiling.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 38-family set: how filing has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
A single filing wave, not sustained growth
Activity was at zero as recently as 2017, climbed to a peak of 11 families in 2023, and had already fallen back by the 2022 midpoint of 6 — the shape of a technology that had one concentrated filing push rather than a steadily compounding one. The partial 2026 count of 2 should be read against the publication lag, not as a collapse.
Transmission hardware dominates over pure DSP framing
H04B (transmission, general) appears in 33 of 38 records and H04L (digital information transmission) in 21, meaning most families claim the RIS channel-estimation method as part of a transmission system rather than as a standalone signal-processing algorithm. The remaining classes — H04W, G02B, G06K, H01Q — each carry a single record, marking wireless-network integration, optical implementation, pattern-recognition-assisted estimation and antenna-level framing as minority approaches rather than established sub-fields.
Shares are the percentage of the 38 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Channel Coding with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about reconfigurable intelligent surface channel coding and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
Two-level reconfigurable intelligent surface channel state information
Filed by InterDigital Patent Holdings and published 2026-07-09, this family describes a two-level RIS CSI scheme: a WTRU derives a first RIS CSI from a first symbol set using a uniform-phase quantization format, transmits it, then derives a second RIS CSI from a further symbol set and a second quantization format.Abstract trimmed for length — see full record for complete claim language.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CN112565121A | 用于智能反射面辅助的大规模MIMO系统的半盲信道估计方法 | 20 |
| 2 | WO2022221976A1 | Configuration of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) selection | 10 |
| 3 | WO2023218079A1 | Channel estimation technique for reconfigurable intelligent surfaces | 7 |
| 4 | US20250167835A1 | Method for machine-learning-based uplink channel estimation in reflective intelligent systems | 6 |
| 5 | US20250323689A1 | Reconfigurable intelligent surface channel state information | 5 |
| 6 | US20250309943A1 | Radio frequency identification tags for a reconfigurable intelligent surface | 5 |
| 7 | CN117221052A | 毫米波RIS信道估计方法、装置、设备及存储介质 | 4 |
| 8 | CN117614775A | 一种基于卡尔曼滤波的联合硬件损伤与RIS信道估计方法 | 3 |
| 9 | CN114629751A | 一种毫米波通信系统的信道估计方法及系统 | 3 |
| 10 | WO2024088542A1 | Reconfigurable intelligent surface and control thereof | 2 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to be cited; read them as a signal of influence on later work, not as a ranking of current importance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about where this field stands
Three signals worth weighing before deciding where to file or search for freedom to operate.
One wave, already crested
The climb from zero in 2017 to 11 families in 2023, followed by a pullback, points to a single concentrated filing push rather than an accelerating field. New entrants now face a denser prior-art base than the raw family count suggests.
Hardware-first claiming
Most applicants anchor RIS channel estimation inside a transmission-system claim (H04B) rather than a standalone algorithm claim (H04L alone). That framing choice shapes where a freedom-to-operate search needs to start.
No single jurisdiction dominates
PCT filings lead marginally, with China, the United States, Europe and India each carrying a meaningful share. A single-jurisdiction FTO search would miss most of the corpus.
Flat momentum at the top
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum — including Qualcomm, Nokia and InterDigital — shows zero or negative year-on-year filing change. Read this alongside the publication lag: it may reflect reporting delay as much as a real pause.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to reconfigurable intelligent surface channel coding, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the claim space still has room
The 38-family set has no runaway leader; filing is split across a handful of network-equipment vendors, research institutes and named inventors, with co-filing pairs pointing to specific collaboration lines.
Qualcomm's named-inventor pairings
Qualcomm's strongest co-filing links are with individually named inventors (Zhang Yu, Elshafie Ahmed) rather than with other corporate assignees, suggesting these filings track specific engineering teams rather than a joint-venture structure.
Established filers, paused clocks
The named standards-adjacent vendors — InterDigital, Nokia Solutions and Networks, Qualcomm, Ericsson — each show zero filings in the latest tracked year. Their prior filings still anchor the most-cited table, so their claim positions remain live even without new activity.
A mixed corporate/academic base
Alongside the vendor names, Chinese research entities and universities appear in the assignee set, indicating that RIS channel estimation is still drawing academic filing activity rather than being fully consolidated into commercial vendor portfolios.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| InterDigital Patent Holdings, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Nokia Solutions and Networks Oy | 0 | — |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 0 | — |
| Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson | 0 | — |
| ZHANG YU | 0 | — |
| ELSHAFIE AHMED | 0 | — |
| Peng Cheng Laboratory | 0 | — |
| Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The trend and assignee data point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is filing, licensing or freedom-to-operate clearance.
Run a claim-level FTO check
Because 33 of 38 records sit in H04B, a subclass-only search will miss the H04L, H04W and optical-domain minority filings. A claim-level check across all six IPC subclasses in this set is the safer starting point.
Explore in Eureka →Watch the standards-vendor cluster
InterDigital, Nokia, Ericsson and Qualcomm hold the most-cited positions but show no latest-year filings. Any new activity from this cluster would be an early signal of a renewed filing wave.
Track assignees in Eureka →Common questions about RIS channel coding patents
In this dataset it means a filing covering the estimation, acquisition or feedback of channel state for a system that includes a reconfigurable intelligent surface (also called an intelligent reflecting surface) — for example cascaded channel estimation, reflection-coefficient estimation or RIS-specific CSI quantization and reporting formats. The search deliberately excludes general RIS hardware or beamforming patents that do not touch channel estimation. It is a narrow slice of the broader RIS patent landscape, built from 38 patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026.
The assignee set mixes established network-equipment vendors — Qualcomm, Nokia Solutions and Networks, Ericsson, InterDigital — with Chinese research institutes and universities and several named individual inventors. No single assignee dominates the 38-family set, and co-filing pairs such as Qualcomm with named inventors Zhang Yu and Elshafie Ahmed point to specific engineering teams rather than a joint corporate program. All tracked assignees show zero or negative filing growth in the latest year, though this should be read against the roughly 18-month publication lag.
Filing rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 11 families in 2023, then pulled back — the midpoint year 2022 already sat below peak at 6 families. That shape indicates one concentrated filing wave rather than sustained year-on-year growth. The partial count for 2026 is not yet a reliable read on direction, since recent filings take time to publish.
H04B (general transmission) and H04L (digital information transmission) cover the large majority of this set, appearing in 33 and 21 of the 38 records respectively, which means most claims are framed as part of a transmission system rather than as a standalone algorithm. Smaller counts in H04W, G02B, G06K and H01Q mark minority approaches — wireless-network signalling, optical implementation, pattern-recognition-assisted estimation and antenna-level framing — that are each represented by only a single record and remain comparatively open.
Risk concentrates around the most-cited records, several of which sit in cascaded channel estimation for large-scale MIMO RIS-assisted systems and around machine-learning-based uplink channel estimation, since these draw the heaviest citation counts in the corpus. Because filings split across WIPO, China, the United States, Europe and India in comparable numbers, a single-jurisdiction search will not surface the full risk picture. Teams should also check named-inventor co-filings, not just corporate assignees, since some of the strongest collaboration links in this set are between a company and specific individuals.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.