  The march towards 6G is accelerating and future wireless network
architectures require enhanced performance along with significant coverage
especially, to combat impairments on account of the wireless channel.
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technology is a promising solution,
that has recently been considered as a research topic in standards, to help
manipulate the channel in favor of users needs. Generally, in experimental RIS
systems, the RIS is either connected to the transmitter (Tx) or receiver (Rx)
through a physical backhaul link and it is controlled by the network and
requires significant computation at the RIS for codebook (CB) designs. In this
paper, we propose a practical user-controlled RIS system that is isolated from
the network to enhance communication performance and provide coverage to the
user based on its location and preference. Furthermore, a low-complexity
algorithm is proposed to aid in CB selection for the user, which is performed
through the wireless cloud to enable a passive and energy efficient RIS.
Extensive experimental test-bed measurements demonstrate the enhanced
performance of the proposed system while both results match and validate each
other.
