Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces assisted wireless communication networks: ergodic capacity and symbol error rate

By enabling reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), we can deploy intelligent reflecting signals from the base station to destinations. Different from traditional relaying system, RIS relies on programmable metasurfaces and mirrors to improve system performance of destinations. We derive the formulas of main system performance metrics such as ergodic capacity and symbol error rate (SER). Based on types of modulation, we need to demonstrate other parameters which make influence to system performance. We show analytically that the number of reflecting elements along with the transmit power at the source can improve system performance. Moreover, we check the exactness of derived expressions by matching Monte-Carlo with analytical simulations. Finally, we find the best performance can be achieved at specific parameters and results are verified by explicit simulations.