Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Empowered Multi-Hop Transmission over Generalized Fading

Abstract

The use of multiple reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) between a source and destination can enhance the performance of wireless communications over severe shadowing environment by creating line-of-sight (LOS) connectivity. This paper analyzes the performance of a multiple RIS empowered multi-hop transmission for a wireless system. We develop an analytical framework to derive statistical results of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the multi-RIS communication by considering independent and non-identical double generalized gamma (dGG) fading channels in each hop. We analyze the performance of the considered multi-RIS system by deriving exact analytical expressions of the outage probability, average bit-error rate (BER), and ergodic capacity in terms of Fox’s H-function. We present asymptotic analysis and diversity order of the outage probability in the high SNR regime to provide a better insight into the system performance. We use computer simulations to demonstrate the effect of multiple RIS modules, and fading parameters on the RIS-aided multi-hop transmissions for the considered communication system.