Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Assisted Millimeter Wave Networks: Cell Association and Coverage Analysis

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is emerging as a promising technology to achieve coverage enhancement. This paper develops a tractable analytical framework based on stochastic geometry for performance analysis of RIS-assisted millimeter wave networks. Based on the framework, a two-step cell association criterion is proposed, and the analytical expressions of the user association probability and the coverage probability in general scenarios are derived. In addition, the closed-form expressions of the two performance metrics in special cases are also provided. The simulation results verify the accuracy of the theoretically derived analytical expressions, and reveal the superiority of deploying RISs in millimeter wave networks and the effectiveness of the proposed cell association scheme to improve coverage. Furthermore, the effects of the RIS parameters and the BS density on coverage performance are also investigated.