Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface in Wireless-Powered Interference-Limited Communication Networks

The commercialization of future wireless communication systems faces crucial problems in terms of reduced network cost of deployment and high power consumption. As a result, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) have been suggested as a promising approach to overcome these existing challenges. In this paper, the performance of RIS in a wireless-powered interference-limited communication network is investigated. In this network, an energy-constrained access point (AP) is powered by a dedicated multiantenna power beacon (PB) and communicates to a destination limited-interference node via the RIS. It is assumed that the RIS experiences generalized-K fading distribution while the PB and interferers links are subjected to Nakagami-m fading distributions. To evaluate the system performance, the analytical closed-form expression of the probability distribution function (PDF) for the concerned system is derived. Through this, the exact closed-form expressions of the systems outage probability, average delay-tolerance throughput and average bit error rate are obtained. The analysis quantifies the effects of the number of reflecting elements in the RIS, number of interferer nodes, fading parameters on the AP and interferer links and number of antennas on the PB. It is deduced from the results that there is a kind of symmetry relationship between the analytical and simulation results. Additionally, the results illustrate that the proposed system with an RIS outperforms the conventional system without an RIS. Finally, the accuracy of the derived analytical expressions is validated through a Monte-Carlo simulation.