Channel modelling in RIS-empowered wireless communications

Abstract

Despite various intelligent reconfigurable surface (IRS)-assisted use cases in the existing literature, there is no strong consensus to identify the killer applications that effectively exploit the potential of RISs to control the transmission medium with intelligent reflections for enhanced end-to-end system performance. The first step in clearing this ambiguity is to form a unified and physical RIS-assisted channel model that can be adapted to different use cases and operating frequencies, taking into account the physical characteristics of RISs. As intelligent reflection is the art of manipulating the channel characteristics brilliantly and dynamically, modeling the RIS-assisted transmission link is essential to provide detailed insights into the practical use cases. This chapter mainly aims to present a vision of channel modeling strategies for the RIS-empowered communications systems considering the state-of-the-art channel and propagation modeling efforts in the literature. Another objective of the chapter is to draw attention to open-source and standard-compliant physical channel modeling efforts to provide comprehensive insights regarding the practical use cases of RISs in future wireless networks. Furthermore, the extensive numerical results are provided via the SimRIS Channel Simulator MATLAB package for the detailed evaluation of how RISs can be effectively used in future wireless networks to enrich and improve the existing communication systems.