Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces to Enable Energy-Efficient IoT Networks

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how reconfigurable intelligent surfaces can enhance energy efficiency in IoT networks by optimizing transmit power and battery life of devices, considering RIS discretization and deployment.

Contribution

It derives new expressions for transmit power and battery lifetime of IoT devices assisted by RIS, accounting for RIS discretization and configurations.

Findings

RIS improves energy efficiency in IoT networks

Transmit power depends on RIS setup and device position

Numerical results show increased battery lifetime with RIS

Abstract

In this article, we study the uplink (UL) channel of a cellular network of Internet of Things (IoT) devices assisted by a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with a limited number of reflecting angle configurations. Firstly, we derive an expression of the required transmit power for the machine-type devices (MTDs) to attain a target signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), considering a channel model that accounts for the RIS discretization into sub-wavelength reflecting elements. Such an expression demonstrates that the transmit power depends on the target SNR, the position of the MTD in the service area, and the RIS setup, which includes the number of reflecting elements and the available reflecting angle configurations. Secondly, we develop an expression for the expected battery lifetime (EBL) of the MTDs, which explicitly depends on the MTD transmit power. Numerical simulations on the energy efficiency (EE) evaluated via the EBL demonstrate the benefits of adopting RISs to enable energy-efficient IoT networks.