Still Waters Run Deep: Extend THz Coverage with Non-Intelligent Reflecting Surface

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of non-intelligent reflecting surfaces (NIRS) to improve Terahertz band coverage in non-line-of-sight areas, highlighting its advantages over intelligent surfaces and demonstrating its effectiveness through experiments.

Contribution

It introduces NIRS as a cost-effective alternative to IRS for THz coverage enhancement and compares their advantages, supported by experimental validation.

Findings

NIRS effectively improves THz coverage in NLoS areas.

NIRS is cheaper and easier to implement than IRS.

Experimental results confirm NIRS's coverage enhancement capabilities.

Abstract

Large reflection and diffraction losses in the Terahertz (THz) band give rise to degraded coverage abilities in non-line-of-sight (NLoS) areas. To overcome this, a non-intelligent reflecting surface (NIRS) can be used, which is essentially a rough surface made by metal materials. NIRS is not only able to enhance received power in large NLoS areas through rich reflections and scattering, but also costless and super-easy to fabricate and implement. In this article, we first thoroughly compare NIRS with the lively discussed intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) and point out the unique advantages of NIRS over IRS. Furthermore, experimental results are elaborated to show the effectiveness of NIRS in improving coverage. Last but not least, open problems and future directions are highlighted to inspire future research efforts on NIRS.