UAV-Assisted Wireless Communication System with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: Outage Probability Approach

Abstract

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) are considered as a useful method for improving performance of wireless communication networks by controlling electromagnetic wave transmission. In this paper, a communication network based on the reflective role of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with RIS between command-and-control center on the ground and another aerial vehicle is presented for the improvement of the network coverage and the total system performance of the communication framework supported by the UAV. The scenario in which the UAV equipped with RIS acts as a reflective relay is designed in order to prevent obstacles between the ground-based command and control system and the aerial vehicle and to ensure uninterrupted communication. Channel modeling of the RIS supported UAV communication network is designed and the outage probability of system is analyzed. Performance of the communication network according to the position parameters of the UAV and the number of RIS reflective surface elements is investigated using Monte-Carlo simulations. In addition, the presented scheme is compared with traditional cooperative communication systems (amplify-and-forward, decode-and-forward). The obtained results showed that coverage of the proposed RIS-UAV supported architecture is improved efficiently and the RIS-UAV structure is a useful candidate for the future communication networks.