RIS-Empowered V2V Communications: Three-Dimensional Beam Domain Channel Modeling and Analysis

In this paper, a three-dimensional (3D) geometry-based stochastic model (GBSM) empowered by reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is presented for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication systems. Owing to the channel non-stationarity, spherical wavefront, and antenna configurations in RIS-empowered V2V channel, the geometry-based channel models suffer from high computational complexity, thereby leading to high hardware burden. To address this issue, a novel beam domain channel model (BDCM) is generated from the proposed geometry-based channel model through a beamforming operation based on discrete Fourier transform (DFT). To describe the non-stationarities of the V2V channels empowered by RIS, the channel model presented in this paper introduces real-time velocities and accelerations to capture the motion features of the communication terminals. The propagation characteristics including spatial cross-correlation functions (CCFs), temporal autocorrelation functions (ACFs), frequency correlation functions (FCFs), and channel capacities of the proposed communication system are derived and discussed. Some comparisons between the propagation characteristics of the proposed GBSM and those based on BDCM with respect to the different physical parameters of RIS and different environmental variables are investigated. Furthermore, numerical results indicate that the proposed channel model works well by changing the velocity parameters in different motion states.