Performance Analysis of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Assisted Channels for 73 and 142 GHz Frequency Bands

This paper investigates the potential benefits of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) in outdoor environments across various frequency bands, ranging from mmWave to subTerahertz (sub-THz) frequencies, particularly at 73 and 142 GHz. A general system model with a single RIS is considered, and the impact of the number of reflecting elements on the probabilistic distribution of the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and bit error rate (BER) is evaluated under Rician fading. The path loss exponent is analyzed using 3GPP-referenced empirical path loss models. The novel aspect of this study is to explore the RIS-assisted communication systems at 142 GHz. The prominent contributions to this study include path loss analysis under line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions, achievable rate calculations, channel capacity, bit error rate (BER) analysis, and outage probability estimation. The findings at 142 GHz highlight significant effects of varying the number of RIS elements and distances, which offer new insights into the performance of RIS-assisted systems at sub-THz frequencies.