Outage Probability Analysis of UAV-Assisted Wireless Communication System with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces Over Weibull Fading Channels

Abstract

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) aim to direct the incoming signal with adjustable phase shift using too many low-cost passive elements.In this paper, we investigate the scenario in which the UAV equipped with RIS acts as a reflective relay in order to prevent obstacles between the ground-based command and control system and another aerial vehicle to ensure uninterrupted communication. Channel modeling of the RIS supported UAV communication network is designed with double Weibull fading and the outage probability of proposed system is analyzed by presenting closed form expressions. 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. Furthermore, 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 schemeis a rewarding candidate for the future communication networks.

Keywords

• reconfigurable intelligent surfaces
• outage probability
• double-weibull channel
• relaysystems