On Performance of Low-Power Wide-Area Networks With the Combining of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces and Relay

This article proposes an integration of multiple reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) with a relay to enhance the performance of a low-power wide-area (LPWA) network. Specifically, besides using the traditional relaying approach to assist the transmission between an Internet of Things (IoT) sensor and a gateway, multiple RISs are also utilized to boost the intermediate links between the IoT sensor and the relay and between the relay and the gateway. We mathematically derive the analytical expressions of average outage probability (AOP) and average symbol error probability (ASEP) of this multiple-RIS-relay aided LPWA network over Nakagami-m fading channels. The performance of the proposed network is also compared with the performance of the relay-aided LPWA network without using RISs. The analytical results show that the exploitation of RISs can greatly enhances the performance of the LPWA network. Thus, the multiple-RIS-relay aided LPWA network can operate at the high frequency band for long range transmission. Moreover, the effect of various important factors such as the location of the RISs, the Nakagami-m parameters, the data transmission rate, and the modulation scheme on the performance of the multiple-RIS-relay aided LPWA network are also investigated in practical scenarios.