Intelligent Reflecting Surface Versus Decode-and-Forward : How Large Surfaces are Needed to Beat Relaying?

• The rate and energy efficiency of wireless channels can be improved by deploying software-controlled metasurfaces to reflect signals from the source to the destination, especially when the direct path is weak. While previous works mainly optimized the reflections, this letter compares the new technology with classic decode-and-forward (DF) relaying. The main observation is that very high rates and/or large metasurfaces are needed to outperform DF relaying, both in terms of minimizing the total transmit power and maximizing the energy efficiency, which also includes the dissipation in the transceiver hardware.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Signalbehandling (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Signal Processing (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Telekommunikation (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Telecommunications (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Kommunikationssystem (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Communication Systems (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Relays

Resource description framework

Signal to noise ratio

Receivers

Surface waves

Wireless communication

Transceivers

Intelligent reflecting surface

DF relaying

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)