On the Performance Analysis of RIS-Empowered Communications Over Nakagami-m Fading

Abstract: In this paper, we study the performance of wireless communications empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RISs) over Nakagami-m fading channels. We consider two phase configuration designs for the RIS, one random and another one based on coherent phase shifting. For both phase configuration cases, we present single-integral expressions for the outage probability and the bit error rate of binary modulation schemes, which can be efficiently evaluated numerically. In addition, we propose accurate closed-form approximations for the ergodic capacity of the considered system. For all considered metrics, we have also derived simple analytical expressions that become tight for large numbers of RIS reflecting elements. Numerically evaluated results compared with Monte Carlo simulations are presented in order to verify the correctness of the proposed analysis and showcase the impact of various system settings.