Reliability Assurance in RIS-Assisted 6G Campus Networks

Campus networks have become a major market segment for cellular communication technology, providing a flexible communication infrastructure to meet the specific de-pendability and performance requirements of industry verticals. With the emerging 6G technologies, an order of magnitude higher throughput is on the horizon, however, the higher communication frequencies are more susceptible to line-of-sight (LOS) blockages. One way to tackle this issue is a dense installation of base stations (BSs). However, as a more cost-efficient alternative, this paper ex-plores how to assure the reliability of communication links in such scenarios, by analyzing the efficacy of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS). We present a model and optimization framework to efficiently maintain connectivity in a factory environment case study. Our model also takes into account the realistic assumptions imposed by the limitations of RIS technology and the practical constraints of campus networks. We address the resource allocation problem, proposing two approaches namely, an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and a heuristic method. Our results showcase the tangible benefits of RIS in providing continuous connectivity while reducing outages.