On the Performance of RIS-enabled NOMA for Aerial Networks

In this paper, we investigate the performance of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted aerial communications, where a ground base station (GBS) communicates with distant terrestrial and/or aerial users through the assistance of a RIS-equipped unmanned aerial vehicle (RIS-UAV). The GBS uses the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme to transmit its signal, which is directed to the users via the RIS-UAV. First, the end-to-end channel is characterized, by considering the shadowed Rician fading, then the outage probability performance metric is derived for the underlying system model. Through numerical results, we demonstrate the impact of several system parameters on the performance of NOMA users. Specifically, we found that RIS elements need to be carefully allocated among different NOMA users, according to their channel conditions, in order to achieve the needed quality of service.