Achievable Data Rate Improvement Analysis of a THz Multiple RIS-Assisted Factory System Based on Ray Tracing

The application of reflective intelligent surfaces (RISs) combined with the vast bandwidth available in the THz spectrum band is an enabling technology that can substantially enhance the performance of industrial networks in the sixth generation of wireless communications (6G). In this context, this work analyzes the performance improvement achieved by deploying multiple RISs in a system operating at 140 GHz in an indoor factory (InF) scenario. The analysis is based on ray tracing simulations using a geometric model representing an InF environment. The effects of specular reflection, diffraction, diffuse scattering, and atmospheric molecular absorption are considered in the propagation modeling. The performance of the networks is measured based on the achievable data rate (ADR), and the gain from using RISs is quantified by comparing it to the performance of a system without the RIS aid. According to the simulation results, the application of five RISs with 1000 reflecting elements promotes an increase of 4.1 bit/s/Hz in the average achievable rate when compared to the non-RIS-assisted system.