Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Aided Wideband THz Communications: Modeling and Analysis

Konferenz: WSA 2021 - 25th International ITG Workshop on Smart Antennas
10.11.2021 - 12.11.2021 in French Riviera, France

Tagungsband: ITG-Fb. 300: WSA 2021

Seiten: 5Sprache: EnglischTyp: PDF

Autoren:
Dovelos, Konstantinos; Assimonis, Stylianos D.; Ngo, Hien Quoc; Matthaiou, Michail (Centre for Wireless Innovation (CWI), Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK)
Bellalta, Boris (Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Spain)

Inhalt:
In this paper, we study the performance of wideband terahertz (THz) communications assisted by an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS). Specifically, we first introduce a generalized channel model that is suitable for electrically large THz IRSs operating in the near-field. Unlike prior works, our channel model takes into account the spherical wavefront of the emitted electromagnetic waves and the spatial-wideband effect. We next show that conventional frequency-flat beamfocusing significantly reduces the power gain due to beam squint, and hence is highly suboptimal. More importantly, we analytically characterize this reduction when the spacing between adjacent reflecting elements is negligible, i.e., holographic reflecting surfaces. Numerical results corroborate our analysis and provide important insights into the design of future IRS-aided THz systems.