Generalized Received Signal Power Models for Multi-Hop RIS and its Practical Analysis

The coverage in 6G communication can be enhanced using reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) by carefully designing and controlling their unit cell, especially in the environment of multiple blockages. This letter proposes received signal power models for multi-hop RIS-enabled wireless communication scenarios with multiple blockages. In particular, the work analyses the impact of several design parameters, such as RIS location, number of RIS-hops, unit-cell code sequence, etc. The results were analyzed analytically and practically in the anechoic chamber. Our results indicate that multi-hop RIS significantly enhances signal strength as well as spectral efficiency. These findings suggest that optimal RIS coding strategies can maximize signal strength at known receiver locations, thereby improving system performance in complex environments.