On the Performance of Active RIS-Assisted Mixed RF-THz Relaying Systems

Abstract

We investigate the performance of an active reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted mixed radio frequency (RF)-terahertz (THz) relaying system, where the RF signal reaches the relay through the active RIS and is then transmitted to the user via the THz channel. Under this scenario, we analyze the system performance with the relay employing amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) protocols. More specifically, we derive the exact expressions for the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for both relaying protocols. Based on this, we obtain the exact expressions for the outage probability (OP), average bit error rate (ABER), and average channel capacity (ACC). Furthermore, to gain deeper insights, we derive the asymptotic expressions at high SNRs and obtain diversity order (DO) of the system. Moreover, we extend the analysis to the variable gain relaying scheme. The findings reveal that the DOs for both relaying protocols are determined by the THz channel parameters, and the DO under the AF relaying protocol is twice that of the DF relaying protocol. Finally, we validate that active RIS (A-RIS) can more effectively assist the performance of the mixed RF-THz relaying system compared to passive RIS.