Where to Deploy Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces in the Presence of Blockages?

Wireless communications aided by reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) is a promising way to improve the coverage for cellular users. The controlled reflection of the signal from RISs is especially useful in mm-wave networks when the direct link between a cellular user and its serving base station (BS) is weak or unavailable due to blockages. But the joint blockage of the user-RIS and the user-BS links may significantly degrade the performance of RIS-aided transmissions. This paper aims to study the effect of joint blockages on downlink performance. When the RIS locations are coupled with BS locations, using tools from stochastic geometry, we obtain an optimal placement of RISs either to minimize the joint blockage probability of the user-RIS and the user-BS links or to maximize the downlink coverage probability. The results show that installing RISs on the street intersections improves the coverage probability. For users associated with BSs that are deployed sufficiently close to intersections, the intersection-mounted RISs offer a better coverage performance compared to BS-coupled RISs.