Performance analysis of RIS-aided incremental-relaying wireless communication systems

Manlin Fang; Min Deng; Jun Yang; Saifullah Adnan; Zhen Chen

doi:10.1016/j.dcan.2025.12.003

›› 2026, Vol. 12 ›› Issue (2) :388 -395. DOI: 10.1016/j.dcan.2025.12.003

Regular Papers

research-article

Performance analysis of RIS-aided incremental-relaying wireless communication systems

Author information +

^a School of Computer Science and Engineering, Huizhou University, Huizhou, 516000, China

^b School of Electronic and Information Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510600, China

^c Hunan Province Key Laboratory of Credible Intelligent Navigation and Positioning, Xiangtan, 411105, China

^d Department of Computing, Hamdard University, Karachi, 74600, Pakistan

^e College of Cyber Security, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 516000, China

^* E-mail addresses: manlinfang@hotmail.com (M. Fang), iemdeng@xtu.edu.cn (M. Deng), eejyang@scut.edu.cn (J. Yang), saifullah.adnan@hamdard.edu.pk (S. Adnan),

zchen563@um.cityu.edu.hk (Z. Chen).

Manlin Fang received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Macau University of Science and Technology in 2014 and 2018, respectively. He is currently a Lecturer with the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Huizhou University, Huizhou, China. His research interests include reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, fluid antennas, and ultra-reliable low-latency communication. He has authored or co-authored multiple SCI-indexed journal pa-pers in prestigious publications such as IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Com-puter Communications, and IEEE Communications Letters. He has served as a reviewer for journals including Computer Communications, IEEE Open Journal of the Communica-tions Society, and Signal Processing, and was recognized as an Outstanding Reviewer for Computer Communications.

Min Deng received the B.E. degree in communication engineering from Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, China, in 2010, and the Ph.D. degree in information and communica-tion engineering from the South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, in 2017. Since 2017, she has been with Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, China, where she is currently an Associate Professor. Her research interests include navigation interference detection and anti-jamming, resource scheduling optimization, and cognitive radio. She has published over 10 SCI/EI-indexed papers in prestigious journals and conferences such as IEEE JSAC, IEEE TCOM, IEEE Sensors Journal, the Journal of Electronics and Infor-mation Technology, and IEEE VTC, focusing on topics including navigation interference detection and recognition, UAV task assignment, cognitive radio, and resource scheduling.

Jun Yang received the Ph.D. degree in radio physics from Wuhan University, China, in 2004. In 2005, he was a Senior Algorithm Engineer with Huawei Company, Shenzhen. Since 2006, he has been with the School of Electronic and Information Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, where he is currently an Associate Profes-sor. His research interests include RF and wireless communications, the design of SDR systems, the nonlinear modeling of microwave devices, and communications systems. He has led over ten research projects as the principal investigator, including projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, sub-projects of the National Key Re-search and Development Program, and industry-sponsored technology development. He has published multiple papers in IEEE Transactions and holds over ten patents. In 2022, he received the Guangdong Electronic Information Science and Technology Award.

Saifullah Adnan received the B.S. degree in electronics engineering from the COMSATS Institute of Information and Technology (CIIT), Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2012, the M.S. degree in information and communication engineering from Harbin Engineering Univer-sity, China, in 2016, and the Ph.D. degree from the School of Electronic and Information Engineering, South China University of Technology, China. Currently, he is working as an Assistant Professor with the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineer-ing, Jinnah University for Women, Karachi, Pakistan. He has published over 20 research publications in renowned scientific journals and conferences. He is a reviewer of many international conferences and journals. His research interests include signal detection in large scale MIMO systems, 5G cellular networks, compressive sensing for mobile commu-nications, spatial modulation, and artificial intelligence.

Zhen Chen is currently a full professor with the Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. From 2020 to 2023, he was a lead engineer with Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute, Hong Kong. From 2023 to 2025, he was a postdoctoral research fellow with the City University of Hong Kong and University of Macao, respectively. His current research interests include large language model, integrated radar and communication, channel estimation, AI communications and 5G/6G secure communication. He serves as an associate editor for IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, Digital Commu-nications and Networks (Elsevier), Signal Processing (Elsevier), Applied Soft Computing (Elsevier) and IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing. He also served as a guest editor for several journals, including IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing.

Show less

History +

PDF

Abstract

The emerging sixth-generation networks demand ultra-high-speed wideband transmissions. In this context, this study proposes a novel Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS)-aided Incremental Relaying (IR) scheme that combines the complementary benefits of RISs and relay systems to enhance the achievable rate. In the proposed system, a relay is exploited to retransmit the source signal when the destination fails to decode the RIS-aided signal correctly. To assess the system performance, we analytically derive closed-form expressions for the out-age probability and throughput of the RIS-aided IR scheme, using the central limit theorem. Simulation results validate the analytical findings and reveal that the proposed RIS-aided IR scheme significantly outperforms the conventional pure RIS and hybrid RIS-relay schemes in terms of both outage probability and throughput, high-lighting its potential for improving communication-system performance.

Keywords

Reconfigurable intelligent surface / Incremental relaying / Outage probability / System throughput

Cite this article

Download citation ▾

Manlin Fang, Min Deng, Jun Yang, Saifullah Adnan, Zhen Chen. Performance analysis of RIS-aided incremental-relaying wireless communication systems. , 2026, 12(2): 388-395 DOI:10.1016/j.dcan.2025.12.003

登录浏览全文

4963

注册一个新账户忘记密码

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Manlin Fang: Writing-original draft, Visualization, Validation, For-mal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization; Min Deng: Writing-review & editing; Jun Yang: Writing-review & editing; Saifullah Ad-nan: Supervision, Project administration; Zhen Chen: Writing-review & editing, Writing-original draft, Supervision, Methodology, Concep-tualization.

Declaration of competing interest

No conflict of interest exists in the submission of this manuscript. The authors declare that the work described is original research that has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publica-tion elsewhere, in whole or in part. All the authors have approved the enclosed manuscript.

Acknowledgement

This work has been supported in part by the National Natu-ral Science Foundation of China under Grant 62371197, in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province under Grant 2024A1515011172, in part by the Indigenous Innovation’s Capability Development Program of Huizhou University under Grant HZU202516, and in part by the Professorial and Doctoral Scientific Research Foun-dation of Huizhou University under Grant 2022JB034.

References

Publishing order | Descend order by publishing year | Descend order by cited within

[1]	A.R. Ndjiongue, O.A. Dobre, H. Shin, On the concept of on-demand RIS-assisted 6G networks: applications and the way forward, IEEE Commun. Mag. 63 (5) (2025) 174-181.

[2]	Z. Chen, L. Huang, H.C. So, H. Jiang, X.Y. Zhang, J. Wang, Deep reinforcement learning over RIS-assisted integrated sensing and communication: challenges and opportunities, IEEE Veh. Technol. Mag. 20 (3) (2025) 97-105.

[3]	M. Fang, J. Li, Y. Liu, Z. Chen, X.Y. Zhang, Performance analysis of active reconfig-urable intelligent surface-aided URLLC systems, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 73 (11) (2024) 17842-17847.

[4]	Z. Chen, Y. Guo, P. Zhang, H. Jiang, Y. Xiao, L. Huang, Physical layer security im-provement for hybrid RIS-assisted MIMO communications, IEEE Commun. Lett. 28(11)(2024) 2493-2497.

[5]	Z. Tu, R. Long, Y. Pei, Y.-C. Liang, RIS-enabled full-duplex backscatter communica-tion in multi-user symbiotic radio, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. 23 (11) (2024) 16261-16274.

[6]	H. Jiang, W. Shi, Z. Zhang, C. Pan, Q. Wu, F. Shu, R. Liu, Z. Chen, J. Wang, Large-scale RIS enabled air-ground channels: near-field modeling and analysis, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. 24 (2) (2025) 1074-1088.

[7]	M. Mohammadi, H.Q. Ngo, M. Matthaiou, Phase-shift and transmit power optimiza-tion for RIS-aided massive MIMO SWIPT IoT networks, IEEE Trans. Commun. 73 (1) (2025) 631-647.

[8]	M. Almekhlafi, M.A. Arfaoui, C. Assi, A. Ghrayeb, A low complexity passive beam-forming design for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) in 6G networks, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 72 (5) (2023) 6309-6321.

[9]	Z. Chen, J. Tang, X.Y. Zhang, D.K.C. So, S. Jin, K.-K. Wong, Hybrid evolutionary-based sparse channel estimation for IRS-assisted mmWave MIMO systems, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun. 21 (3) (2022) 1586-1601.

[10]	K. Fang, Y. Ouyang, B. Zheng, L. Huang, G. Wang, Z. Chen, Security enhancement for RIS-aided MEC systems with deep reinforcement learning, IEEE Trans. Commun. 73 (4) (2025) 2466-2479.

[11]	Q. Bie, Y. Liu, Y. Wang, X. Zhao, X.Y. Zhang, Deployment optimization of reconfig-urable intelligent surface for relay systems, IEEE Trans. Green Commun. Netw. 6 (1) (2022) 221-233.

[12]	Z. Abdullah, S. Kisseleff, W.A. Martins, G. Chen, L. Sanguinetti, K. Ntontin, A. Pa- pazafeiropoulos, S. Chatzinotas, B. Ottersten, Cooperative hybrid networks with ac-tive relays and RISs for B5G: applications, challenges, and research directions, IEEE Wireless Commun. 31 (1) (2024) 126-132.

[13]	G. Zhang, X. Gu, W. Duan, M. Wen, J. Choi, F. Gao, P.-H. Ho, Hybrid time-switching and power-splitting EH relaying for RIS-NOMA downlink, IEEE Trans. Cognit. Com-mun. Netw. 9 (1) (2023) 146-158.

[14]	P.T. Tran, B.C. Nguyen, T.M. Hoang, T.N. Nguyen, On performance of low-power wide-area networks with the combining of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces and relay, IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput. 22 (10) (2023) 6086-6096.

[15]	W. Chen, Y. Zou, J. Zhu, L. Zhai, Joint trajectory design and phase shift optimization for multi-RIS-assisted UAV relay network using deep reinforcement learning, IEEE Internet Things J. 12 (8) (2025) 9759-9774.

[16]	T. Zhang, S. Wang, Y. Zhuang, C. You, M. Wen, Y.-C. Wu, Reconfigurable intelli-gent surface assisted OFDM relaying: subcarrier matching with balanced SNR, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 72 (2) (2023) 2216-2230.

[17]	K.-T. Nguyen, T.-H. Vu, S. Kim, A unified framework analysis for reconfigurable intelligent surface-aided coordinated NOMA systems, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 72(11) (2023) 15115-15120.

[18]	J. Yuan, G. Chen, M. Wen, D. Wan, K. Cumanan, Security-reliability tradeoff in UAV-carried active RIS-assisted cooperative networks, IEEE Commun. Lett. 28 (2) (2024) 437-441.

[19]	S. Zhang, X. Huang, R. Song, Joint optimization of phase shift matrices and trajectory for AF relay-based cooperation communication with RIS-enabled UAV system, IEEE Syst. J. 17 (3) (2023) 4703-4714.

[20]	Z. Xiao, L. Yang, Z. Yan, Y. Bian, RIS-assisted full-duplex relaying systems with im-perfect CSI and hardware impairments, IEEE Commun. Lett. 28 (2) (2024) 412-416.

[21]	S. Zhang, Q. Ma, H. Cheng, R. Song, Achievable rate optimization of RIS-assisted multi-antenna FD DF relay cooperation system with SWIPT technology, IEEE Trans. Netw. Sci. Eng. 12 (3) (2025) 2243-2253.

[22]	Z. Chen, M.-M. Zhao, K. Xu, Y. Cai, M.-J. Zhao, Intelligent reflecting surface assisted full-duplex relay systems: deployment design and beamforming optimization, IEEE Trans. Commun. 72 (7) (2024) 4493-4508.

[23]	Z. Wei, X. Zhu, S. Sun, Y. Huang, L. Dong, Y. Jiang, Full-duplex versus half-duplex amplify-and-forward relaying: which is more energy eﬃcient in 60-GHz dual-hop indoor wireless systems?, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 33 (12) (2015) 2936-2947.

[24]	Q. Ding, J. Yang, Y. Luo, C. Luo, Intelligent reflecting surfaces vs. full-duplex relays: a comparison in the air, IEEE Commun. Lett. 28 (2) (2024) 397-401.

[25]	M. Samy, H. Al-Hraishawi, S. Chatzinotas, B. Otteresten, Outage performance of mul-tiple hybrid active relays and RISs-assisted NOMA networks, IEEE Wireless Commun. Lett. 13 (9) (2024) 2322-2326.

[26]	I. Trigui, W. Ajib, W.-P. Zhu, Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces-aided relaying in correlated rice fading: performance analysis and design optimization, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 73 (4) (2024) 5150-5161.

[27]	Z. Chen, G. Chen, J. Tang, S. Zhang, D.K.C. So, O.A. Dobre, K.-K. Wong, J. Cham- bers, Reconfigurable-intelligent-surface-assisted B5G/6G wireless communications: challenges, solution, and future opportunities, IEEE Commun. Mag. 61 (1) (2023) 16-22.

[28]	Z. Chen, J. Tang, X.Y. Zhang, Q. Wu, Y. Wang, D.K.C. So, S. Jin, K.-K. Wong, Offset learning based channel estimation for intelligent reflecting surface-assisted indoor communication, IEEE J. Sel. Top. Signal Process. 16 (1) (2022) 41-55.

[29]	E. Basar, M. Di Renzo, J. De Rosny, M. Debbah, M.-S. Alouini, R. Zhang, Wireless communications through reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, IEEE Access 7 (2019) 116753-116773.

[30]	Q. Tao, J. Wang, C. Zhong, Performance analysis of intelligent reflecting surface aided communication systems, IEEE Commun. Lett. 24 (11) (2020) 2464-2468.

[31]	L. Yang, J. Yang, W. Xie, M.O. Hasna, T. Tsiftsis, M.D. Renzo, Secrecy performance analysis of RIS-aided wireless communication systems, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 69 (10) (2020) 12296-12300.

[32]	D. Sadhwani, R.N. Yadav, S. Aggarwal, Tighter bounds on the Gaussian Q function and its application in Nakagami-𝑚 fading channel, IEEE Wireless Commun. Lett. 6(5) (2017) 574-577.

[33]	I.S. Gradshteyn, I.M. Ryzhik, Table of Integrals, Series, and Products, Academic Press, San Diego, CA, USA, 7th edition, San Diego, CA, USA, 2007.

[34]	T.-Y. Kan, R.Y. Chang, F.-T. Chien, B.-J. Chen, H.V. Poor, Hybrid relay and reconfig-urable intelligent surface assisted multiuser MISO systems, IEEE Trans. Veh. Tech-nol. 72 (6) (2023) 7653-7668.

[35]	N. Ye, S. Miao, J. Pan, Y. Xiang, S. Mumtaz, Dancing with chains: spaceborne dis-tributed multi-user detection under inter-satellite link constraints, IEEE J. Sel. Top. Signal Process. 19 (2) (2025) 430-446.