Control and Placement of Finite-Resolution Intelligent Surfaces in IoT Systems with Imperfect CSI

In this paper, we study the advantages of using reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) for interference suppression in single-input single-output (SISO) distributed Internet of Things (IoT) networks. Implementing RIS-assisted networks confronts various problems, mostly related to the control and placement of the RIS. To tackle the control-related challenges, we consider noisy and local channel knowledge, based on which we devise algorithms to optimize the potentially distributed RISs to achieve an overall network objective, such as the sum-rate. We use a network with a centralized RIS as a benchmark for our comparisons. We further assume low-bit phase shifters at the RIS to capture real-world hardware limitations. We also study the placement of the RIS and analytically quantify the minimum required degrees-of-control for the RIS as a function of its location to guarantee a specific network performance metric and verify the results via simulations.