The Extended Vienna System-Level Simulator for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have been considered a promising research direction for the next generation of wireless communications. It is essential to perform extensive simulations in a system-level simulator (SLS) to analyze the system performance of RIS-assisted large-scale wireless networks. This paper introduces the RIS-tailored Vienna SLS that utilizes the MATLAB ray tracer to realize RIS-assisted transmissions. A recently published free space pathloss model for RIS (RISFSPL) has been adopted to be compatible with our SLS. In addition, we modified the ray tracing (RT) model based on the RISFSPL model to obtain a more precise pathloss in a realistic environment. In this way, we realize the advantages of both the RISFSPL and RT models. We verified the system performance through simulations in a single-input single-output (SISO) scenario with random and optimized RIS phase shifts. Furthermore, we analyzed the system performance through simulations in a complex scenario that consists of multiple base stations (BSs), RISs, and users.