Network-controlled repeater (NCR) has been recently considered as a study-item in 3GPP Release 18, and the discussions are continuing in a work-item. In this paper, we introduce the concept of NCRs, as a possible low-complexity device to support for network densification and compare the performance of the NCRs with those achieved by reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs). The results are presented for the cases with different beamforming methods and hardware impairment models of the RIS. Moreover, we introduce the objectives of the 3GPP Release 18 NCR work-item and study the effect of different parameters on the performance of NCR-assisted networks. As we show, with a proper deployment, the presence of NCRs/RISs can improve the network performance considerably.
@article{arxiv.2211.06974,
title = {A Comparison between Network-Controlled Repeaters and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces},
author = {Hao Guo and Charitha Madapatha and Behrooz Makki and Boris Dortschy and Lei Bao and Magnus Åström and Tommy Svensson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.06974},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
7 pages, 7 figures, submitted to potential IEEE publication