BER-Aware Reflecting Elements Allocation for RIS-aided NOMA Networks over Ricean Fading

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) as a supportive technology for aiding downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can enhance the bit error rate (BER) performance. In this paper, a novel BER-aware reflecting elements allocation (REA) on an RIS is proposed to maintain the BER order among paired RIS-NOMA users. The RIS REA is useful for minimizing the average user BER, ompared with a system that allocates the same number of elements to all users. Additionally, the Ricean fading is considered instead of Rayleigh fading as it is more practical and general. Furthermore,an REA optimization objective function for equalizing the user BER is proposed. In order to solve the problem, a modified exhaustive search is proposed to reduce complexity. The distribution of the objective function is observed first; subsequently, the exhaustive search range is determined. Both the analytical and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can minimize the average user BER.