IRS Deployment for Highly Time Sensitive Short Packet Communications: Distributed or Centralized Deployment?

ZHANG Yangyi; GUAN Xinrong; YANG Weiwei; CAO Kuo; WANG Meng; CAI Yueming

doi:10.11999/JEIT250720

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ZHANG Yangyi, GUAN Xinrong, YANG Weiwei, CAO Kuo, WANG Meng, CAI Yueming. IRS Deployment for Highly Time Sensitive Short Packet Communications: Distributed or Centralized Deployment?[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT250720

Citation:

ZHANG Yangyi, GUAN Xinrong, YANG Weiwei, CAO Kuo, WANG Meng, CAI Yueming. IRS Deployment for Highly Time Sensitive Short Packet Communications: Distributed or Centralized Deployment?[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT250720

Citation:

ZHANG Yangyi, GUAN Xinrong, YANG Weiwei, CAO Kuo, WANG Meng, CAI Yueming. IRS Deployment for Highly Time Sensitive Short Packet Communications: Distributed or Centralized Deployment?[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT250720

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IRS Deployment for Highly Time Sensitive Short Packet Communications: Distributed or Centralized Deployment?

doi: 10.11999/JEIT250720 cstr: 32379.14.JEIT250720

1.
National University of Defense Technology, Nanjing 210007, China
2.
Army Engineering University of PLA, Nanjing 210007, China
3.
National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China

Funds: The National Natural Science Foundation of China (62171461, 62201584, 62171464)

Received Date: 2025-07-31
Accepted Date: 2025-11-05
Rev Recd Date: 2025-11-05

Available Online: 2025-11-13

Abstract

Abstract

Objective With the rapid advancement of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), latency-sensitive applications—such as environmental monitoring and precision control—which primarily rely on short-packet communications, are placing increasingly stringent demands on the timeliness of information delivery. The Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) has emerged as a promising technology to enhance both the reliability and timeliness of short-packet communications by dynamically adjusting reflection coefficients. However, existing research has predominantly focused on optimizing the phase shifts of IRS elements, overlooking the potential performance gains achievable through flexible deployment strategies. Indeed, optimizing the physical deployment of IRS can introduce new degrees of freedom for improving timeliness performance. Two typical deployment strategies are commonly considered: distributed IRS and centralized IRS, each creating distinct effective channel characteristics and resulting in different capacity behaviors. This paper systematically investigates and compares both deployment schemes in IRS-assisted short-packet communication systems. By evaluating their Age of Information (AoI) performance under practical channel estimation overheads, we provide insights into optimal IRS deployment strategies for achieving superior timeliness across diverse system conditions. Methods The paper investigates an IRS-assisted short-packet communication system in which multiple terminal devices transmit short packets to an access point (AP) via IRS reflection. Two typical IRS deployment schemes are considered: distributed and centralized IRS. In the distributed scheme, each device is assisted by a dedicated IRS with M reflecting elements deployed in its vicinity. In contrast, the centralized scheme collocates all IRS elements near the AP. To theoretically evaluate and compare the timeliness performance of both deployment strategies, the average AoI is adopted as the key performance metric. However, the complex distribution of the composite channel gain poses a challenge for deriving a closed-form average AoI expression. To overcome this, the moment matching (MM) approximation method is employed to approximate the distribution of the composite channel gain. Furthermore, by incorporating pilot overhead into the analysis, closed-form average AoI expressions are derived for both deployment schemes, thereby enabling a comprehensive performance comparison. Results and Discussions Through the simulation results, it can be found that the AoI performance of distributed IRS and centralized IRS varies differently under different system conditions. Specifically, the distributed IRS deployment can achieve superior AoI performance when the IRS equipped with a large number of reflecting elements (Fig. 4). Under high transmission power conditions, the centralized IRS configuration exhibits better AoI performance (Fig. 5). For scenarios with large AP-device distances, the distributed IRS scheme provides more favorable AoI outcomes (Fig. 6). Notably, as the system bandwidth increases, the centralized IRS architecture shows rapid AoI reduction, eventually outperforming its distributed counterpart (Fig. 7). Conclusions This paper presents a comparative investigation of the timeliness performance in IRS-assisted short-packet communication systems under two deployment strategies: distributed and centralized IRS. First, the MM method is employed to approximate the composite channel gain as a gamma distribution, enabling the derivation of an approximate expression for the average packet error rate. Subsequently, a closed-form expression for the average AoI is established, incorporating the impact of channel estimation overhead. Simulation-based comparisons between the two deployment schemes reveal distinct AoI performance advantages under different operational conditions. Specifically, the distributed IRS configuration achieves superior AoI performance when a large number of reflecting elements is deployed or when the AP-device distance is considerable. In contrast, the centralized IRS scheme yields better AoI performance under high transmission power or ample system bandwidth.
- Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS),
- Short Packet Communication,
- Age of Information (AoI)

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References(24)

References

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