Beam Squint and Aperture--Bandwidth Limitations in Wideband RIS-Assisted THz Links

Abstract

This paper analyzes the ergodic rate of a wideband reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted terahertz link under beam squint and finite-resolution phase control. Independent Rayleigh fading on the two RIS-assisted hops produces double-Rayleigh cascaded amplitudes. Exact second- and fourth-order channel moments are derived by incorporating the frequency-dependent array response and phase-quantization errors. Moment matching then provides a Gamma approximation for the received power on each subcarrier and a tractable closed-form approximation for the wideband ergodic rate. A first-null bandwidth approximation characterizes the aperture--bandwidth limitation of frequency-flat RIS control. Monte Carlo simulations validate the analytical framework.