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ACM Netw."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2023,11,27]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper presents a comprehensive study on the deployment of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) in urban environments with poor radio coverage. We focus on the city of London, a large metropolis where radio network planning presents unique challenges due to diverse geographical and structural features. Using crowd-sourced datasets, we analyze the Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) from end-user devices to understand the existing radio coverage landscape of a major Mobile Network Operator (MNO). Our study identifies areas with poor coverage and proposes the deployment of RIS to enhance signal strength and coverage. We selected a set of potential sites for RIS deployment and, combining data from the MNO, data extracted from a real RIS prototype, and a ray-tracing tool, we analyzed the gains of this novel technology with respect to deploying more conventional technologies in terms of RSRP, coverage, and cost-efficiency.<\/jats:p>\n          <jats:p>To the best of our knowledge, this is the first data-driven analysis of the cost-efficiency of RIS technology in the production of urban networks. Our findings provide compelling evidence about the potential of RIS as a cost-efficient solution for enhancing radio coverage in complex urban mobile networks. More specifically, our results indicate that large-scale RIS technology, when applied in real-world urban mobile network scenarios, can achieve 72% of the coverage gains attainable by deploying additional cells with only 22% of their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over a 5-year timespan. Consequently, RIS technology offers around 3x higher cost-efficiency than other more conventional coverage-enhancing technologies.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3629134","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,11,28]],"date-time":"2023-11-28T15:40:05Z","timestamp":1701186005000},"page":"1-20","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":13,"title":["Data-driven Analysis of the Cost-Performance Trade-off of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces in a Production Network"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"1","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5406-4283","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Marco","family":"Rossanese","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2005-2222","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andres","family":"Garcia-Saavedra","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH, Madrid, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7361-1257","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andra Elena","family":"Lutu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Telefonica Research, Madrid, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9654-6109","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xavier","family":"Costa Perez","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH, and i2CAT Foundation, and ICREA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,11,28]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","unstructured":"[n. d.]. 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