With the emergence of future mobile generations beyond 5G, novel technologies are studied to satisfy the envisioned requirements of future services such as Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) or Virtual Reality. Among these technologies, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) arise as one of the most promising due to their capabilities to improve the channel while only modestly increasing the network energy consumption. However, multiple challenges have to be addressed before they can be deployed. In this thesis, we study strategies for positioning the RIS to achieve maximum SNR coverage in an outdoor propagation environment. Our model takes into account the effects of shadow fading and line-of-sight (LoS). A comparison between centralized and distributed deployments is also considered. Additionally, the required size of RIS to match the coverage of a small cell is assessed. The results show that the best positions to deploy a RIS lie close to the mobile terminals, in the vicinity of the boundary between covered and out-of-coverage areas. It is concluded that a centralized deployment is better than a distributed one, and a feasible size of the RIS which matches the small cell coverage is obtained
