  In this article, we study the uplink (UL) channel of a cellular network of
Internet of Things (IoT) devices assisted by a reconfigurable intelligent
surface (RIS) with a limited number of reflecting angle configurations.
Firstly, we derive an expression of the required transmit power for the
machine-type devices (MTDs) to attain a target signal-to-noise ratio (SNR),
considering a channel model that accounts for the RIS discretization into
sub-wavelength reflecting elements. Such an expression demonstrates that the
transmit power depends on the target SNR, the position of the MTD in the
service area, and the RIS setup, which includes the number of reflecting
elements and the available reflecting angle configurations. Secondly, we
develop an expression for the expected battery lifetime (EBL) of the MTDs,
which explicitly depends on the MTD transmit power. Numerical simulations on
the energy efficiency (EE) evaluated via the EBL demonstrate the benefits of
adopting RISs to enable energy-efficient IoT networks.
