Channel reconfiguration for intelligent reflecting surface‐aided vehicular networks

Abstract

AbstractIntelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been recognized as one of the core technologies in the sixth generation (6G). Nevertheless, the character of channel state rapid change is a major problem in vehicular networks due to the dynamic vehicle movement and electromagnetic wave random scattering. In order to address the above problem, a strategy that joint phase shifts and channel alignment (PS‐CA) is proposed to reduce Doppler shift impact and improve communication performance in IRS‐aided vehicular networks. In this article, the channels can be divided into two types: the one type is the cascaded channel from the base station (BS) to the IRS and then to the vehicle; the other one is the direct channel from the BS to the vehicle. Thus, the proposed PS‐CA strategy can be divided into two stages. In the first stage, the cascaded channel fast fading state is reduced by designing IRS reflection phase shifts. In the second stage, considering the phase difference between the direct channel and the cascaded channel, we designed a correction function to align the direct channel with the cascaded channel. Then, we combined the designed correction function with IRS reflection phase shifts to reduce the impact of the direct channel fast fading state on overall performance. Simulation results demonstrate that compared to the RPS strategy, the PS‐CA strategy achieves higher spectral efficiency by 31.5.