Intelligent Reflecting Surface in 6G Vehicular Communications: A Survey

Abstract

The applications of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and autonomous driving in the 6G era heavily rely on the massive information exchange of ultra-wide bandwidth, high reliability, and low latency to guarantee the safety and experience. On the other hand, the signals in high frequency bands including millimeter wave and Terahertz (THz) can be easily blocked by the obstacles. To address this problem, Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) has attracted a lot of attention since it allows for reflecting the signals and changing the propagation directions in a high intelligence and low power consumption way, which creates smart radio environments. Due to its easy deployment and low expense, it has been widely recognized as a promising technology for ground and aerial vehicular networks to enhance signal strength, physical layer security, and positioning accuracy. In this paper, we give a comprehensive survey of current research works on different IRS applications in ground-based vehicular communications and aerial vehicular communications after discussing its basic knowledge and main characteristics. To improve current works and spark more ideas, we summarize the challenges and discuss the future perspectives of IRS-aided 6G vehicular communications.