Conformal Metasurfaces for Recovering Dynamic Blockage in Vehicular Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces conformal, passive IRS on vehicles that improve V2V communication robustness against blockages without reconfiguration, validated through experiments and simulations showing significant SNR improvements.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental realization and validation of conformal IRS operating at 26 GHz, designed for dynamic vehicular scenarios without reconfiguration.

Findings

C-IRS enhances V2V communication robustness.

Experimental validation confirms analytical models.

Up to 25 dB SNR improvement with increased C-IRS deployment.

Abstract

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) will represent a key technology in the upcoming sixth-generation (6G) communication networks to extend the network coverage and overcome link blockage. Research on IRS is expected to take a giant leap in the coming years to address the current technological limitations, mainly regarding the IRS re-configuration in highly dynamic scenarios, such as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) ones. This paper proposes a fully passive and low-cost solution based on pre-configured IRS to be lodged on the vehicle's body, which does not require any signaling for re-configuration. However, conventional IRS are planar array and cannot fit with most vehicles' silhouettes. Hence, the proposed design targets conformal surfaces (C-IRS) with an arbitrary shape. In particular, this paper reveals the first experimental findings on the realization of C-IRS operating at 26 GHz and measurements in anechoic chamber, which validate the analytical derivations. To demonstrate the benefits of the proposed solution, numerical simulations in a V2V scenario show that, when the percentage of vehicles equipping a C-IRS increases, the communication becomes more robust to vehicles' blockage and the average end-to-end SNR is enhanced up to 25 dB.