A SURVEY ON INTELLIGENT REFLECTING SURFACES

Using intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) to improve the coverage and the data rate of future wireless networks is a viable option. These surfaces are constituted of a significant number of passive and nearly passive components that interact with incident signals in a smart way, such as by reflecting them, to increase the wireless system’s performance as a result of which the notion of a smart radio environment comes to fruition. In this survey we supply a study review of IRS-assisted wireless communication starting with the principles of IRS which include the hardware architecture, the control mechanisms, and the discussions of previously held views about the channel model and path loss, then the performance analysis considering different performance parameters, analytical approaches and metrics are presented to describe the IRS-assisted wireless network performance improvements. Despite its enormous promise, IRS confronts new hurdles in integrating into wireless networks efficiently due to its passive nature. Consequently, the channel estimation for, both full and nearly passive IRS and the IRS deployments are compared under various wireless communication models and for single and multi-users. Lastly, we propose the challenges and potential future study areas for the IRS aided wireless communication systems.