The Rise of Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces in Integrated Sensing and Communications Paradigms

Abstract

The intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) alters the behavior of wireless media and, consequently, has potential to improve the performance and reliability of wireless systems such as communications and radar remote sensing. Recently, integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) has been widely studied as a means to efficiently utilize spectrum and thereby save cost and power. This article investigates the role of IRS in the future ISAC paradigms. While there is a rich heritage of recent research into IRS-assisted communications, the IRS-assisted radars and ISAC remain relatively unexamined. We discuss the putative advantages of IRS deployment, such as coverage extension, interference suppression, and enhanced parameter estimation, for both communications and radar. We introduce possible IRS-assisted ISAC scenarios with common and dedicated surfaces. The article provides an overview of related signal processing techniques and the design challenges, such as wireless channel acquisition, waveform design, and security.

Accepted paper in IEEE Network Magazine

References in corpus (4)

• An Overview of Signal Processing Techniques for RIS/IRS-aided Wireless Systems
• Joint Transmit Waveform and Passive Beamforming Design for RIS-Aided DFRC Systems
• Foundations of MIMO Radar Detection Aided by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces
• Joint Active and Passive Beamforming for IRS-Assisted Radar

Cited by in corpus (6)

• A Survey of Beam Management for mmWave and THz Communications Towards 6G
• 6G: The Intelligent Network of Everything
• An Overview of Advances in Signal Processing Techniques for Classical and Quantum Wideband Synthetic Apertures
• Cramer-Rao Lower Bound Optimization for Hidden Moving Target Sensing via Multi-IRS-Aided Radar
• Quantized Phase-Shift Design of Active IRS for Integrated Sensing and Communications
• One-Bit Channel Estimation for IRS-aided Millimeter-Wave Massive MU-MISO System