A Survey on Intelligent-Reflecting-Surface-Assisted UAV Communications

Ki-Won Park, Hyeon Min Kim and Oh-Soon Shin
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Ki-Won Park: School of Electronic Engineering, Soongsil University, Seoul 06978, Korea
Hyeon Min Kim: Department of Information Communication Convergence Technology, Soongsil University, Seoul 06978, Korea
Oh-Soon Shin: School of Electronic Engineering, Soongsil University, Seoul 06978, Korea

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 14, 1-20

Abstract: Both the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) are attracting growing attention as enabling technologies for future wireless networks. In particular, IRS-assisted UAV communication, which incorporates IRSs into UAV communications, is emerging to overcome the limitations and problems of UAV communications and improve the system performance. This article aims to provide a comprehensive survey on IRS-assisted UAV communications. We first present six representative scenarios that integrate IRSs and UAVs according to the installation point of IRSs and the role of UAVs. Then, we introduce and discuss the technical features of the state-of-the-art relevant works on IRS-assisted UAV communications systems from the perspective of the main performance criteria, i.e., spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, security, etc. We also introduce machine learning algorithms adopted in the previous works. Finally, we highlight technical issues and research challenges that need to be addressed to realize IRS-assisted UAV communications systems.

Keywords: intelligent reflecting surface (IRS); unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); spectral efficiency; energy efficiency; optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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