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Conformal Metasurfaces for Recovering Dynamic Blockage in Vehicular Systems

Signal Processing 2022-08-16 v1

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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.06881,
  title  = {Conformal Metasurfaces for Recovering Dynamic Blockage in Vehicular Systems},
  author = {Marouan Mizmizi and Dario Tagliaferri and Misagh Khosronejad and Laura Resteghini and Gian Guido Gentili and Lorenza Draghi and Umberto Spagnolini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.06881},
  year   = {2022}
}

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6 pages