Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has recently received much attention from the research community due to its potential to achieve high spectral and power efficiency cost-effectively. In addition to traditional cellular networks, the use of IRS in vehicular networks is also considered. Prior works on IRS-aided vehicle-to-everything communications focus on deploying reflection surfaces on the facades of buildings along the road for sidelink performance enhancement. This paper goes beyond the state of the art by presenting a novel paradigm coined Intelligent Reflecting Vehicle Surface (IRVS). It embeds a massive number of reflection elements on vehicles' surfaces to aid moving vehicular networks in military and emergency communications. We propose an alternative optimization method to optimize jointly active beamforming at the base station and passive reflection across multiple randomly-distributed vehicle surfaces. Performance evaluation in terms of sum spectral efficiency under continuous, discrete, and random phase shifts is conducted. Numerical results reveal that IRVS can substantially improve the capacity of a moving vehicular network.

翻译：智能反射表面（IRS）因其能够以低成本实现高频谱效率和功率效率，近期受到研究界的广泛关注。除传统蜂窝网络外，IRS在车辆网络中的应用也得到考虑。现有关于IRS辅助车联网通信的研究主要关注沿路建筑物表面部署反射表面以增强侧链性能。本文突破现有技术水平，提出一种名为智能反射车辆表面（IRVS）的新型范式。该范式在车辆表面嵌入大量反射元件，以支持军事和应急通信中的运动车辆网络。我们提出一种交替优化方法，联合优化基站的主动波束成形和多个随机分布车辆表面的被动反射。基于连续、离散和随机相位偏移下的总频谱效率性能评估得以进行。数值结果表明，IRVS能显著提升运动车辆网络的容量。