This paper highlights advancements in intelligent reflecting surfaces for improved wireless communication, suggesting benefits for urban infrastructure.
Wireless communication has been crucial to contemporary life from early radio technologies to fifth generation (5G) and beyond. Wireless communication has transformed personal communications, mobile networks, and the promise for pervasive, always‐on access. Highlighting the evolution of wireless technology from first generation (1G) to sixth generation (6G), the paper provides a comprehensive overview of promising 6G technology known as intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs). IRSs control electromagnetic wave propagation to improve signals, coverage, security, and power usage in wireless communication. The basic operation of IRS is explained, which includes signal reception, phase shift compensation, signal reflection, and its ability to combat wireless issues including multipath fading and shadowing. The advantages of variants of IRSs, namely, passive IRS, active IRS, and simultaneously transmitting and reflecting (STAR) IRS, are examined. For energy‐efficient applications, passive IRS reflects signals without amplification while active IRS uses amplifiers to improve signal intensity. STAR IRS enables both reflection and transmission and serve the user nodes in the reflection space and transmission space. The performance comparison of IRS variants is also discussed. The convergence of IRSs with multi‐antenna systems, millimeter wave (mmWave) communication, non‐orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), visible light communication (VLC) and wireless information and power transfer (WIPT) systems, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks is also investigated. Further, the use case scenarios of IRSs in different application domains are presented ranging from smart cities, smart transportation to smart classrooms, shopping malls, and underwater communication. IRS improves urban connection, supports sophisticated applications, optimizes smart city infrastructure, transforms public services, and enhances operational efficiency. The future research trends for IRS assisted communication are provided offering network security, edge intelligence, and green communication support. In the end, the strategic insights into IRS advancements are presented.
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Shrivastava et al. (2025) studied this question.
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