Opportunities for Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces in 6G-Empowered V2X Communications

The applications of upcoming sixth generation (6G)-empowered vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications depend heavily on large-scale data exchange with high throughput and ultra-low latency to ensure system reliability and passenger safety. However, in urban and suburban areas, signals can be easily blocked by various objects. Moreover, the propagation of signals with ultra-high frequencies such as millimeter waves and terahertz communication is severely affected by obstacles. To address these issues, the Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS), which consists of nearly passive elements, has gained popularity because of its ability to intelligently reconfigure signal propagation in an energy-efficient manner. Due to the promise of ease of deployment and low cost, IRS has been widely acknowledged as a key technology for both terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks to improve signal strength, physical layer security, positioning accuracy, and reduce latency. This paper first describes the introduction of 6G-empowered V2X communications and IRS technology. Then it discusses different use case scenarios of IRS enabled V2X communications and reports recent advances in the existing literature. Next, we focus our attention on the scenario of vehicular edge computing involving IRS enabled drone communications in order to reduce vehicle computational time via optimal computational and communication resource allocation. At the end, this paper highlights current challenges and discusses future perspectives of IRS enabled V2X communications in order to improve current work and spark new ideas