Enhancing High-Speed Rail Communications with Intelligent Reflective Surfaces: A Performance Evaluation

In this article, we explore the potential benefits of using intelligent reflective surfaces (IRS) in wireless communication systems to enhance their performance. IRS are panels or surfaces that can be strategically placed in a communication system to manipulate and control the wireless signals, allowing for better signal quality, increased capacity, and improved coverage. By utilizing IRS, we can increase the sum-rate of users in one frame by 4.5%, 5.7%, 16.5%, and 23.7% compared to traditional communication systems without IRS, respectively.
We also investigate the effect of IRS adoption on the communication system’s performance and analyze how it impacts the sum-rate of users in one frame. Our findings show that as the number of IRS elements increases, the sum-rate of users also increases. However, there is a point of diminishing returns where adding more IRS elements no longer results in a significant increase in sum-rate.
Furthermore, we examine how K-factor affects the achievable sum-rates of the five schemes and observe that as Kf increases, the performance gap among the five schemes becomes negligible when Kf ≥ 5. We also analyze how mobility speed impacts the achievable throughput and find that as the speed of the train increases, the throughput decreases.
In summary, IRS have the potential to significantly enhance the performance of wireless communication systems by improving signal quality, increasing capacity, and extending coverage. By strategically placing IRS panels or surfaces in a communication system, we can maximize their benefits and improve overall system performance.