Joint Beamforming for Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Assisted Millimeter Wave Communications

Understand

Millimeter wave (mmWave) communications are evolving as a promising technology to meet the ever increasing data rate requirements.

• However, high directivity and severe path loss make it vulnerable to blockages, which could be frequent in indoor or urban environments.
• To address this issue, intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) are introduced to provide additional adjustable reflected paths.
• Most prior works assume that elements of IRSs have an infinite phase resolution, which is difficult to be realized in practical systems.