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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
Deep Learning Enabled IRS for 6G Intelligent
Transportation Systems: A Comprehensive Study
Wei Song , Member, IEEE, Shaik Rajak , Shuping Dang , Member, IEEE, Ruijun Liu , Member, IEEE,
Jun Li , Member, IEEE, and Sunil Chinnadurai , Member, IEEE
Abstract— Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) play an
increasingly significant role in our life, where safe and effective
vehicular networks supported by sixth-generation (6G) commu-
nication technologies are the essence of ITS. Vehicle-to-vehicle
(V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications need
to be studied to implement ITS in a secure, robust, and efficient
manner, allowing massive connectivity in vehicular communica-
tions networks. Besides, with the rapid growth of different types
of autonomous vehicles, it becomes challenging to facilitate the
heterogeneous requirements of ITS. To meet the above needs,
intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) are introduced to vehicular
communications and ITS, containing the reflecting elements that
can intelligently configure incident signals from and to vehicles.
As a novel vehicular communication paradigm at its infancy,
it is key to understand the latest research efforts on applying
IRS to 6G ITS as well as the fundamental differences with
other existing alternatives and the new challenges brought by
implementing IRS in 6G ITS. In this paper, we provide a big
picture of deep learning enabled IRS for 6G ITS and appraise
most of the important literature in this field. By appraising
and summarizing the existing literature, we also point out the
challenges and worthwhile research directions related to IRS
aided 6G ITS.
Manuscript received January 6, 2022; revised May 8, 2022; accepted June 8,
2022. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China under Grant 62076012, Grant 61773368, and Grant 61701127;
in part by the Beijing Natural Science Foundation under Grant 4202016; in
part by the Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project under
Grant 202102010416; in part by the International Collaborative Research
Program of Guangdong Science and Technology Department under Grant
2020A0505100061; in part by the University Research Fellowship from SRM
University-Andhra Pradesh; in part by the Guangzhou University-The Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology (GZU-HKUST) Joint Research
Program under Grant YH202110; in part by the Guangzhou Key Laboratory of
Software-Defined Low Latency Network under Grant 202102100006; and in
part by the Zhejiang Laboratory’s Open Project under Grant 2021KF0AB06.
The Associate Editor for this article was H. Lv. (Wei Song and Shaik Rajak
contributed equally to this work.) (Corresponding authors: Jun Li;
Sunil Chinnadurai.)
Wei Song is with the Department of Electronic Information and Com-
munication Engineering, Applied Technology College, Soochow University,
Suzhou 215325, China (e-mail: songw3015@suda.edu.cn).
Shaik Rajak and Sunil Chinnadurai are with the Department of Electronics
and Communication Engineering, School of Engineering and Science, SRM
University, Amaravathi 522502, India (e-mail: rajak_shaik@srmap.edu.in;
sunil.c@srmap.edu.in).
Shuping Dang is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engi-
neering, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UB, U.K. (e-mail: shuping.
dang@bristol.ac.uk).
Ruijun Liu is with the School of Computer and Information Engineering,
Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, China (e-mail:
liuruijun@btbu.edu.cn).
Jun Li is with the Research Center of Intelligent Communication Engi-
neering, School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Guangzhou
University, Guangzhou 510006, China (e-mail: lijun52018@gzhu.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITS.2022.3184314
1558-0016 © 2022 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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1
Index Terms— Intelligent transportation systems (ITS), intelli-
gent reflecting surface (IRS), deep learning (DL), 6G communi-
cations, spectral efficiency, energy efficiency.
I. I NTRODUCTION
I NTELLIGENT transportation systems (ITS) were devel-
oped in response to the growing transportation demands in
recent years [1]. ITS features a modern data wireless network,
which merges intelligence, connectivity, technology, and other
innovations in this sector to create a seamless interaction
between humans, roadways, and automobiles [2]. Several
studies combined vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-
infrastructure (V2I) communications in vehicular networks
to boost the performance of ITS [3]. The effectiveness and
efficiency of future ITS will be determined by networking
integration between V2V and V2I and making the best use of
resource allocation and frequency sharing. However, with the
massive development of automated vehicles, it is becoming an
increasingly challenging task to fulfil ITS demands [4]. A large
amount of data has to be transferred swiftly in ITS while
using 6G communications which require more transmission
power. Therefore, ITS needs accurate and almost zero latency
communication forfaster as well as safer operation. Also, there
may be a signal blockage in ITS due to tall buildings and other
obstacles. So, Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) is used in
ITS to overcome the above problems such as avoiding signal
blockage, increasing the received signal strength, and also
reducing the power consumption by reflecting the incident
signal with a large number of passive elements. IRS blocks
are noticed as one of the most revolutionized technologies
that can improve the system capability of future wireless
networks [5]. The phase shifts of reflecting elements in IRS are
adjusted to reconfigure the transmission signal between source
and destination to enhance the system performance [6]. IRS
architecture without Deep Learning (DL) techniques has been
shown in Fig. 1, where signal detection, channel estimation,
and beamforming largely depend on mathematical models.
It also describes the importance of IRS between the base
station and other devices such as mobiles, smart cars, smart
homes etc. Researchers devoted time and effort to designing
reconfigurable wireless environments between the transmitter
and receiver by meta-surfaces with reflecting elements [7].
The impact of IRS in urban areas has more influence on
the performance of energy efficiency (EE) and spectral effi-
ciency (SE) as compared to semi-urban and rural areas. This
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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
Fig. 1. IRS aided wireless communication network without DL techniques.
is because relays still are very effective in semi-urban and rural
areas.
However, with an increase in the number of IRS, there will
be significant training overhead for ITS, channel estimation
becomes highly complex, which is resulting from the inherent
uncertainty and intricate reconfigurable nature of IRS [8].
Fortunately, by developing a prototype modelling with a large
number of training sets, DL can estimate the IRS channel
with less training overhead and low complexity [9]. Also,
DL is very efficient at acquiring features from input data and
interpreting the input data for IRS-assisted communication
systems [10]. In addition, DL is more reliable than model-
based approaches, which depend heavily on mathematical
models [11]. The IRS-assisted wireless networks have widely
used DL to effectively support the ITS and other advanced
6G advanced application scenarios with high data rates [12].
A novel DL-based ITS framework has been presented in [13]
to optimize the computational complexity, throughput, and
accuracy.
Fig. 2 describes the DL enabled IRS for the ITS, where
the number of reflecting elements employed to improve the
performance of the system. Then the DL techniques have
been applied to estimate the channel parameters, phase-shift,
beamforming and pathloss. Furthermore, DL algorithms can
provide object detection, speed control, pathfinding, and learn-
ing how to drive themselves. Physical optics techniques are
used in [14] to obtain the path loss component for an IRS
to control and reflect the incoming signal from the far-field,
in which the received beam bandwidth is inversely propor-
tional to the size of the IRS. Single input single output (SISO)
wireless network aided with IRS elements demonstrated [15]
experimental results with free space path loss, where system
considered free space path loss of IRS, near/far-field impact
of IRS, antenna arrangement and IRS block size to improve
the coverage area by deploying low cost and energy efficient
reflective elements. However, the authors in [16] observed that
IRS with high data rate requirement and large meta surface
scenarios can only outperform the Decode-and-Forward (DF)
relay in both the cases of EE and transmit power. The IRS
model is designed with a large number of passive elements
that operate at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths to
reflect the incident signal towards the receiver without any
relay [17].
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Fig. 2. IRS aided intelligent transportation system enabled by DL techniques.
Multiple input multiple output (MISO) system has been
examined for the beamforming optimization with IRS ele-
ments. These requirements were fulfilled with IRS supported
single input multiple output (SIMO) system [18], as Passive
Beamforming and Information Transfer (PBIT) technique by
implementing Spatial Modulation to transfer the data by
controlling the reflections ON/OFF status, which helped to
obtain the passive beamforming. But it is difficult to find
channel state information (CSI) at IRS with a large number
of elements that require many RF chains. So, the Particle
Swarm optimization technique was used to optimize the beam-
forming at Base Station (BS)and IRS without CSI, which has
shown the near-optimal results of beamforming with CSI [19].
IRS assisted Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) and
Orthogonal Multiple Access (OMA) are considered to calcu-
late the downlink and uplink coverage efficiency of the far
user from the BS with Nakagami-m fading channel. Results
revealed that the IRS performed better than full-duplex DF
relay [20]. The joint optimization problem for IRS assisted
multi-cell multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system is
formulated as a non-convex problem, which is simplified by
using the block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm. Later,
phase-shift optimization is determined by both Majorization-
Minimization (MM) and Complex Circle Manifold (CCM) to
improve the cell-edge user [21]. Many existing works indi-
vidually investigated the performance of IRS assisted wireless
networks in terms of information transfer or maximizing the
EE. Unlike the previous works, the joint optimization prob-
lem of IRS assisted multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) network
is considered in [22] where, the proposed relax-and-retract
algorithms improved the quality of service (QoS) with less
computational complexity.
Authors in [23] addressed Super Resolution (SR) network
based on Least Square (LS) estimation scheme to reduce
the complexity of channel estimation for high-frequency IRS
mmwave systems. IRS has the ability to improve the cov-
erage for beyond 5G cellular Internet of Things (IoT) by
wisely selecting the amplitude reflecting coefficient, and the
energy consumption is reduced with the implementation of
time-length allocation method [24]. Practical power consump-
tion in realistic outdoor environments for IRS based sys-
tems has been presented to design an energy-efficient model.
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SONG et al.: DEEP LEARNING ENABLED IRS FOR 6G INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY 3

Sequential fractional programming method was employed for TABLE I

transmit power allocation and gradient descent search to cal- L IST OF A BBREVIATIONS IN T HIS PAPER
culate the IRS phase coefficients, which performs better than
multi-antenna amplify-and-forward relaying [25]. In [26], IRS
was established with the MIMO system for rank improvement
with the help of channel capacity. With a large number of
elements, the radio-frequency chain increases, which in turn
the design complexity. Along with the index modulation (IM)
to the IRS aided communication network, improvement in
the SE with high data rates becomes possible by exploring
the space shift keying (SSK) and spatial modulation (SM)
techniques. And then greedy and maximum likelihood detec-
tor investigated the complexity of both the techniques [27].
In order to increase the uplink data [28], the large intelligent
surface-based antenna-array network has been analyzed, and
results show the improved data rate with minimum hardware
constraints such as channel estimation and Rician fading
interference caused by the user.
The application scenario with Tera Hertz (THz) communi-
cation via an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) supported IRS
provided increased minimum average rate to all the users
by applying Successive Convex Approximation with the Rate
constraints (CAR) and BCD based algorithms [29]. The work
in [30] studied the system architecture with Simultaneous
Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT) to solve
the IRS reflection design, channel estimation and resource
allocation optimization. Security count of the SWIPT MIMO
system is maximized with cascaded channel error model,
which is solved by Bernstein-type inequality model. IRS
equipped NOMA system has increased the secrecy rate by
solving the joint optimization with SCA and SDR approaches
and reduces the transmit power [31]. The reflective or absorp-
tive status of IRS [32], is derived to measure the performance
of the system and found that backscatter link provides robust
connection than direct link. Although IRS contains only few
phase shifts, resulting in performance reduction. The perfor-
mance of an uplink IRS aided network is evaluated [33] by
estimating the feasible data rate and the influence of finite
number of phase shifts. IRS based Jammers effectively reduce
the signal power of eavesdropper based on block coordinate
decent, semidefinite relaxation and Gaussian randomization
technique [34]. Large area of intelligent block is compared
with individual multiple antenna terminals, where IRS block
provided the enhanced system performance compared to the green building IoT, resulting in a green technology and also
massive MIMO [35]. However, power scaling law has been underwater scenarios shift toward fine management and secure
examined to prove that Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of single and efficient information processing [39]–[41]. In comparison
user IRS cannot beat the SNR value of massive MIMO. with conventional IRS for ITS, DL based techniques still face
To overcome this problem, large number of reflecting elements many challenges and issues, here we mentioned a few of them
should be inserted in IRS block [36]. By deploying the large as follows
sized IRS block, wireless network architecture and estimation i) Channel estimation for DL based IRS wireless system
of signal propagation at various environments will become becomes more complex due to a large number of reflective
more difficult. In order to overcome the above problem, elements.
deep learning-based approaches are used for the IRS-assisted ii) Current DL algorithms need a longer training time for
wireless networks [37]. Other novel functions have also been data collection and storage.
documented in the literature that designed a continuous time iii) DL architecture requires millions of neurons to train
model for low earth orbit satellite links supported IRS system deeper and wider to overcome the environmental changes.
with receiver mobility condition [38]. The researcher’s goal is In this review, we extensively discussed DL approaches for
to do big data analysis (BDA) on the huge data created by the ITS with the IRS to improve performance in terms of reduced

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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

TABLE II
O PTIMIZATION OF P OWER /E NERGY OF IRS A SSISTED C OMMUNICATION S YSTEMS

power consumption and computational complexity. We studied
and summarized the technologies of the most recent works
on DL-enabled IRS for ITS in table II and III. Most survey
papers discussed DL techniques for IRS or ITS separately.
Whereas, in our paper, we reviewed deep learning-enabled
IRS for 6G ITS and appraise most of the important literature
in this field. As per our knowledge, this is the first survey that
emphasized in detail with most significant concerns such as
SE, EE, channel estimation, and secrecy count of DL enabled
IRS for ITS. IRS can help the 6G ITS with the reduction
in the power consumption, blockage problem. DL enabled
techniques for channel estimation, phase shifts of reflection
elements, and lower computational complexity. We organized
this review paper in such a way that each subsection starts to
discuss the conventional wireless system with IRS and ITS,
later followed by DL-enabled approaches of IRS for ITS.
We have also summarized the current challenges faced in using
DL-enabled IRS in ITS and provided a few research directions.
The remainder of this paper is outlined as follows. Section II
demonstrates a comprehensive overview of the recent research
works of IRS assisted ITS into different categories like SE, EE,
channel estimation and secrecy. In section III, we discussed
various challenges involved in implementing IRS, followed by
significant future research directions to design ITS with IRS.
Finally, concluding remarks are given in section IV.
II. S PECTRAL E FFICIENCY AND E NERGY E FFICIENCY OF
DL E NABLED IRS A SSISTED ITS
In this section, we concentrated on the applications
of DL enabled IRS for ITS with respect to
SE and EE.
A. Spectral Efficiency of DL Enabled IRS Assisted ITS
For many years, Spectral Efficiency has been the utmost
concern for wireless communication systems. International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) allot the specific bandwidth
to the telecom industries for providing voice and data services
to the users. Because of rapid expansion in mobile data users
and IoT, the demand for additional spectrum is also increased.
Many researchers are finding a way to improve the efficient
use of available spectrum. In the present scenario, IRS is con-
sidered as a promising technology even for higher frequencies
in THz ranges without the utilization of additional power.
THz communication has been estimated as a promising
technology to enhance the performance of future wireless com-
munication systems. THz waves offer severe propagation loss
with blockage issue, which is handled by using IRS elements.
IRS assisted THz MIMO system outperformed by imple-
menting Taylor Expansion aided Gradient Descent (TE-GD)
scheme than Convolutional Gradient Descent (C-GD). Results
revealed that the proposed TE-GD provides 4.3 bps/Hz SE
increment and 80.17% reduced complexity with dynamic step
size selection [42].
In [43] authors investigated the SE of downlink MIMO in
THz communication by using discrete phase-shifts of IRS and
precoder at BS, which turns out to be a critical nonconvex
problem. So, it is changed into another form, where IRS phase
shifts are used to increase the overall path gains. A cross
entropy (CE) based algorithm is implemented to find the
favourable condition for IRS phase shifts. Then Singular Value
Decomposition and Water filling methods are used to find the
optimal precoder design. Transmission beamforming at the
Access Point (AP) and the reflection beamforming at the IRS

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SONG et al.: DEEP LEARNING ENABLED IRS FOR 6G INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY 5

TABLE III
R ECENT W ORKS AND VALIDATIONS OF C ELLULAR N ETWORKS BY U SING IRS E LEMENTS

are analyzed for both the ideal and non-ideal cases to optimize
the SE. With the increase of APs, hardware impairments
will affect the noise at the IRS, which impacts the downlink
SE [44].
In [45] joint optimization fractional problem is addressed
to find the SE of IRS assisted multi-user MISO downlink
system. Later, Weighted Mean-Square Error (WMMSE) based
method is introduced to change the problem to a convex
problem. IRS assisted multi-user MIMO uplink system has
considered phase-shifters with continuous or discrete values
in [46]. They proposed a network architecture for the joint
optimization of transmission precoding at the user terminal

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6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
and reflection beamforming at IRS, which considered the
alternating optimization (AO), mean-squared error (MSE) and
majorization-minimization methods. So, by combining all the
techniques adopted from the above optimization framework,
SE of IRS assisted multi-user MIMO uplink systems is
maximized. The same framework can also be suitable for
optimization problems, which involves partial CSI.
The paper [47] maximize the weighted sum-rate of IRS
aided MISO multi-user downlink communication in which the
multi-antenna AP supports the several single-antenna users by
considering the perfect and imperfect channel conditions. The
optimization process became complex with perfect channel
information. To address this challenge, the fractional program-
ming (FP) mechanism is applied then the existing problem
is divided into four discrete parts. Following that, a low-
complexity algorithm is derived from the BCD approach.
Later imperfect CSI for the IRS aided system has been
determined, where the joint optimization issue has been solved
by enlarging the algorithms utilized for perfect CSI, as well
as the SCA method. Results validated that proposed joint
optimization techniques outperformed 100 IRS elements over
the benchmarks.
The authors in [48] briefly analyzed the performance of IRS
supported millimeter-wave ultra-massive MIMO system with
suitable transmitter architecture. By considering the precoder
constraints and the channel conditions, two efficient precoders
designed for IRS aided systems, the first precoder based on
maximizing mutual information (MI) and the second orthogo-
nal matching pursuit (OMP), depends on approximating the
full-duplex (FD). The proposed precoder designed for IRS
assisted MIMO network compared and realized improved SE
by placing the antennas properly for IRS elements. The OMP
based precoder exhibited better performance than the MI
based precoder for channels with poor scattering, and the
MI based precoder showed superiority over the OMP based
precoder with channels having rich scattering. Compared with
conventional MIMO networks, IRS aided MIMO architecture
is highly preferable due to the smaller number of RF chains
that reduce the hardware cost and transmit power constraints.
In [49] SIMO communication model has been examined
to obtain the desired SNR. The data bits are simultaneously
encrypted by the activation permutations process and phase
of the transmitted signal by employing differential reflecting
modulation (DRM), which effectively work without having the
channel state information at the source, IRS or destination.
In comparison, the DRM with reflecting elements imposes an
efficient SNR loss than the non-DRM.
The paper [50] demonstrated the IRS aided MISO network
to maximize the minimum weighted gained SINR at users by
estimating the integrated transmission beamforming matrices
at the several BS and the reflecting beamforming matrix at the
IRS under the limitations of maximum transmit power for each
BS and reflection factors of IRS. Due to the link between the
reflective and transmit beamforming matrix, the beamforming
problem was formulated as a non-convex problem. Initially,
second-order cone programming (SOCP) and SDP techniques
used to optimize the transmit and reflective beamforming
based on the exact-alternating optimization approaches offered
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high computational complexity with compromised perfor-
mance. Afterwards, to overcome the previous defects, inexact-
alternating optimization based on the SCA algorithm has been
proposed, which improved the min-weighted SINR value.
In addition, a low complexity inexact alternating optimization
model has been suggested to minimize computing difficulty.
Albinsaid et al. [51] discussed an IRS aided multi-direction
beamforming with multiple-antenna selection (MAS) at the
receiver. Recent works studied the transmission of information
bits by considering the single-antenna selection (SAS), spatial
shift keying (SSK) and spatial modulation, which limited
the performance by increasing antenna arrays as well as
M-ary digital modulation. To overcome the aforementioned
problems, MAS has been introduced that combined the M-ary
digital modulation bits into a single complex-valued scalar
by imposing superposition coding (SC). Further Successive
Signal Detection (SSD) is proposed to abstract the data bits
from the transmitter sequentially. Numerical results validated
that the proposed model increased the average successful bit
transmitted (ASBT) at the transmitter, and the IRS reflections
helped enhance the bit error rate (BER).
In [52] the sum-rate is examined for multiple user NOMA
systems by adopting long short-term memory (LSTM) to
locate the position of the users by generating the early sta-
tus and predicting the future position. Next, K-means based
Gaussian Mixture Model (K-GMM) algorithm is preferred for
the user clustering. Finally, deep Q-network based techniques
are involved in controlling the phase-shift and power alloca-
tions jointly. The sum rate of the NOMA scheme showed better
results with the machine learning method compared with the
conventional OMA scheme.
IRS-assisted mmwave network performance is measured
in [53] with Beam Management (BM) concept. Implemen-
tation of IRS in mmwave networks have been very difficult
to design the architecture considering the blockage issue.
To overcome the above issue, machine learning based BM
is proposed to reduce the design overhead by considering the
environmental changes and mobility status of the user.
In [54] IRS is introduced to support the UAVs with a
single antenna macro BS. The base station signal combines
constructively with IRS reflected waves towards the UAV. The
signal strength at the UAV is then studied as a factor of UAV
height and several IRS variables such as size, altitude and
separation from the BS. From the above analysis, results show
that 21 dB gain increased for UAV with a small IRS block
inserted on the building walls.
IRS assisted UAV communication network was presented
in [55] to increase the achievable rate. The system has been
designed by combining UAV trajectory with passive beam-
forming under the limits of practical UAV mobility and IRS
phase-shift challenges. Firstly, the extracted signals from the
UAV and the IRS are added to improve the signal power at the
receiver, which find the closed-form solution for phase-shift to
optimize the UAV trajectory. Afterwards, the SCA method is
utilized to solve the problems to design an integrated system
with maximized average achievable rate.
The work in [56] suggested a novel IRS aided UAV
OFDMA communication network to attain the maximum sum
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SONG et al.: DEEP LEARNING ENABLED IRS FOR 6G INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY
rate and then investigated joint UAV path, reconfiguration
of IRS elements and resource allocation. However, with the
large reflecting elements of IRS and the higher mobility of
UAV, the channels suffer from frequency selective fading
as well as spatial selective fading. To solve this problem,
OFDMA is integrated with IRS assisted UAV system. The
joint optimization problem turned into a non-convex problem,
and the parametric approximation method is used to find
the upper and lower bounds for the above-mentioned non-
convexity. Furthermore, an alternating optimization model has
been implemented to produce the resource allocation and IRS
scheduling, including the UAV trajectory.
The authors in [57] studied the performance of an intel-
ligent traffic system, where Artificial Intelligence has been
introduced to track the vehicle passing the time by using
back-propagation (BP) neural networks. Control area net-
work (CAN) interconnectivity is optimized by implementing
the Earliest Deadline First (EDF) method to control the traffic
rate. Simulation results reveal that the proposed AI based
CAN model can accurately forecast crossing time vehicles at
the junctions below 10% error and achieved more than 95%
transmitting data rate for various input rates.
Li et al. developed the Generalized Quadrature Spatial
Modulation (GQSM) for the MIMO system to improve the
SE [58]. A near optimal Maximum Likelihood (ML) detector
is placed to identify the desired signal with reduced complexity
compared to the ideal ML detector. Later NOMA scheme was
integrated with GQSM for multiple vehicle downlink scenar-
ios. Finally, GQSM supported NOMA and GQSM supported
OMA are examined in terms of BER, two vehicles handled
by a single base station. Simulation results demonstrated that
the GQSM outperforms the QSM for all SNR ranges, and
also GQSM supported NOMA attained better average BER
performance than GQSM supported OMA network.
Recent works on vehicular communications have shown
the path to develop intelligent transportation systems such
as self-driving cars and autonomous vehicles. These vehicles
need to recognize and track surrounding people, vehicles
and other equipment correctly in an effective timeframe to
assure safety. The work in [59] introduced reflective surfaces
for ITS (REITS) architecture. Initially, fundamental RF-based
prediction in self-drive vehicles has been examined to find the
failures in that model. Later, REITS is used to implement the
reflecting surfaces to fulfil the requirements with constructive
and destructive beamforming techniques. Numerical results
discovered that the proposed REITS with Van Atta type array
reflector can sense and detect the signal in all directions.
In [60] authors implemented hybrid precoders based on
DL algorithms for the mmwave massive MIMO system. The
proposed architecture with deep neural networks has been
divided into a three-stage network, where the three neural
networks are used to optimize the deep precoder, decoder,
and channel state information. Results have shown that the
proposed HybridPrecodingNet outperforms the CNN-MIMO,
two-phase hybrid, and OMP algorithm in terms of SE and con-
vergence time. Deep reinforcement learning has been applied
to select the particular reflecting element in the IRS-aided
system. In this work, discrete phase shifts of IRS elements
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7
Fig. 3. IRS assists cell edge users to improve SE/EE in ITS.
have been considered to optimize efficiency. The proposed
DRL techniques resolved the non-convex problem with lower
time requirements compared to conventional methods [61].
Authors [62] investigated the autonomous vehicular system
via a network service provider (NSP) as a backscatter with
macro and small BSs to improve the resource allocation and
effectively share the limited spectrum. The effective sharing
of the spectrum has been resolved by using the reinforcement
learning approaches and later Q-learning techniques to train
the user to adopt the suitable methods for associating users and
distributing the available spectrum. The proposed deep neural
network (DNN) based algorithms solved the above-mentioned
problems with reduced power and NSP architecture enhances
the performance of autonomous vehicle systems.
The paper [63] analyzed the importance of intelligence,
practical traffic estimation, information sharing, and resource
allocation of smart city transportation systems by using
DL-based techniques. Furthermore, convolution neural net-
work (CNN) with 5G technology has been implemented to
predict and improve the accuracy of the traffic management
system. The results show that the proposed AlexNet network
outperforms the other DL-based approaches and provided a
4.29% higher prediction accuracy. So, more advanced and
precise DL-based methods can enhance the performance of
ITS in smart cities.
B. Energy Efficiency of DL Enabled IRS Assisted ITS
Next-generation wireless networks and ITS with a large
number of users demand high data rates, which consume more
power. Furthermore, ITS needs reliable and safe communi-
cation that requires faster communication and low latency,
IRS can help the ITS to provide a large amount of data with
reduced power consumption compared to conventional relays.
IRS with a large number of passive elements reflects the
incident signal towards the user without transmission power
that improves the EE of the system. Fig. 3 shows the IRS
supported ITS to improve both the SE/EE of the far user.
The IRS-assisted wireless network is identified as an effec-
tive solution for improving EE. In [64] IRS consisted of
wireless communication systems that reflect the signal with an
adjustable phase shift to achieve three-dimensional beamform-
ing without transmitting RF chains. The active beamforming
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8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
at the AP and passive beamforming at the IRS were combined
to minimize the transmit power. Semidefinite relaxation and
alternating optimization methods are implemented to increase
the SNR with a minimum amount of transmission power.
Research work [65] presented a multi-IRS assisted multi-
user MISO system to reduce the network power requirements,
where IRS circuit power consumptions and transmit power
usage at the BS while maintaining QoS criteria. The joint opti-
mization of beamforming at the BS and IRS phase-shift turned
into a mixed-integer quadratic programming (MIQP) problem.
BS beamforming is optimized by solving second-order cone
programming, and IRS phase-shifts MIQP problem changed
to semidefinite programming, which is simplified with binary
relation and SDP techniques.
The work in [66] addressed multi-user IRS assisted
mmwave system equipped with a lenticular antenna, which
decreased the number of RF chains. Multiple IRS with discrete
phase-shifters is introduced to reduce power consumption by
creating line-of-sight. Quadratic transfer method and Sequen-
tial Convex Approximation techniques are applied to optimize
the transmit beamforming and the reflect beamforming, respec-
tively, by considering the constraints such as maximum data
transmission, QoS and number of RF chains.
The paper [67] analysed the EE of IRS assisted wireless
networks with hardware impairments. Asymptotic channel
capacity is calculated while considering power consumption
at BS with a large number of antennas. By employing IRS,
the cost and number of antennas at the BS can be reduced to
enhance the EE over the extensive deployment of hardware
equipment.
The conference paper [68] and its extension work [69]
established a multi-IRS aided multi-BS multi-user millimeter
wave downlink model to maximize the EE. This sequen-
tial fractional programming (SFP) method is used to solve
the beamforming at IRS. In addition, forward-reverse auc-
tion (FRA) is implemented for both convex optimization and
user association to gain higher EE compared to amplify-and-
forward relay. The transmit power is optimized in [70] to
improve the EE by availing the Inner Approximation (IA)
algorithm, which promises the communication system to meet
the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker solution.
In [71] a downlink wireless MISO network is designed with
distributed IRS that can change the on-off status depending
upon the network requirements. To increase the EE, IRS
phase shifts, transmit beamforming and IRS on-off status are
considered as a joint optimization problem with the least
constraints. For single and multi-user case, phase optimization
and transmit beamforming is solved by using the SCA method.
The IRS on/off problem is optimized with the dual method for
single-user scenarios, in which a parametric approach based
on the Dinkelbach procedure is used to simplify the fractional
form. In contrast, the greedy method is applied to solve IRS
on-off problem in multi-user cases.
In [72] IRS aided green multi-user MISO network has been
utilized the power-efficient and reliable resource allocation
architecture with the proper knowledge of CSI as well as
imperfect CSI. Resource allocation for perfect CSI at the
AP formulated as a non-convex problem, which is resolved
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by applying penalty based alternating minimization (AltMin)
and inner approximation (IA) algorithm. For imperfect CSI
cases, the AltMin technique is used for joint optimization.
The proposed algorithms promised to reach the Karush-Kuhn-
Tucker solution. Finally, results show that for the perfect CSI
scenario, the penalty-based algorithm achieves better accuracy
at the cost of higher total transmit power compared to the IA
algorithm.
As stated by [73] it is the first work that investigated EE
of wireless powered communication Networks (WPCN) for
both downlink Wireless Energy Transmission (DL WET) and
uplink Wireless Information Transfer (UL WIT), an alter-
nating optimization approach that relies on the Dinkelbach
and penalty-based methods are proposed, which enhances the
system’s EE by integrating the phase shift, beamforming,
schedule optimization, and reducing the transmission power.
This research [74] discussed a hybrid MIMO- OFDM sys-
tem with IRS operating at the mmwave frequency. At both
the BS and UE, the IRS reflecting factors and composite
beamforming are implemented individually. To be more accu-
rate, a geometric mean decomposition (GMD) based base-
band beamforming architecture is used to achieve the higher
BER performance without the complex bit/power allocation
scheme shown in the singular value decomposition (SVD)
technique. For the analog section, simultaneous orthogonal
matching pursuit (SOMP) is applied. Besides, an oversampling
two-dimensional discrete fourier transform (2D-DFT) code
block is utilized to acquire the same channel gain from a
massive MIMO system as well as IRS to attain better BER
performance.
As stated by [75] an IRS supported a multi-user full-duplex
two-way communication network is investigated the joint opti-
mization of precoding matrix at the BS and reflecting factors
of the IRS to improve the weighted minimum rate (WMR)
to all the users under the transmit power and unit modu-
lus restrictions. The combined optimization problem showed
more difficulty to solve with fundamental methods. Hence,
suggested BCD techniques transforms and solves the original
argument successfully by using the weighted minimum mean
square error and inserting specific supplementary elements.
In addition, Minorization-maximization methods provided a
further reduction in the computational complexity of the BCD
algorithm.
The authors in [76] presented the cell edge users EE per-
formance of MISO downlink system assisted unnamed aerial
vehicle (UAV) with IRS elements. The EE is achieved by using
alternating optimization methods, maximum ratio transmission
and Difference Convex (DC) programming considering the
perfect CSI. Results show that the proposed MISO system
assisted UAV acquired 45% more EE compared Amplify-and-
Forward (AF) relaying and 50% by inserting a large number
of reflecting elements at UAV.
In this research, [77] examined at downlink IRS aided
SWIPT model with one IoT equipment powered by BS and
three IRSs mounted on two UAVs and one building. The joint
optimization of power distribution ratio, transmit beamform-
ing, phase shifts and directions of UAVs resolved to maxi-
mize the average feasible rate by considering perfect channel
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SONG et al.: DEEP LEARNING ENABLED IRS FOR 6G INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY
conditions. In order to solve the non-convexity, issue alter-
native approaches and iterative algorithms are implemented.
After that, maximum ratio transmission (MRT) obtained the
closed-form solution of transmit beamforming and the SCA
method employed to resolve the phase shifts as well as UAVs’
trajectories. Furthermore, the realistic LoS scenario without
knowing CSI is investigated with the same objective function.
In this case, SVD and SCA schemes are used to simplify the
transmit beamforming and UAVs path, respectively. Besides,
to solve the subproblems of both perfect and imperfect CSI,
Block Successive Upper Maximization/Minimization (BSUM)
has been proposed.
AI enabled communication networks have shown an enor-
mous impact on performance and reliability enhancement.
In [78] wireless sensors and IoT network for ITS has been
examined to increase the EE. Besides the previous works
in this article, a novel approach of integrating distributed
AI (DAI) using the neural network has been suggested to
tackle the problems in ITS. Furthermore, the self-organizing
map (MOP) technique is also developed in DAI that reduces
the time required in scheduling compared to standard methods.
Recently [79] has been analyzed the ITS supported with
SWIPT technique with various parameters to solve the fusion
problem. The problem has turned into non-convex with the EE
maximization constraints. The difficult non-convex problem is
solved by applying a high SNR approximation process. Then
the multiple components such as minimum transmit power,
number of transmitter antennas, and receiver location have
been discovered with the Lambert W function and Lagrange
method. Simulation results found that the proposed model
can help the ITS with the implementation of the SWIPT
technology.
The paper [80] discussed IRS-assisted vehicular wireless
system BS with IRS and earth-based vehicles to increase the
QoS. The considered model intended to optimize the average
throughput for V2I while ensuring SINR of V2V with diverse
channel connections. The above optimization is simplified
by applying the dual-phase alternating optimization method.
In the first phase, the combined power distribution and IRS
radiation patterns were resolved, and the spectrum utilization
process for both the V2I and V2V was executed in phase
two. Simulations found that the IRS can improve the channel
losses and enhance the V2I sum ability in vehicular networks.
The perfect detection of driving patterns and forecasting of
vehicle movements play a major role in safety measure-
ments for autonomous vehicle scenarios. In [81] discussed
deep learning-based modeling approaches such as LSTM and
Personalized joint time-series modeling (PJTSM) to predict
the driving behaviors as well as mobility of the vehicles for
various energy levels.
From the above studies on IRS, we realized that EE opti-
mization shows more impact on the performance of wire-
less networks. Specifically, more concern has to be paid to
find the EE with the optimal number of users and transmit
power for future wireless communication systems. Hence,
in this section, the EE performance of IRS is analyzed by
varying the number of users and transmit power. In this
simulation setup we considered the power amplifier efficiency
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9
Fig. 4. EE of IRS aided communication system with varying number of
users.
ν = 0.5, Ps = Pd = Pr = 100 mW (power dissipation in the
transceiver hardware of source, destination and relay), Pe =
5 mW (power dissipation per element) and d1 = 20m. Numer-
ical results in Fig. 4 shows that the EE is increasing with IRS
for a smaller number of users, then it decreased gradually
with a large number of users. In addition, we examined the
EE of IRS by varying the transmit power in Fig.5, where EE
increases until transmit power reaches 7 Watts. From the above
analysis, we noticed that more research has to be done in IRS
to find the optimal number of users and transmit power to
maximize the EE. From the numerical results, it is observed
that EE of IRS outperforms EE of Decode and Forward relay
for all transmission powers [16].
III. P RACTICAL I SSUES OF DL E NABLED
IRS A SSISTED ITS
In this section, we review the studies related to the practical
issues of DL enabled IRS assisted ITS, especially the channel
estimation and secrecy related issues.
A. Channel Estimation of DL Enabled IRS Assisted ITS
IRS is a meta-surface made up of a large number of passive
reflecting elements that can control the amplitude and/or phase
of the reflected signal without using active RF chains. Thus,
significantly IRS can reduce the hardware cost and power
consumption. These services require exact knowledge of the
propagation channels and multipath components. The passive
character of IRS-assisted communications, as well as the
enormous number of IRS elements, are two major bottlenecks
to channel estimations, which cannot be simplified by funda-
mental signal processing methods. We need to design novel
channel measurement frameworks to estimate the channel
conditions in different environments.
In [82] MISO system has been considered to predict the
channel information between the transmitter and the receiver
by using IRS elements with continuous phase-shift. The opti-
mal channel estimation has been determined based on the
Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) with certain limitations such
as IRS attenuation and phase-shift. IRS activations that used
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10
Fig. 5. EE of IRS aided communication system with varying transmit power.
DFT showed one order reduced estimation error compared
with traditional on/off approaches.
The authors in [83] investigated a single-user communica-
tion system to improve the data transmission by using discrete
IRS phase-shift elements. In this work, a new hierarchical
training reflection is formulated to estimate the IRS elements
channel propagation, in which an IRS block is divided into
groups and then subgroups. Efficient progressive channel
estimation, Hamard-matrix truncation methods implemented
to improve the channel estimation and Successive Refinement
algorithm to reduce the complexity in the design of IRS
beamforming.
IRS assisted multi-user communication systems introduced
a three-phased framework to estimate the channel condi-
tion. In phase-I user-BS direct channel, and the user-IRS-BS
reflected channels are considered, where IRS is switched off,
then estimate the channel between the user and BS. Phase-II
IRS is switched on, and only one user can transmit the pilot
symbols to calculate the channels reflected from the IRS. The
third phase estimates the channel condition that other users
can transmit pilot symbols, as well as their IRS, reflected
channels by assigning the weightage to reflect elements. Both
the Ideal, practical cases with and without noise at the receiver
has been examined. The required pilot sequence has been
minimized for an ideal case by increasing the number of
antennas. In the practical case with noise, linear minimum
mean squared error (LMMSE) helped for all three phases to
estimate the channel information [84].
In [85] IRS aided wideband wireless systems have been
presented reliable Channel Estimation (CE) approaches that
considered the doppler effect in both single and multi-path
cases. The quasi-static multi-path CE paradigm was used
to create a new methodology for adjusting doppler induced
distortions in estimated signals by combining frequency and
time domain conversions. In addition, the low-complexity CE
model is designed based on the configuration of elements
at the IRS, which is commonly used in mmwave and THz
communications with user mobility.
The paper [86] explored the channel estimation and user
location for the MIMO-OFDM system equipped with IRS
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
elements. A twin-IRS structure is introduced with two IRS
planes that rotate relative to each other. Third-order canonical
polyadic (CP) tensor is applied for the channel estimation,
and cascaded parameter decoupling techniques are used to
recover the channel parameters. Furthermore, 3-D propagation
mapping model is included to find the scatter position on NLoS
as well as user location. To promote rapid cascaded channel
estimation, [87] offers a new method for fast estimation of
channels depending on the innovative notion of sampling-wise
IRS reflection variation, which builds artificial linear and time-
variant (ALTV) cascaded channels within one OFDM symbol.
In [88] demonstrated the channel propagation for IRS
assisted MIMO system linked with tensor decomposition.
Two algorithms were proposed to observe the transmitter-IRS
and IRS-received MIMO channel by considering the parallel
factor (PARFAC) tensor model at the received signal. Firstly,
a closed-form solution has been found by adopting the least
square Khatri-Rao factorization (LSKRF) algorithm that relies
on rank-1 matrix approximation. In contrast, in the second
algorithm, bilinear alternating least squares models are used
to calculate the suitable channel information.
DL techniques were also introduced for the channel esti-
mation while considering the IRS elements to improve the
connectivity and coverage area of the communication network.
IRS aided mmwave massive MIMO system has been explored
the channel measurements by deep denoising neural network
approaches [89]. Compressive sensing (CS) based broadband
channel extractions recommended simultaneous orthogonal
match pursuit algorithm to jointly calculate the channels of
multiple sub-carriers while considering the Multiple Measure-
ment Vector (MMV) property. Subsequently, complex-valued
denoising convolution-neural network (CV-DnCNN) is devel-
oped to improve the estimation efficiency with complex-valued
channels obtained for the MIMO channel matrix. The sug-
gested CV-DnCNN can serve a wide range of SNRs and
multi-path components if trained for a specific SNR or a
particular count of multi-path components (MPC).
IRS aided wireless communication networks increase the
challenges to acquiring the perfect channel state information.
A large number of reflecting elements do not have the trans-
mit/receive ability. So, [90] introduced a practical transmission
scheme for the IRS supported OFDM network that performs
effective channel estimation and reflecting optimization by
deploying the strongest channel impulse response maximiza-
tion (SCM) techniques where IRS elements are assumed to be
ON status at all the time. Then the conventional SDR method
was compared with the proposed SCM scheme, which showed
less computing complexity.
IRS-assisted multi-user wireless network in [91] estimated
the channel conditions to increase the sum rate with a number
of users and joint optimization of IRS phase-shifts. DL based
location-aware convolution long short term memory network
(LA-CLNet) promoted the Predictive beamforming method
to maximize the sum-rate with proper IRS phase-shift and
the significant channel conditions. Afterwards, instantaneous
CSI (ICSI)-aware fully connected neural network (IA-FNN)
is recommended to improve the transmission beamforming
depending on the continuously updated channel conditions.
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SONG et al.: DEEP LEARNING ENABLED IRS FOR 6G INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY
IRS multi-user communication network proposed deep
learning methods to estimate the channel information.
Conventional MMSE techniques in previous work offered
more complexity and a high convergence rate. To overcome
the challenge of limited channel estimation performance in
IRS aided networks, recently, deep learning-based approaches
like convolution neural network with a deep residual learning
based channel estimation methodology that uses a deep
residual system to learn the residual noise directly in order to
retrieve the channel coefficient from noise-contaminated data.
Simulation results show the suggested CDRN framework
applied to test the robustness in terms of SNR effect and
denoising process [92].
The paper [93] established IRS integrated UAV with a
single BS and a single user IoT network that analyse
the system performance in Non-Line of Sight (NLoS) sce-
nario. A unified elevation angle-based path loss model is
used to estimate the specific LoS environment between the
UAV BS and UAV user. First, generated feasible math-
ematical formulas for IRS assisted UAV communication
model in achieving symbol error rate (SER), ergodic capac-
ity and outage probability. In addition, practical limits on
the average SNR have been obtained and compared with
the Central Limit Theorem (CLT). Results reveal that IRS
helped to improve the SER by five orders of magnitude
as well as ergodic capacity ten times higher than UAV
without IRS.
In [94] the phase propagation of IRS-assisted MIMO system
has been explained with a large number of elements at the
IRS. DL based approaches allowed to reconfigure the phase
of the reflecting elements. Two deep neural networks (DNN)
are placed at the received pilot signals. First, DNN is used
to compare the results with the traditional least-square (LS)
estimator-based scheme. The second DNN is trained to detect
the lower pilot sequence and project the suitable phases and
beamforming.
The authors in [95] presented IRS supported vehicular
uplink network in the mmwave region for robust connection
from vehicles to the BS that is equipped with a large number
of antennas, each one connected to one vehicle separately. IRS
with discrete phase shifts and weighted sum rate increment
problem has simplified for the single- and multi-user scenario.
Successive refinement methods are implemented to solve
the IRS phase shift problem in the single-user case. In the
multi-user scenario, alternating optimization techniques have
been utilized. Numerical results validated with the ray-tracing
method revealed that IRS can reduce the impact of mobility
issues that occurred in real-world applications of vehicular
communication.
IRS empowered inter-vehicle network has considered the
Fox’s H function distributed framework rather than using
Rayleigh/Nakagami/Rician propagation to estimate the chan-
nel state information. After that, instead of the well-known
central limit theorem expectation-maximization, a dependent
mixture of Gaussian (MoG) distribution was applied to find the
SNR of the received signal, path loss and efficiency validated
with the Monte-Carlo simulations. Furthermore, numerical
values described that the MoG approaches to produce effective
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11
Fig. 6. IRS aided secured ITS.
performance with a limited or enormous number of reflective
elements of IRS [96].
DL techniques have been extensively shown better per-
formance for channel estimation in vehicular networks. The
work in [97] collected the practical data with proper IQ
samples in various outdoor environments and compared it
with the measured data set of the IEEE 802.11P model.
Simulation results demonstrated that the deep-learning-based
channel estimation outperforms the standard auto-regression
framework in vehicular networks and provides more accurate
communication links.
B. Secrecy of DL Enabled IRS Assisted ITS
Recent reports have shown billions of users interested in
wireless communications. As the number of users increases,
the frequency reuse concept has been introduced; due to
this, the secrecy rate of communication systems became a
more challenging assignment. Research works suggested that
the IRS aided communication systems can enhance security
without losing their original information. IRS can be utilized
to suppress the signal power towards the eavesdropper, and
signal strength has increased at the legalized user to improve
the secrecy rate, as shown in Fig. 6.
The work in [98] studied the IRS assisted multi-antenna
system in maximizing the secrecy count at the physical layer.
MISO system has explored the deployment of IRS to increase
secrecy rate by adding the SNR at receiver and suppressing the
SNR at the eavesdropper. The complex non-convex problem in
the above work is resolved by using an alternating algorithm
and path-following algorithm with closed-form solutions and
improved the secrecy count with a smaller number of itera-
tions [99]. It is also observed that the secrecy count is raised
when the authorized receiver is near the IRS. The remaining
factors, like increasing the distance between IRS and users, the
number of antennas, does not show any impact on the secrecy
count.
Cui et al. [100] compared the secrecy count of IRS-aided
and without IRS wireless networks. IRS block is placed
between the AP and users with the presence of eavesdroppers.
The channel from the source to the eavesdropper is treated
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12
stronger than the authorized channel at the receiver. Initially,
IRS is set to add the reflected signals constructively at the
user side to enhance the received signal strength. At the same
time, these signals are destructively added at the eavesdropper
to cancel its received power. AP beamforming was also
arranged to balance the signal power transmitted to IRS and
user/eavesdropper for signal raise/suppression.
The papers [101], [102] examined the IRS aided wireless
system added with Artificial Noise (AN) to improve the
secrecy count. Joint optimization difficulty has been solved by
imposing the alternating optimization algorithm. A penalty-
based approach, SCA and semidefinite relaxation methods
were used in [102] to resolve the non-convex problem. Results
showed that IRS assisted system with AN performed better
secrecy count when the eavesdroppers are increased. Further-
more, physical layer security can be maximized by properly
distributing the reflecting elements instead of deploying at only
one position.
To improve the secrecy count, we need to consider the
communication system performance, beamforming, and IRS
phase-shifts should find the closed-form solutions, in [103]
alternating algorithm based SDR, and charness-cooper trans-
formation (CCT) adopted then secrecy count is increased.
In [104] Low-resolution Digital-to-Analog converter (LDAC)
was considered to reduce the cost and power consumption for
IRS aided mmwave systems with hardware impairments. Fur-
thermore, the element-wise Block Coordinate Descent method
is introduced, which obtain the closed-form solution of phase-
shift to enhance the secrecy count.
The authors in [105] implemented IRS assisted multi-
carrier MIMO-OFDM system in improving the physical layer
security. The secrecy count enhancement was obtained by
optimizing the multi-carrier transmission beamforming and
IRS reflection coefficient matrix simultaneously with the
restrictions on the transmission power as well as unit modulus
of IRS reflecting factors. Since the optimization problem is
non-convex, the IRS reflecting factors problem has been solved
by the MM scheme and the Lagrange multiplier algorithm
is used to optimize the beamforming of the multi-carrier
MIMO channel. Furthermore, MM techniques are applied
again to minimize optimization of the IRS reflecting matrix.
Finally, IRS discrete phase shift problem is simplified by a
low complexity based Heuristic Projection Method (HPM)
to attain a sub-optimal solution, which increases the secrecy
count.
In this paper [106] different from physical layer security
with IRS aided network, a new IRS based backscatter jam-
ming has been investigated and compared the results. At the
transmitter, the beamforming is adjusted to estimate the source
to destination channel matrix with a total amount of transmit
power used to transfer confidential messages. To improve
the secrecy count, IRS is deployed to transform the received
secret message into a jamming signal by intelligently altering
the reflection elements, enabling the degraded signal at the
eavesdropper. For a perfect CSI scenario, IRS elements are
programmed to increase the maximum SINR of eavesdropper
subject to the SINR at the receiver. If the CSI is unknown,
then the passive beamforming reduces the SINR loss at
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
the eavesdropper and the receiver SINR loss probability by
implementing Gaussian channel errors [107].
IRS supported multi-antenna communication network devel-
oped to increase the secrecy rate with less time consumption,
while the eavesdroppers used multi-antennas to exploit the
signals transmitting towards the legalized receiver. The secrecy
count maximization is formulated as the joint optimization
problem, where the active beamforming at the BS and IRS
phase shift with alternating optimization techniques. The
issue of IRS phase shift control is translated into simple
form by using fractional programming and resolved repeat-
edly using Manifold Optimization (MO) [108]. On the other
hand, IRS deployed Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) commu-
nication has compared with both the decode-and-forward as
well as amplify-and-forward with a fixed-gain relay. The
results revealed that IRS assisted system outperforms the
relaying [109].
IRS assisted wireless systems equipped with M antennas
at AP, one user and one eavesdropper has been addressed
the physical layer security [110]. A deep neural network
is designed with a supervised learning method to train the
IRS phase shifts in real-time. For the multiple inputs, Keras
functional API model has been employed, which can effec-
tively handle the multi-input problems. The DNN architecture
consists of three sections. In the first section, the chan-
nel coefficients are obtained, the connection between the
channel coefficients and IRS phase shifts is realized in the
second section. The final section layers determined the IRS
phase shifts and resolved the joint optimization problem with
required constraints to improve the secrecy count [111].
In [112], [113] IRS-UAV based communication systems
have been examined the secrecy rate maximization where
UAV transmits the information to the user in the presence
of eavesdroppers. The joint optimization of power control,
path f UAV and phase-shift of the IRS was solved by
applying SCA [112]. And the IRS aided UAV MISO system
addressed SCA, second-order cone programming to maximize
the secrecy rate by optimizing the UAV location and IRS
phase-shift [113].
Yang et al. [114] introduced a modern Deep Reinforcement
Learning (DRL) based communication network for secure
beamforming, which enhance the learning capability and
secrecy performance. In this work, they investigated the opti-
mized beamforming versus eavesdroppers in different envi-
ronments. DL based Post Decision State (PDS) learning is
implemented to track the continuous channel state information
for every scenario, and learning capability is improved by
using Prioritized Experience Relay (PED).
Besides, [115] determined a training optimum data pro-
gramming model that optimizes transmitting efficiency by
enlarging delay restrictions while leveraging a large number
of communication sources and different kinds of modulation
techniques. To meet the network throughput of cognitive
radio aided vehicular systems, a Markov decision process
tool has been developed that found the intelligent spectrum
sharing, vehicle storing, the interaction between the vehicle
mobility and transmission methods, as well as required data
rate. The proposed Q-learning based methods obtained the
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SONG et al.: DEEP LEARNING ENABLED IRS FOR 6G INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY
Fig. 7. UAV-IRS interaction with ITS for 6G communications.
maximum data rate allocation process with lower costs and
delay constraints.
The paper [116] analyzed the secrecy rate maximization
in vehicular communication by using IRS technology. The
vehicular networks are classified into two categories, such
as V2V and V2I. the objective of the secrecy outage prob-
ability (SOP) in the V2V case, IRS helps two vehicles share
information with high QoS while being obstructed by other
entities. On the other hand, for the V2I situation, IRS operates
as a receiver that transfers the significant information to the
intelligent transmission systems, which received from vehicles.
Because of the inescapable security problems, the recent mass
manufacture and use of the IoT have raised severe concerns.
IoT security relies heavily on the architecture of connected
devices. To provide pleasant, hygienic, and secure interior
settings, heating-ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) tech-
nologies have already been used. As a result, for IIoTs,
where a wide variety of data users occur at various phases
of the network, a privacy-preserving shared data architecture
is required [117]–[119]. IRS aided communication network
via UAV is shown in Fig. 7.
IV. IRS A IDED ITS: C HALLENGES AND F UTURE
R ESEARCH D IRECTIONS
From the above discussions, it is obvious that implementing
DL enabled IRS with various communication technologies can
benefit the ITS in terms of SE, EE, channel estimation and
Secrecy. Applications of IRS in ITS via different technologies
are shown in Fig. 8. Meanwhile, the IRS’s power consumption
is often neglected in current IRS-assisted communication
systems, but it is also unknown how to power the IRS in
the THz transmission network. As a result, it is necessary
to think about the IRS’s power consumption and reflecting
coefficients together. The essential fundamental difficulties
described above must be mitigated. Conventional techniques
to IRS channel information probably assume that only one
reflection element is active at any given time, and the others
are disabled. For a widespread IRS with a great number
of reflection elements, so an element by element ON-OFF
based channel propagation framework is costly. Existing works
on IRS are mostly validated with only simulation results.
Therefore, significant research is needed to compare the theo-
retical results with the data collected by the experimental and
real-time implementation. Besides that, new efforts can take
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13
Fig. 8. Future research directions for IRS aided ITS.
into account IRS discrete phase shifts in order to empower
the practical implications of IRS aided SWIPT. However,
there still exists a few difficulties, open problems, and other
challenges, which has been discussed as follows.
A. Existing Challenges
• The IRS deployment for ITS: In the case of ITS, the
distance between the vehicles may vary in kilometer
ranges, so we need to find the proper deployment methods
for IRS supported ITS, such as the number of IRS
elements, how large sized IRS block has to be fixed
to acquire the ITS to operate in stipulated time. For
self-driving and intelligent transportation, IRS elements
should be fixed to the vehicles at the convenient position
that makes the strong propagation with communication
systems.
• Learning algorithm for ITS: Learning algorithm takes
a long time and required a lot of sources by using
DL-enabled IRS. With the massive IRS elements and
enormous vehicles need to find the optimal channel
conditions with robust connectivity as well as immediate
connects and disconnects issues with vehicle mobility.
The DL models need to perform most of the operations
like how quickly to train the networks, how deeply to
create the system, and what type of framework has to
design for the secure and safe execution of ITS. This
results in significant transmission delay and also security
problems.
• Training for extreme situations: We need reliable trans-
port systems, which can operate in a variety of conditions
such as weather changes, public meetings, vacations
and traffic delays caused by accidents or maintenance.
Under these situations with limited data, even very
small changes in given datasets of ITS, deep neural
network training may become a more challenging task
to detect the exact pathways. Further, there is a large
gap between the practical and simulated scenarios for
DL-based approaches for 6G ITS.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
14
Fig. 9. Applications of IRS in ITS via various technologies.
• Power Consumption Management: Modern communica-
tion requires an energy-efficient system that utilizes min-
imum power levels to satisfy the UEs with required data
rate. IRS concept has been implemented with reduced
power consumption by replacing relays with passive
reflective elements. IRS has been integrated with ITS in
which power consumption changes in various parts of a
vehicle significantly impact energy consumption.
• QoS for the ITS: Based on new innovations of ITS, the
highest QoS depends on how much comfort and safety
has been provided to the riders by predicting the number
of passengers in the vehicle, how many can pick, and
how much time passengers wait. All these concerns can
be addressed by DL algorithms with less time. However,
to develop proper models for ITS by using DL-enabled
IRS for ITS, these networks need huge datasets and
significant computational capacity to process the data.
• IRS in Public transportation vehicles: When an IRS aided
ITS is structured for the public transportation mode, there
will be a huge crowd, and many smart devices inside
a vehicle use a large amount of data that leads to the
rapid power consumption of communication networks
and battery capacity of the users. To make the comfort
and user friendliness in ITS, need to take significant
concern of battery capacity of the smart gadgets. Research
works in [120] suggested wireless energy transfer concept
and mobile edge computing techniques; however, more
investigations are needed to implement in practical sce-
narios. And some of the fundamental research directions
for IRS assisted ITS are depicted in Fig.9.
B. Future Research Directions
• Beamforming: 5G and beyond communication systems
will also operate in a higher frequency millimeter-wave
range. IRS deployment in between the transmitter and
receiver will allow the receiver to get the desired signal
strength in ITS. Need to optimize the beamforming at
the transmitter and IRS phase-shift. More research is
required in order to find the optimal joint active and
passive beamforming techniques.
• IRS phase shift: A large number of reflection elements in
practical environments cannot reflect the incident signal
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
towards the desired direction due to the passive behav-
iors. With that, existing signal processing implementation
becomes more difficult. So more investigations need
to find robust control over the phase shift of the IRS
elements.
• Pathloss: Pathloss factors for IRS is essential to determine
the practical IRS assisted ITS. Relays and backscatters
suffer from severe path loss due to the additional spread-
ing of the signal. Recent works investigated path loss for
the IRS based communication, although the experimental
results verification is still pending.
• Channel Modelling: Wireless networks with IRS depends
mostly on the passive elements. So, it is difficult to
apply signal processing methods to find the channel
estimation. Therefore, a novel procedure has to be imple-
mented to find the channel information and control
the network environment without deploying the power
amplifiers [121]. Recently AI/ML based techniques have
shown better results towards the channel estimation
involving ITS.
• Security: IRS aided ITS need to find the closed-form
expression to solve the convex problems, which leads to
an increase the system performance. A large number of
passive elements of IRS are used to increase the secrecy
count. Further research needs to be carried out to find
the optimal number of IRS elements for maximizing the
secrecy count.
• Different sensor models in ITS: ITS may receive and
sends the data from various sources these sources have
been equipped with different type of sensor models with
a variety of response behaviour. ITS has to develop the
proper architecture to deal with this multi-model learning.
DL-based techniques with IRS can help the ITS to learn
the sensor modalities with large amounts of data require-
ments. Reference [122] illustrated the significant methods
for a network to deal with different sensor models.
• Similarity tracking for ITS: Current ITS contains a very
large number of datasets, where the information is fre-
quently recorded as a video or images. And also, millions
of extra datasets are produced on a regular basis and
identifying relevant content can be a difficult process.
To address this problem DL approaches have been utilized
that train a DNN to analyze the data of images or video.
Later Locally Optimized Product Quantization (LOPQ)
technique has been used to index the datasets [123].
C. Impacts of IRS Assisted ITS on Society
Transportation is one of the largest income sources and
most essential part of everyone’s daily life from education,
medical emergency and business etc. Previous works on IRS
realized that IRS is a promising technology to enhance the
system performance, so IRS can also use in IRS aided ITS
may operate in a reliable environment then it shows more
positive impact on daily life. Specifically, autonomous vehicles
are strongly connected to the wireless networks through IRS to
improve safety, comfort and also help to reach the destination
within a stipulated time duration without further delay. IRS
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
SONG et al.: DEEP LEARNING ENABLED IRS FOR 6G INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY
usage in 6G-ITS massively helps the traffic control system to
precisely send and receive the information of school buses
as well as healthcare vehicles like ambulances, fire safety
vehicles, etc. Many more applications can extend their services
by overcoming the challenges and obstacles with IRS aided
ITS in practical scenarios.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this comprehensive study, we summarized the previous
research works, mostly discussing the phase shift optimization
problems and respective solution methods using DL for IRS
in 6G ITS. By going through the key literature of DL enabled
IRS for ITS, we articulated the new challenges brought
by IRS to 6G ITS and proposed several worthwhile future
research directions for improvement. Overall, IRS has the great
potential to enhance the performance of ITS supported by
6G communications by and is able to provide secure, robust,
and high-rate data services in the V2V and V2I scenarios.
However, it should also be fully noted that with a massive
increase in the number of reflecting elements for ITS, channel
estimation becomes more difficult and complex than that
of classical ITS without IRS. This is highly undesirable to
latency-critical ITS. Hence, DL based techniques are utilized
to solve the challenges of channel estimation with reduced
computational complexity and signaling overhead.
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Wei Song (Member, IEEE) received the M.S. degree
in soft engineering from the Dalian University of
Technology, China, and the Ph.D. degree from
Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, South Korea,
in 2010. He is currently working as a Distinguished
Professor with the Applied Technology College,
Soochow University, Suzhou, China. His research
interests include spatial modulation, MIMO, STBC,
and reconfigurable intelligent surface.
Shaik Rajak received the B.Tech. degree in
electronics and communication engineering from
JNTUH, Hyderabad, in 2013, and the M.Tech.
degree in electronics and communication engineer-
ing from JNTU, Hyderabad, in 2016. He is currently
pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Department of
Electronics and Communication Engineering, SRM
University, Amaravathi, India, under the supervision
of Dr. Sunil Chinnadurai. He has worked as an
Assistant Professor at the QIS College of Engineer-
ing and Technology, Andhra Pradesh, for a year. His
research interests include wireless communications, 5G, massive MIMO, IRS,
machine learning, and ITS. He was awarded a Gold Medal on Research Day
organized by SRM University-AP.
Shuping Dang (Member, IEEE) received the B.Eng.
degree (Hons.) in electrical and electronic engineer-
ing from The University of Manchester and the
B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering and automa-
tion from Beijing Jiaotong University in 2014 via
a joint ‘2+2’ dual-degree program and the D.Phil.
degree in engineering science from the Univer-
sity of Oxford in 2018. He joined the Research
and Development Center, Huanan Communication
Company Ltd., after graduating from the University
of Oxford and worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow
with the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering
Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
He is currently a Lecturer with the Department of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering, University of Bristol. His research interests include 6G commu-
nications, wireless communications, wireless security, and machine learning
for communications.
Authorized licensed use limited to: SRM University. Downloaded on July 27,2022 at 09:40:17 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
Ruijun Liu (Member, IEEE) received the M.S.
degree from Beihang University in 2009 and the
Ph.D. degree from the École Centrale de Nantes,
France, in 2013. He is currently working at Beijing
Technology and Business University. His current
research interests include machine learning, virtual
reality, and 3D reconstruction.
Jun Li (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D.
degree from Chonbuk National University, Jeonju,
South Korea, in 2016. He is currently an Associate
Professor with Guangzhou University, Guangzhou,
China. His research interests include spatial modu-
lation, OFDM with index modulation, and reconfig-
urable intelligent surface. He serves as a Reviewer
for IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON C OMMUNICATIONS,
IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON W IRELESS C OMMUNI -
CATIONS , IEEE J OURNAL ON S ELECTED A REAS
IN C OMMUNICATIONS, IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
I NTELLIGENT T RANSPORTATION S YSTEMS , and IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
V EHICULAR T ECHNOLOGY.
Sunil Chinnadurai (Member, IEEE) received the
M.S. degree in electronics and communication engi-
neering from Mid Sweden University, Sweden,
in 2012, and the Ph.D. degree in electronics and
communication engineering from Chonbuk National
University, South Korea, in 2018. He was working as
a Post-Doctoral Research Scientist with the Signal
Intelligence Research Center, Hanyang University,
Seoul, South Korea, for a year. Since March 2019,
he has been with SRM University, Amaravathi,
India, as an Assistant Professor. He has published
many papers in reputed journals and conferences. His research interests
include information theory, convex optimization, mathematical analysis,
hyperspectral image processing, and optimization of signal processing algo-
rithms for physical-layer wireless communication systems. He has received
the Best Paper Award at the 24th MSPT International Symposium in 2016.