Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Assisted Localization: Performance Analysis and Algorithm Design

Meng Hua, Qingqing Wu*, Wen Chen, Zesong Fei, Hing Cheung So, Chau Yuen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

47 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The target sensing/localization performance is fundamentally limited by the line-of-sight link and severe signal attenuation over long distances. This letter considers a challenging scenario where the direct link between the base station (BS) and the target is blocked due to the surrounding blockages and leverages the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) with some active sensors, termed as semi-passive IRS, for localization. To be specific, the active sensors receive echo signals reflected by the target and apply signal processing techniques to estimate the target location. We consider the joint time-of-arrival (ToA) and direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation for localization and derive the corresponding Cramér-Rao bound (CRB), and then a simple ToA/DoA estimator without iteration is proposed. In particular, the relationships of the CRB for ToA/DoA with the number of frames for IRS beam adjustments, number of IRS reflecting elements, and number of sensors are theoretically analyzed and demystified. Simulation results show that the proposed semi-passive IRS architecture provides sub-meter level positioning accuracy even over a long localization range from the BS to the target and also demonstrate a significant localization accuracy improvement compared to the fully passive IRS architecture.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)84-88
Number of pages5
JournalIEEE Wireless Communications Letters
Volume13
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2024

Keywords

  • Cramer-Rao bound (CRB)
  • Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)
  • direction-of-arrival (DoA)
  • target localization
  • time-of-arrival (ToA)

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