Autonomous Guidance of an Aerial Drone for Maintaining an Effective Wireless Communication Link with a Moving Node Using an Intelligent Reflecting Surface

The excellent 3D mobility has made aerial drones (ADs) good candidates to improve the coverage of wireless communication networks. However, the effectiveness/efficiency of an AD (as an aerial active relay) is questionable for holding a continuous line-of-sight (LoS) link with a moving node (MN) in fifth-generation (5G) millimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless networks due to the signal propagations/blockage issues. Nevertheless, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) technology has been introduced as a useful and energy-efficient method to improve the spectrum efficiency of 5G networks. In this paper, an AD equipped with IRS is proposed and autonomously navigated to maintain a continuous wireless link with an MN. The MN can be a vehicle moving through a dense urban environment. Simulation results corroborate the effectiveness of the method.