Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Enhanced Radar Detection with Beam Broadening

Pedestrian detection becomes a challenging issue in autonomous urban driving when direct echoes are blocked by obstacles. To improve the detection performance of the vehicular radar, we propose in this letter an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted radar detection system, where an IRS is deployed at intersection corners to help extend the detection coverage from the radar to a given detection area. To this end, we design a new protocol containing the beam broadening method for the IRS reflection design to maximize the worst-case signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for all points within the detection area. Simulation results show that the proposed method outperforms various benchmark schemes in terms of detection accuracy.