  A statistical characterization of the fundamental performance bounds of an
intelligent reflective surface (IRS) intended for aiding wireless
communications is presented. To this end, the outage probability, average
symbol error probability, and achievable rate bounds are derived in
closed-form. By virtue of asymptotic analysis in the high signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) regime, the achievable diversity order is derived. Thereby, we show that
a diversity gain in the order of the number of passive reflective elements
embedded within the IRS can be achieved with only controllable phase
adjustments. Thus, IRS has a great potential of boosting the wireless
performance by intelligently controlling the propagation channels without
employing additional active radio frequency chains.
