Joint Active and Passive Beamforming Design in Intelligent Reflecting Surface(IRS)-Assisted Covert Communications:A Multi-Agent DRL Approach

Intelligent Reflecting Surface(IRS),with the potential capability to reconstruct the electromagnetic propagation environment,evolves a new IRSassisted covert communications paradigm to eliminate the negligible detection of malicious eavesdroppers by coherently beaming the scattered signals and suppressing the signals leakage.However,when multiple IRSs are involved,accurate channel estimation is still a challenge due to the extra hardware complexity and communication overhead.Besides the crossinterference caused by massive reflecting paths,it is hard to obtain the close-formed solution for the optimization of covert communications.On this basis,the paper improves a heterogeneous multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient(MADDPG)approach for the joint active and passive beamforming(Joint A&P BF)optimization without the channel estimation,where the base station(BS)and multiple IRSs are taken as different types of agents and learn to enhance the covert spectrum efficiency(CSE)cooperatively.Thanks to the‘centralized training and distributed execution’feature of MADDPG,each agent can execute the active or passive beamforming independently based on its partial observation without referring to others.Numeral results demonstrate that the proposed deep reinforcement learning(DRL)approach could not only obtain a preferable CSE of legitimate users and a low detection of probability(LPD)of warden,but also alleviate the communication overhead and simplify the IRSs deployment.

Cooperative User-Scheduling and Resource Allocation Optimization for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Enhanced LEO Satellite Communication

Lower Earth Orbit(LEO) satellite becomes an important part of complementing terrestrial communication due to its lower orbital altitude and smaller propagation delay than Geostationary satellite. However, the LEO satellite communication system cannot meet the requirements of users when the satellite-terrestrial link is blocked by obstacles. To solve this problem, we introduce Intelligent reflect surface(IRS) for improving the achievable rate of terrestrial users in LEO satellite communication. We investigated joint IRS scheduling, user scheduling, power and bandwidth allocation(JIRPB) optimization algorithm for improving LEO satellite system throughput.The optimization problem of joint user scheduling and resource allocation is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem. To cope with this problem, the nonconvex optimization problem is divided into resource allocation optimization sub-problem and scheduling optimization sub-problem firstly. Second, we optimize the resource allocation sub-problem via alternating direction multiplier method(ADMM) and scheduling sub-problem via Lagrangian dual method repeatedly.Third, we prove that the proposed resource allocation algorithm based ADMM approaches sublinear convergence theoretically. Finally, we demonstrate that the proposed JIRPB optimization algorithm improves the LEO satellite communication system throughput.

Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Transmission Optimization Strategies in Wireless Networks

Wireless Power Transfer(WPT)technology can provide real-time power for many terminal devices in Internet of Things(IoT)through millimeterWave(mmWave)to support applications with large capacity and low latency.Although the intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)can be adopted to create effective virtual links to address the mmWave blockage problem,the conventional solutions only adopt IRS in the downlink from the Base Station(BS)to the users to enhance the received signal strength.In practice,the reflection of IRS is also applicable to the uplink to improve the spectral efficiency.It is a challenging to jointly optimize IRS beamforming and system resource allocation for wireless energy acquisition and information transmission.In this paper,we first design a Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy(LEACH)clustering protocol for clustering and data collection.Then,the problem of maximizing the minimum system spectral efficiency is constructed by jointly optimizing the transmit power of sensor devices,the uplink and downlink transmission times,the active beamforming at the BS,and the IRS dynamic beamforming.To solve this non-convex optimization problem,we propose an alternating optimization(AO)-based joint solution algorithm.Simulation results show that the use of IRS dynamic beamforming can significantly improve the spectral efficiency of the system,and ensure the reliability of equipment communication and the sustainability of energy supply under NLOS link.

Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Aided Secure and Covert Communications

This work employs intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)to enhance secure and covert communication performance.We formulate an optimization problem to jointly design both the reflection beamformer at IRS and transmit power at transmitter Alice in order to optimize the achievable secrecy rate at Bob subject to a covertness constraint.We first develop a Dinkelbach-based algorithm to achieve an upper bound performance and a high-quality solution.For reducing the overhead and computational complexity of the Dinkelbach-based scheme,we further conceive a low-complexity algorithm in which analytical expression for the IRS reflection beamforming is derived at each iteration.Examination result shows that the devised low-complexity algorithm is able to achieve similar secrecy rate performance as the Dinkelbach-based algorithm.Our examination also shows that introducing an IRS into the considered system can significantly improve the secure and covert communication performance relative to the scheme without IRS.

Intelligent reflecting surface for sum rate enhancement in MIMO systems

The research for the Intelligent Reflecting Surface(IRS)which has the advantages of cost and energy efficiency has been studied.Channel capacity can be effectively increased by appropriately setting the phase value of IRS elements according to the channel conditions.However,the problem of obtaining an appropriate phase value of IRs is difficult to solve due to the non-convex problem.This paper proposes an iterative algorithm for the alternating optimal solution in the Single User Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output(SU-MIMO)systems.The proposed iterative algorithm finds an alternating optimal solution that is the phase value of IRS one by one.The results show that the proposed method has better performance than that of the randomized IRS systems.The number of iterations for maximizing the performance of the proposed algorithm depends on the channel state between the IRS and the receiver.

Performance Analysis of Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Wireless Communication System

In this paper,we investigate the end-to-end performance of intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)-assisted wireless communication systems.We consider a system in which an IRS is deployed on a uniform planar array(UPA)configuration,including a large number of reflecting elements,where the transmitters and receivers are only equipped with a single antenna.Our objective is to analytically obtain the achievable ergodic rate,outage probability,and bit error rate(BER)of the system.Furthermore,to maximize the system’s signal-to-noise ratio(SNR),we design the phase shift of each reflecting element and derive the optimal reflection phase of the IRS based on the channel state information(CSI).We also derive the exact expression of the SNR probability density function(p.d.f.)and show that it follows a non-central Chi-square distribution.Using the p.d.f.,we then derive the theoretical results of the achievable rate,outage probability,and BER.The accuracy of the obtained theoretical results is also verified through numerical simulation.Itwas shown that the achievable rate,outage probability,and BER could be improved by increasing the number of reflecting elements and choosing an appropriate SNR regime.Furthermore,we also find that the IRS-assisted communication system achieves better performance than the existing end-to-end wireless communication.

Intelligent reflecting surface-assisted cognitive radio-inspired rate-splitting multiple access systems

Intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)has been widely regarded as a promising technology for configuring wireless propagation environments.In this paper,we utilize IRS to assist transmission of a secondary user(SU)in a cognitive radio-inspired rate-splitting multiple access(CR-RSMA)system in which a primary user's(PU's)quality of service(QoS)requirements must be guaranteed.Without introducing intolerable interference to deteriorate the PU's outage performance,the SU conducts rate-splitting to transmit its signal to the base-station through the direct link and IRS reflecting channels.For the IRS-assisted CR-RSMA(IRS-CR-RSMA)scheme,we derive the optimal transmit power allocation,target rate allocation,and successive interference cancellation decoding order to enhance the outage performance of the SU.The closed-form expression for the SU's outage probability achieved by the IRS-CR-RSMA scheme is derived.Various simulation results are presented to clarify the enhanced outage performance achieved by the proposed IRS-CR-RSMA scheme over the CR-RSMA scheme.

Intelligent reflecting surface-assisted federated learning in multi-platoon collaborative networks

Inspired by mobile edge computing(MEC),edge learning has gained a momentum by directly performing model training at network edge without sending massive data to a centralized data center.However,the quality of model training will be affected by the limited communication and computing resources of network edge.In this paper,how to improve the training performance of a federated learning system aided by intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)over vehicle platooning networks is studied,where multiple platoons train a shared federated learning model.Multi-platoon cooperation can alleviate the pressure of data processing caused by the limited computing resources of single platoon.Meanwhile,IRS can enhance the inter-platoon communication in a cost-effective and energy-efficient manner.Firstly,the federated learning optimization problem of maximizing the learning accuracy is formulated by jointing platoon scheduling,bandwidth allocation and phase shifts at the IRS to maximize the number of scheduled platoon.Specif-ically,in the proposed learning architecture each platoon updates the learning model with its own data and uploads it to the global model through IRS-based wireless networks.Then,a method based on sequential optimization algorithm(SOA)and a group-based optimization method are analyzed for single IRS aided and large-scale IRS aided commu-nication,respectively.Finally,a platoon scheduling scheme is designed based on the communication reliability and computing reliability of platoons.Simulation results demonstrate that large-scale IRS assisted communication can effectively improve the reliability of multi-user communication networks.The scheduling scheme based on learning reliability balances the communication performance and computing performance of platoons.

Outage Behaviors of Active Intelligent Reflecting Surface Enabled NOMA Communications

Active intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)is a novel and promising technology that is able to overcome the multiplicative fading introduced by passive IRS.In this paper,we consider the application of active IRS to nonorthogonalmultiple access(NOMA)networks,where the incident signals are amplified actively through integrating amplifier to reflecting elements.More specifically,the performance of active/passive IRS-NOMA networks is investigated over large and small-scale fading channels.Aiming to characterize the performance of active IRSNOMA networks,the exact and asymptotic expressions of outage probability for a couple of users,i.e.,near-end user n and far-end user m are derived by exploiting a 1-bit coding scheme.Based on approximated analyses,the diversity orders of user n and user m are obtained for active IRS-NOMA.In addition,the system throughput of active IRS-NOMA is discussed in the delay-sensitive transmission.The simulation results are carried out to verify that:i)The outage behaviors of active IRS-NOMAnetworks are superior to that of passive IRS-NOMAnetworks;ii)As the reflection amplitude factors increase,the active IRS-NOMAnetworks are capable of furnishing the enhanced outage performance;and iii)The active IRS-NOMA has a larger system throughput than passive IRS-NOMA and conventional communications.

IRS辅助的感知增强认知无线电网络资源分配方案

在过去的几十年里,大部分可用频谱已被用于高速通信服务。这导致了无线通信系统中的频谱资源稀缺问题。另一方面,大量可用频谱的利用率并不高。为提升通信系统的频谱利用率,学界提出了基于共享的认知无线电技术。认知无线电允许次用户与主用户共享频谱资源,对于提升无线通信网络的频谱效率十分重要,然而目前基于认知无线电的通信网络存在着低信噪比情况下感知性能低下、严苛干扰条件下性能提升受限等缺点。最近,智能反射面(Intelligent Reflecting Surface,IRS)被广泛应用在无线通信的各个领域,可以智能调控无线传输环境以满足频谱和能效的高要求。为了进一步提升认知无线电感知性能与频谱效率,提出了一种新颖的IRS辅助的感知增强频谱共享认知无线电网络。针对此网络,建立了次用户和速率最大化优化问题,联合优化次基站波束赋形向量、智能反射面相移矩阵、感知时间。因存在变量耦合,所构建的优化问题是非凸的,提出一种基于块坐标下降(Block Coordinate Descent,BCD)的迭代算法以交替优化波束形成和智能反射面相位以及感知时间。以逐次凸逼近(Successive Convex Approximation,SCA)求解非凸目标和约束函数,并利用半正定松弛(Semidefinite Relaxation,SDR)解决秩一条件约束,采用一维搜索来寻找最佳感知时间。通过仿真结果证明提出的方法能够快速收敛且对认知无线电网络的感知性能以及频谱效率有较大提升作用。

IRS辅助的车联网相移设计和信道对齐策略

针对车联网中车辆的动态移动以及信号的随机散射所导致的信道快速变化问题,研究了智能反射面(intelligent reflecting surface,IRS)辅助的车联网通信并提出了联合相移设计和信道对齐策略,以削减车联网中多普勒频移的影响并提升通信性能。提出的策略由两个阶段构成。在第一阶段设计IRS的相移以改善级联信道的衰落状态,在策略的第二阶段进行修正函数的设计,实现了直接信道和级联信道的信道对齐,从而减少直接信道快衰落状态对通信性能的影响。通过联合相移设计和信道对齐策略中设计的反射相移以及修正函数,实现了通信性能的提升。仿真结果表明,所提策略相比于相移优化策略可以提升8.8%的频谱效率。

IRS辅助的全双工通感一体化波束成形设计

为了解决传统通感一体化(integrated sensing and communication,ISAC)场景中通信和感知系统收发信号的切换频率差异以及通信易受障碍物阻挡的问题,将全双工(full-duplex,FD)技术和智能反射面(intelligent reflecting surface,IRS)引入ISAC系统,研究ISAC场景下IRS辅助的FD波束成形设计。基于IRS相移约束、基站接收波束成形约束、基站最大发射功率约束、上行用户最大发射功率约束、雷达感知阈值约束,建立了上下行用户和速率最大化波束成形优化问题。利用交替优化、连续凸逼近、半正定松弛、变量替换、半正定规划将原非凸优化问题转换成凸优化问题进行求解。仿真结果表明,在所考虑的通信性能指标下,所提方案相比对应的半双工和随机IRS方案分别提升了89.02%和70.15%。

空中IRS辅助的MISO系统安全鲁棒资源分配算法

空中智能反射面(Aerial Intelligent Reflecting Surface,AIRS)结合了空中平台与智能反射面(Intelligent Reflecting Surface,IRS)的优势,能被灵活地部署在各种无线网络拓扑中以提高通信系统的性能指标。针对无线传输易受到障碍物阻挡和用户窃听而导致传输质量差和安全性能低的问题,本文提出了一种AIRS辅助的多输入单输出(Multiple-Input Single-Output,MISO)通信系统安全鲁棒资源分配算法。考虑到窃听信道的不确定性,以最大化系统的最坏情况总保密速率为目标,在满足基站最大发射功率约束、AIRS相移约束、AIRS部署位置约束以及合法用户最小保密速率约束的条件下,建立了一个联合设计基站主动波束成形、多个AIRS被动波束成形以及多个AIRS部署位置的多变量资源分配问题。然而,优化变量之间的高度耦合导致所建立的问题是复杂非凸的。为了求解上述非凸问题,首先利用块坐标下降(Block Coordinate Descent,BCD)方法将原问题分解为三个子问题,然后应用变量松弛、罚函数以及连续凸近似(Successive Convex Approximation,SCA)等方法来处理这些非凸子问题,最后提出一种交替迭代算法对原优化问题进行迭代求解。仿真结果表明,所提出的资源分配算法相较于其他基准算法能够更为显著地提高通信系统的最坏情况总保密速率并且具有良好的鲁棒性。这一结果不仅验证了AIRS在实现安全无线通信方面的巨大潜力,同时也突显出合理设计AIRS部署位置及其被动波束成形的重要性。

非理想CSI下IRS辅助MISO保密速率最大化方法

基于智能反射面辅助多输入、单输出的安全无线通信系统,提出一种最大化系统保密速率为目标联合主被动波束形成算法.考虑非理想信道状态信息下基站发射波束成形向量和无源智能反射面相移矩阵联合优化设计问题.为解决非凸分式规划问题,通过Charnes-Cooper变换引入两个辅助变量,将单项分式问题转化为差的形式,同时采用一种交替迭代优化联合半正定松弛方法,得到易于求解的凸问题.仿真实验结果表明,该算法相比传统算法,有效提升了系统的安全性,保密性能提升10%~30%,且在一定信道状态信息误差下保密速率下降不明显,具有较强的鲁棒性.

城市街道下场景IRS辅助D2D通信系统波束成形设计

针对城市街道场景下蜂窝用户和D2D通信用户共享频谱以及城市街道下无线信道特性,该文提出一种IRS辅助的联合波束成形设计方法。在D2D链路信号与干扰加噪声比的约束下,以最大化蜂窝用户容量为目标,设计了最优的波束形成向量、相移矩阵和D2D链路发射功率。引入松弛变量将非凸且变量耦合的优化问题转换为解耦后的凸优化问题和二分法搜索功率分配,采用黎曼共轭梯度算法对反射相移矩阵进行优化。仿真结果表明,所提算法收敛性较好,且与基准方案相比能有效地提升用户信道容量。

一种基于IRS和UAV辅助通信系统分析

为提升智能反射面(IRS)和无人机(UAV)辅助混合通信系统的数据传输速率,提出一种优化用户速率方案。该方案考虑了全双工UAV(FD-UAV)辅助传输模式,IRS辅助传输模式和IRS、FD-UAV辅助混合传输模式(IRS-FD-UAV)。建立联合IRS被动波束形成相位(PBP)和UAV/IRS位置的最大化用户速率的目标问题。考虑目标问题的非凸性,利用块坐标下降法(BCD)将原目标问题分解成2个子问题,分别利用黎曼共轭梯度法和交替求解法求解。性能分析表明,相比于FD-UAV和IRS辅助传输模式,IRS-FD-UAV辅助传输模式具有较高的传输速率。

IRS辅助去蜂窝大规模MIMO系统反窃听安全波束赋形研究

为提高物理层安全通信性能,针对目前物理层通信容易受到建筑物遮挡和非法用户窃听的问题,提出了一种智能反射面(intelligent reflecting surface,IRS)辅助去蜂窝大规模多输入多输出(multiple-input multiple-output,MIMO)系统反窃听安全传输波束赋形方案。考虑信道理想的情况下,以还原合法用户接收信号和阻止非法用户接收信号为目标,最小化发射波束赋形向量,构建了一个基站主动波束赋形向量和IRS相移的联合波束赋形问题。通过交替优化将原问题分解为基站波束赋形向量优化子问题和IRS相移优化子问题,并通过解非齐次线性方程组思想的方法,对优化子问题进行求解。仿真结果表明,相较于传统物理层安全通信方案,提出的方案能够有效使非法用户窃听信号为0,降低传输功率,并且具有较好的误码率。

IRS辅助上行NOMA和速率最大化方案

针对非正交多址接入(non-orthogonal multiple access,NOMA)系统在无线环境下传输速率较低的问题,利用智能反射面(intelligent reflecting surface,IRS)可以改变入射信号相移的特性,提出一种基于IRS辅助上行NOMA和速率最大化算法.首先,在满足每个用户功率、每个用户最小速率、IRS相位偏移的约束条件下,构建一个联合用户功率、IRS相移多变量优化模型;然后,通过问题公式的等效简化将原非凸问题转换为2个容易处理的子问题;最后,通过交替方向乘子法(alternating direction method of multipliers,ADMM)、引入松弛变量等方法对子问题进行求解.仿真结果表明,相较于逐次凸逼近法(successiveconvexapproximation,SCA)所提出的算法平均提升了系统0.4 bit/(s·Hz)的和速率,证明了基于ADMM的算法有效提高系统的和速率.

双IRS辅助大规模MIMO系统中基于双时间尺度的信道估计方案

在双智能反射面(IRS)辅助的大规模多入多出(MIMO)通信系统中,为获取信道状态信息(CSI)而进行的信道估计需要较大的导频开销。考虑到基站(BS)-IRS信道与IRS-IRS信道具有高维且准静态的特性,而IRS-用户(UE)信道具有低维且时变的特性,本文提出一种基于双时间尺度的信道估计方案。首先,对于准静态信道,由BS发送导频并基于坐标下降算法和最小二乘法分别估计BS-IRS信道和IRS-IRS信道。然后根据准静态信道的估计结果进一步基于最小二乘法估计IRS-UE信道。仿真结果表明,本文所提出的方案可以采用低于对比方案50%的导频开销来获取低于对比方案近10 dB的估计归一化均方误差(NMSE),实现用更少的导频开销获取更高的信道估计精度。

利用元学习算法的IRS-OTFS通信系统信道估计

针对高多普勒场景下智能反射表面(IRS)辅助多用户通信系统存在的信道估计传输开销大的问题,该文结合正交时频空间(OTFS)调制特点构造一种IRS-OTFS通信系统,充分发挥IRS和OTFS的性能优势,并在此基础上提出一种学习率自适应的模型无关元学习(MAML)算法。对IRS-OTFS多用户信道估计任务做离线训练,根据各任务的收敛速度自适应地调整学习率,防止训练失衡,并利用信道之间的相关性和MAML算法的少样本、泛化特性得到全局模型和适应性模型,快速学习新用户信道的传输特性,降低传输开销,提高信道估计准确性。理论分析和仿真结果表明,该算法在信道传输条件相同的情况下,将传输开销降低了大约50%,并相对于基准算法有4.8 dB左右的性能提升。