Secrecy Efficiency Maximization in Intelligent Reflective Surfaces Assisted UAV Communications

This paper focuses on the secrecy efficiency maximization in intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)assisted unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)communication.With the popularization of UAV technology,more and more communication scenarios need UAV support.We consider using IRS to improve the secrecy efficiency.Specifically,IRS and UAV trajectories work together to counter potential eavesdroppers,while balancing the secrecy rate and energy consumption.The original problem is difficult to solve due to the coupling of optimization variables.We first introduce secrecy efficiency as an auxiliary variable and propose relaxation optimization problem,and then prove the equivalence between relaxation problem and the original problem.Then an iterative algorithm is proposed by applying the block coordinate descent(BCD)method and the inner approximationmethod.The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm converges fast and is superior to the existing schemes.In addition,in order to improve the robustness of the algorithm,we also pay attention to the case of obtaining imperfect channel state information(CSI).

On the achievable rate for double intelligent reflecting surface enhanced cognitive radio network

Intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)can efficiently improve the performance of wireless commu-nication networks by intelligently reconfiguring the wireless propagation environment.Recently,IRS has been integrated with cognitive radio(CR)network in order to improve the resource utilization of communication systems.It is a challenging issue for IRS-assisted CR networks to improve the rate performance of the secondary user(SU)through the rational design of IRS passive beamforming while limiting the interference to the primary network.This paper investigates the optimization of downlink rate of SU in a double-IRS-assisted CR network.The achievable rate is maximized by jointly optimizing the active beamforming vector at the secondary transmitter(SU-TX)and the coop-eratively passive reflective beamforming at the two distributed IRSs.To solve the proposed non-con-vex joint optimization problem,the alternating optimization(AO)and semidefinite relaxation(SDR)techniques are then adopted to iteratively optimize the two variables.Numerical results vali-date that the proposed double-IRS assisted system can significantly improve the performance of the CR network compared with the existing single-IRS assisted CR system.

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.

Impact of surface-reflected seismic waves on the seismic isolation performance of circular tunnel isolation layers

Seismic isolation is an effective strategy to mitigate the risk of seismic damage in tunnels.However,the impact of surface-reflected seismic waves on the effectiveness of tunnel isolation layers remains under explored.In this study,we employ the wave function expansion method to provide analytical solutions for the dynamic responses of linings in an elastic half-space and an infinite elastic space.By comparing the results of the two models,we investigate the seismic isolation effect of tunnel isolation layers induced by reflected seismic waves.Our findings reveal significant differences in the dynamic responses of the lining in the elastic half-space and the infinitely elastic space.Specifically,the dynamic stress concentration factor(DSCF)of the lining in the elastic half-space exhibits periodic fluctuations,influenced by the incident wave frequency and tunnel depth,while the DSCF in the infinitely elastic space remain stable.Overall,the seismic isolation application of the tunnel isolation layer is found to be less affected by surface-reflected seismic waves.Our results provide valuable insights for the design and assessment of the seismic isolation effect of tunnel isolation layers.

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.

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.

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.

机器学习在智能反射面辅助的通信系统中的应用综述

智能反射面(intelligent reflecting surfaces,IRS)可以通过大量低成本的无源反射元件巧妙地调整信号反射,从而动态改变无线信道,提高通信性能,目前已成为无线通信研究的焦点。然而,由于IRS的加入,整个通信系统变得更加复杂,系统的动态性也更高,使通信系统面临着许多新的挑战。机器学习(machine learning,ML)具有很强的数据处理与自适应能力,能够不断适应变化的环境和需求,可以很好地应对通信系统中的许多挑战。因此,使用ML解决IRS辅助的通信系统中的问题,已经成为当前研究的重点。基于此,对ML在IRS系统中的应用进行了系统性的概述,从IRS辅助的通信系统中存在的问题入手,分别从反射因子的设计与优化、信道处理与建模、资源分配和管理、安全性增强4个方面对ML在IRS系统中的应用进行阐述和分析,并讨论了将ML应用在IRS系统中的优势及未来的发展趋势与挑战。

Joint Beamforming for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Wireless Communication Using Statistical CSI

A joint beamforming algorithm is proposed for intelligent reflecting surface(IRS) aided wireless multiple-input multiple-output(MIMO) communication using statistical channel state information(CSI). The beamforming is done by alternatively optimizing the IRS reflecting coefficients and the covariance matrix of the transmit symbol vector, such that the ergodic rate of the system is maximized. The algorithm utilizes only the second order momentum of the random channel matrices and does assume any specific channel distribution, leading to a general framework for ergodic rate evaluation. A practical channel correlation model is configured to validate the performance gain. It is found that the rate can be enlarged by the joint optimization algorithm, however, the gain over that of randomly deployed reflecting coefficients depends highly on the relative correlation distance of the IRS elements and the spatial position of the IRS. In particular, the results suggest that IRS should be placed in the vicinity of either the transmitter or the receiver. Placing IRS far away from those positions is non-beneficial.

Towards Intelligent Reflecting Surface Empowered 6G Terahertz Communications: A Survey

Terahertz(THz)communications have been widely envisioned as a promising enabler to provide adequate bandwidth and achieve ultra-high data rates for sixth generation(6G)wireless networks.In order to mitigate blockage vulnerability caused by serious propagation attenuation and poor diffraction of THz waves,an intelligent reflecting surface(IRS),which manipulates the propagation of incident electromagnetic waves in a programmable manner by adjusting the phase shifts of passive reflecting elements,is proposed to create smart radio environments,improve spectrum efficiency and enhance coverage capability.Firstly,some prospective application scenarios driven by the IRS empowered THz communications are introduced,including wireless mobile communications,secure communications,unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)scenario,mobile edge computing(MEC)scenario and THz localization scenario.Then,we discuss the enabling technologies employed by the IRS empowered THz system,involving hardware design,channel estimation,capacity optimization,beam control,resource allocation and robustness design.Moreover,the arising challenges and open problems encountered in the future IRS empowered THz communications are also highlighted.Concretely,these emerging problems possibly originate from channel modeling,new material exploration,experimental IRS testbeds and intensive deployment.Ultimately,the combination of THz communications and IRS is capable of accelerating the development of 6G wireless networks.

Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces Enabled Cognitive Internet of Things Based on Practical Pathloss Model

In this paper,we aim to unlock the potential of intelligent reflecting surfaces(IRSs)in cognitive internet of things(loT).Considering that the secondary IoT devices send messages to the secondary access point(SAP)by sharing the spectrum with the primary network,the interference is introduced by the IoT devices to the primary access point(PAP)which profits from the IoT devices by pricing the interference power charged by them.A practical path loss model is adopted such that the IRSs deployed between the IoT devices and SAP serve as diffuse scatterers,but each reflected signal can be aligned with its own desired direction.Moreover,two transmission policies of the secondary network are investigated without/with a successive interference cancellation(SIC)technique.The signal-to-interference plus noise ratio(SINR)balancing is considered to overcome the nearfar effect of the IoT devices so as to allocate the resource fairly among them.We propose a Stackelberg game strategy to characterize the interaction between primary and secondary networks.For the proposed game,the Stackelberg equilibrium is analytically derived to optimally obtain the closed-form solution of the power allocation and interference pricing.Numerical results are demonstrated to validate the performance of the theoretical derivations.

Secure Multigroup Multicast Communication Systems via Intelligent Reflecting Surface

This paper considers a secure multigroup multicast multiple-input single-output(MISO)communication system aided by an intelligent reflecting surface(IRS).Specifically,we aim to minimize the transmit power at Alice via jointly optimizing the transmit beamformer,artificial noise(AN)vector and phase shifts at the IRS subject to the secrecy rate constraints as well as the unit modulus constraints of IRS phase shifts.To tackle the optimization problem,we first transform it into a semidefinite relaxation(SDR)problem,and then alternately update the transmit beamformer and AN matrix as well as the phase shifts at the IRS.In order to reduce the high computational complexity,we further propose a low-complexity algorithm based on second-order cone programming(SOCP).We decouple the optimization problem into two sub-problems and optimize the transmit beamformer,AN vector and the phase shifts alternately by solving two corresponding SOCP subproblem.Simulation results show that the proposed SDR and SOCP schemes require half or less transmit power than the scheme without IRS,which demonstrates the advantages of introducing IRS and the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Passive Beamforming Design for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted MIMO Systems

Intelligent reflecting surfaces(IRSs)constitute passive devices,which are capable of adjusting the phase shifts of their reflected signals,and hence they are suitable for passive beamforming.In this paper,we conceive their design with the active beamforming action of multiple-input multipleoutput(MIMO)systems used at the access points(APs)for improving the beamforming gain,where both the APs and users are equipped with multiple antennas.Firstly,we decouple the optimization problem and design the active beamforming for a given IRS configuration.Then we transform the optimization problem of the IRS-based passive beamforming design into a tractable non-convex quadratically constrained quadratic program(QCQP).For solving the transformed problem,we give an approximate solution based on the technique of widely used semidefinite relaxation(SDR).We also propose a low-complexity iterative solution.We further prove that it can converge to a locally optimal value.Finally,considering the practical scenario of discrete phase shifts at the IRS,we give the quantization design for IRS elements on basis of the two solutions.Our simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed solutions over the relevant benchmarks.

Delay Minimization for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Federated Learning

Federated learning(FL), which allows multiple mobile devices to cooperatively train a machine learning model without sharing their data with the central server, has received widespread attention.However, the process of FL involves frequent communications between the server and mobile devices,which incurs a long latency. Intelligent reflecting surface(IRS) provides a promising technology to address this issue, thanks to its capacity to reconfigure the wireless propagation environment. In this paper, we exploit the advantage of IRS to reduce the latency of FL. Specifically, we formulate a latency minimization problem for the IRS assisted FL system, by optimizing the communication resource allocations including the devices’ transmit-powers, the uploading time, the downloading time, the multi-user decomposition matrix and the phase shift matrix of IRS. To solve this non-convex problem, we propose an efficient algorithm which is based on the Block Coordinate Descent(BCD) and the penalty difference of convex(DC) algorithm to compute the solution. Numerical results are provided to validate the efficiency of our proposed algorithm and demonstrate the benefit of deploying IRS for reducing the latency of FL. In particular, the results show that our algorithm can outperform the baseline of Majorization-Minimization(MM) algorithm with the fixed transmit-power by up to 30%.

Effects of Aerosol Vertical Inhomogeneity on the Upwelling Radiance and Satellite Remote Sensing of Surface Reflectance

There are two widely used radiative models without consideration of aerosol inhomogeneity for satellite remote sensing application, the Homogeneous Model and the Two-layer Model with aerosol in the lower layer. In this paper, effects of the aerosol vertical inhomogeneity on upwelling radiance and satellite remote sensing of surface reflectance are analyzed through numerical simulations by using two models. As shown in the simulations by using 24 representative aerosol models, there is often a considerably large error in upwel-ling radiance calculated by two models (Homogeneous and Two-layer) for the short wavelength channel with strong molecular scattering, owing to the difference between molecular and aerosol scattering proper-ties. For the long wavelength channel, the error is small if aerosol optical parameters are less variable with height, but it could also be significant if there are aerosol layers with different scattering phase functions and single scattering albedo. The radiance errors by the Homogeneous Model and the Two-layer Model can be up to 31.4% and 31.5% for the clean atmosphere, and in case of turbid atmosphere 67.8% and 59.2%, respectively. The radiance error could result in a large uncertainty of surface reflectance retrievals, especially for the short wavelength channel and the strongly absorbing aerosol. For the turbid atmosphere with strong-ly absorbing aerosol, the Homogeneous Model and the Two-layer Model are not suitable for atmospheric correction application. Key words Satellite remote sensing - Aerosol inhomogeneity - Surface reflectance - Radiance

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.

Three-Component Model for Bidirectional Reflection Distribution Function of Thermal Coating Surfaces

We present a bidirectional reflection distribution function （BRDF） model for thermal coating surfaces based on a three-component reflection assumption, in which the specular reflection is given according to the microfacet theory and Snell＇s law, the multiple reflection is considered Nth cosine distributed, and the volume scattering is uniformly distributed in reflection angles according to the experimental results. This model describes the reflection characteristics of thermal coating surfaces more completely and reasonably. Simulation and measurement results of two thermal coating samples SR107 and S781 are given to validate that this three-component model significantly improves the modeling accuracy for thermal coating surfaces compared with the existing BRDF models.

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.