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).

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Fairness-Aware Harvested Energy Efficiency Algorithm for IRS-Aided Intelligent Sensor Networks with SWIPT

In this paper,a novel fairness-aware harvested energy efficiency-based green transmission scheme for wireless information and power transfer(SWIPT)aided sensor networks is developed for active beamforming of multiantenna transmitter and passive beamforming at intelligent reflecting surfaces(IRS).By optimizing the active beamformer assignment at the transmitter in conjunction with the passive beamformer assignment at the IRS,we aimtomaximize the minimumharvested energy efficiency among all the energy receivers(ER)where information receivers(IR)are bound to the signal-interference-noise-ratio(SINR)and the maximum transmitted power of the transmitter.To handle the non-convex problem,both semi-definite relaxation(SDR)and block coordinate descent technologies are exploited.Then,the original problem is transformed into two convex sub-problems which can be solved via semidefinite programming.Numerical simulation results demonstrate that the IRS and energy beamformer settings in this paper provide greater system gain than the traditional experimental setting,thereby improving the fairness-aware harvested energy efficiency of the ER.

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.

IRS Assisted UAV Communications against Proactive Eavesdropping in Mobile Edge Computing Networks

In this paper,we consider mobile edge computing(MEC)networks against proactive eavesdropping.To maximize the transmission rate,IRS assisted UAV communications are applied.We take the joint design of the trajectory of UAV,the transmitting beamforming of users,and the phase shift matrix of IRS.The original problem is strong non-convex and difficult to solve.We first propose two basic modes of the proactive eavesdropper,and obtain the closed-form solution for the boundary conditions of the two modes.Then we transform the original problem into an equivalent one and propose an alternating optimization(AO)based method to obtain a local optimal solution.The convergence of the algorithm is illustrated by numerical results.Further,we propose a zero forcing(ZF)based method as sub-optimal solution,and the simulation section shows that the proposed two schemes could obtain better performance compared with traditional schemes.

Distributed IRS-Aided DF Relaying Systems:Performance Analysis and Optimization

Intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)is a newly emerged and promising paradigm to substantially improve the performance of wireless communications by constructing favorable communication channels via properly tuning massive reflecting elements.This paper considers a distributed IRS aided decode-and-forward(DF)relaying system over Nakagami-m fading channels.Based on a tight approximation for the distribution of the received signalto-noise ratio(SNR),we first derive exact closed-form expressions of the outage probability,ergodic capacity,and energy efficiency for the considered system.Moreover,we propose the optimal IRS configuration considering the energy efficiency and pilot overhead.Finally,we compare the performance between the distributed IRS-aided DF relaying and multi-IRS-only systems,and verify the analytical results by using monte carlo simulations.

Transmit Power Minimization for IRS-Assisted NOMA-UAV Networks

The flexibility of unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)allows them to be quickly deployed to support ground users.Intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)can reflect the incident signal and form passive beamforming to enhance the signal in the specific direction.Motivated by the promising benefits of both technologies,we consider a new scenario in this paper where a UAV uses non-orthogonal multiple access to serve multiple users with IRS.According to their distance to the UAV,the users are divided into the close users and remote users.The UAV hovers above the close users due to their higher rate requirement,while the IRS is deployed near the remote users to enhance their received power.We aim at minimizing the transmit power of UAV by jointly optimizing the beamforming of UAV and the phase shift of IRS while ensuring the decoding requirement.However,the problem is non-convex.Therefore,we decompose it into two sub-problems,including the transmit beamforming optimization and phase shift optimization,which are transformed into second-order cone programming and semidefinite programming,respectively.We propose an iterative algorithm to solve the two sub-problems alternatively.Simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in minimizing the transmit power of UAV.

Outage Analysis of Optimal UAV Cooperation with IRS via Energy Harvesting Enhancement Assisted Computational Offloading

The utilization of mobile edge computing(MEC)for unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)communication presents a viable solution for achieving high reliability and low latency communication.This study explores the potential of employing intelligent reflective surfaces(IRS)andUAVs as relay nodes to efficiently offload user computing tasks to theMEC server system model.Specifically,the user node accesses the primary user spectrum,while adhering to the constraint of satisfying the primary user peak interference power.Furthermore,the UAV acquires energy without interrupting the primary user’s regular communication by employing two energy harvesting schemes,namely time switching(TS)and power splitting(PS).The selection of the optimal UAV is based on the maximization of the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio.Subsequently,the analytical expression for the outage probability of the system in Rayleigh channels is derived and analyzed.The study investigates the impact of various system parameters,including the number of UAVs,peak interference power,TS,and PS factors,on the system’s outage performance through simulation.The proposed system is also compared to two conventional benchmark schemes:the optimal UAV link transmission and the IRS link transmission.The simulation results validate the theoretical derivation and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme over the benchmark schemes.

Resource Allocation for IRS Assistedmm Wave Wireless Powered Sensor Networks with User Cooperation

In this paper,we investigate IRS-aided user cooperation(UC)scheme in millimeter wave(mmWave)wirelesspowered sensor networks(WPSN),where two single-antenna users are wireless powered in the wireless energy transfer(WET)phase first and then cooperatively transmit information to a hybrid access point(AP)in the wireless information transmission(WIT)phase,following which the IRS is deployed to enhance the system performance of theWET andWIT.We maximized the weighted sum-rate problem by jointly optimizing the transmit time slots,power allocations,and the phase shifts of the IRS.Due to the non-convexity of the original problem,a semidefinite programming relaxation-based approach is proposed to convert the formulated problem to a convex optimization framework,which can obtain the optimal global solution.Simulation results demonstrate that the weighted sum throughput of the proposed UC scheme outperforms the non-UC scheme whether equipped with IRS or not.

Energy Efficiency Maximization in Mobile Edge Computing Networks via IRS assisted UAV Communications

In this paper,we investigate the energy efficiency maximization for mobile edge computing(MEC)in intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)assisted unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)communications.In particular,UAVcan collect the computing tasks of the terrestrial users and transmit the results back to them after computing.We jointly optimize the users’transmitted beamforming and uploading ratios,the phase shift matrix of IRS,and the UAV trajectory to improve the energy efficiency.The formulated optimization problem is highly non-convex and difficult to be solved directly.Therefore,we decompose the original problem into three sub-problems.We first propose the successive convex approximation(SCA)based method to design the beamforming of the users and the phase shift matrix of IRS,and apply the Lagrange dual method to obtain a closed-form expression of the uploading ratios.For the trajectory optimization,we propose a block coordinate descent(BCD)based method to obtain a local optimal solution.Finally,we propose the alternating optimization(AO)based overall algorithmand analyzed its complexity to be equivalent or lower than existing algorithms.Simulation results show the superiority of the proposedmethod compared with existing schemes in energy efficiency.

Intelligent reflecting surfaces-assisted millimeter wave communication:Channel estimation based on deep learning

In response to the challenge posed by the complexity of the system and the difficulty in obtaining accurate channel state information(CSI)for millimeter wave communication assisted by intelligent reflecting surfaces(IRS),we propose a deep learning-based channel estimation scheme.The proposed scheme employs a hybrid active/passive IRS architecture,wherein the least square(LS)algorithm is initially utilized to acquire the channel estimate from the active elements.Subsequently,this estimation is interpolated to obtain a preliminary channel estimation and ultimately refined into an accurate estimate of the channel using the channel super-resolution convolutional neural network(Chan-SRCNN)deep learning network.The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme surpasses LS,orthogonal matching pursuit(OMP),synchronous OMP(SOMP),and deep neural network(DNN)channel estimation algorithms in terms of normalized mean squared error(NMSE)performance,thereby validating the feasibility of the proposed approach.

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.

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.

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%.