Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Multigroup Multicast MISO Communication Systems

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has recently been envisioned to offer unprecedented massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-like gains by deploying large-scale and low-cost passive reflection elements. By adjusting the reflection coefficients, the IRS can change the phase shifts on the impinging electromagnetic waves so that it can smartly reconfigure the signal propagation environment and enhance the power of the desired received signal or suppress the interference signal. In this paper, we consider downlink multigroup multicast communication systems assisted by an IRS. We aim for maximizing the sum rate of all the multicasting groups by the joint optimization of the precoding matrix at the base station (BS) and the reflection coefficients at the IRS under both the power and unit-modulus constraint. To tackle this non-convex problem, we propose two efficient algorithms. Specifically, a concave lower bound surrogate objective function has been derived firstly, based on which two sets of variables can be updated alternately by solving two corresponding second-order cone programming (SOCP) problems.Then, in order to reduce the computational complexity, we further adopt the majorization—minimization (MM) method for each set of variables at every iteration, and obtain the closed form solutions under loose surrogate objective functions. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate the benefits of the introduced IRS and the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms

Downlink and Uplink Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Networks: NOMA and OMA

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) are envisioned to provide reconfigurable wireless environments for future communication networks. In this paper, both downlink and uplink IRS-aided non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and orthogonal multiple access (OMA) networks are studied, in which an IRS is deployed to enhance the coverage by assisting a cell-edge user device (UD) to communicate with the base station (BS). To characterize system performance, new channel statistics of the BS-IRS-UD link with Nakagami-$m$ fading are investigated. For each scenario, the closed-form expressions for the outage probability and ergodic rate are derived. To gain further insight, the diversity order and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) slope for each scenario are obtained according to asymptotic approximations in the high-SNR regime. It is demonstrated that the diversity order is affected by the number of IRS reflecting elements and Nakagami fading parameters, but the high-SNR slope is not related to these parameters. Simulation results validate our analysis and reveal the superiority of the IRS over the full-duplex decode-and-forward relay.Comment: Accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication