Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is an emerging technology for future wireless communications including 5G and especially 6G. It consists of a large 2D array of (semi-)passive scattering elements that control the electromagnetic properties of radio-frequency waves so that the reflected signals add coherently at the intended receiver or destructively to reduce co-channel interference. The promised gains of IRS-assisted communications depend on the accuracy of the channel state information. In this paper, we address the receiver design for an IRS-assisted multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system via a tensor modeling approach aiming at the channel estimation problem using supervised (pilot-assisted) methods. Considering a structured time-domain pattern of pilots and IRS phase shifts, we present two channel estimation methods that rely on a parallel factor (PARAFAC) tensor modeling of the received signals. The first one has a closed-form solution based on a Khatri-Rao factorization of the cascaded MIMO channel, by solving rank-1 matrix approximation problems, while the second one is an iterative alternating estimation scheme. The common feature of both methods is the decoupling of the estimates of the involved MIMO channel matrices (base station-IRS and IRS-user terminal), which provides performance enhancements in comparison to competing methods that are based on unstructured LS estimates of the cascaded channel. Design recommendations for both methods that guide the choice of the system parameters are discussed. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed receivers, highlight the involved trade-offs, and corroborate their superior performance compared to competing LS-based solutions.
This paper investigates the use of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to aid point-to-point multi-data-stream multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communications. With practical finite alphabet input, the reflecting elements at the RIS and the precoder at the transmitter are alternatively optimized to minimize the symbol error rate (MSER). In the reflecting optimization with a fixed precoder, two reflecting design methods are developed, referred as eMSER-Reflecting and vMSER-Reflecting. In the optimization of the precoding matrix with a fixed reflecting pattern, the matrix op…
The IEEE Signal Processing Society is proud to announce the eighth edition of the Signal Processing Cup: an exciting challenge to control a wireless propagation environment using an intelligent reflecting surface. An intelligent reflecting surface is a two-dimensional array of metamaterial whose interaction with electromagnetic waves can be controlled, e.g., by tuning the impedance variations over the surface. These surfaces might be used in the sixth generation (6G) mobile technology to direct wireless signals from a transmitter towards a receiver, to raise the communication performance. The …
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 p…
The work analyzed the positioning of IRS over the coverage region of micro cell to derive optimal placement location to support cell-edge Internet of Things (IoT) devices with a favorable signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR). Moreover, the work derived that the implementation of IRS significantly enhances energy efficiency notably reducing the transmit power of the micro cell base station.
Millimeter wave communication is eminently suitable for high-rate wireless systems, which may be beneficially amalgamated with intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS), relying on beam-index modulation. Explicitly, we propose three different architectures based on IRSs for beam-index modulation in millimeter wave communication, which circumvent the line-of-sight blockage of millimeter wave frequencies. We conceive both the optimal maximum likelihood detector and a low-complexity compressed sensing detector for the proposed schemes. Finally, the schemes conceived are evaluated through extensive si…
As a means to control wireless propagation environments, the use of emerging and novel intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) is envisioned to enhance and broaden many applications in future wireless networks. This paper is concerned with a point-to-point IRS-assisted millimeter-wave (mmWave) system in which the IRS consists of multiple subsurfaces, each having the same number of passive reflecting elements, whereas both the transmitter and receiver are equipped with massive antenna arrays. Under the scenario of having very large numbers of antennas at both transmit and receive ends, the achiev…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technology has recently emerged as a spectral- and cost-efficient approach for wireless communications systems. However, existing hand-engineered schemes for passive beamforming design and optimization of RIS, such as the alternating optimization (AO) approaches, require a high computational complexity, especially for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. To overcome this challenge, we propose a low-complexity unsupervised learning scheme, referred to as learning-phase-shift neural network (LPSNet), to efficiently find the solution to the spect…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a promising solution to enhance wireless information transmissions by adaptively controlling prorogation environment. Recently, the brand-new concept of utilizing IRS to implement a passive transmitter attracts researchers' attention since it potentially realizes low-complexity and hardware-efficient transmitters of multiple-input single/multiple-output (MISO/MIMO) systems. In this paper we investigate the problem of precoder design for a low-resolution IRS-based transmitter to implement multi-user MISO/MIMO wireless communications. Particula…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) based communications have emerged as a new paradigm. This letter proposes a differential reflecting modulation (DRM) scheme for RIS based communication systems. In DRM, information bits are jointly carried by the activation permutations of the reflecting patterns and the phases of the transmitted signals, leading to that DRM can work without any channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter, RIS or receiver. In other words, DRM can release the intricate and resource-consuming channel estimation in the transmission process. Simulation results show t…
Vehicular communication is an important application of the fifth generation of mobile communication systems (5G). Due to its low cost and energy efficiency, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been envisioned as a promising technique that can enhance the coverage performance significantly by passive beamforming. In this paper, we analyze the outage probability performance in IRS-assisted vehicular communication networks. We derive the expression of outage probability by utilizing series expansion and central limit theorem. Numerical results show that the IRS can significantly reduce the o…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is envisioned as a promising solution for controlling radio propagation environments in future wireless systems. In this paper, we propose a distributed intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted multi-user millimeter wave (mmWave) system, where IRSs are exploited to enhance the mmWave signal coverage when direct links between base station and users are unavailable. First, a joint active and passive beamforming problem is established for weighted sum-rate maximization. Then, an alternating iterative algorithm with closed-form expressions is proposed to t…
We investigate the use of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in a millimeter-wave (mmWave) vehicular communication network. An intelligent reflecting surface consists of passive elements, which can reflect the incoming signals with adjustable phase shifts. By properly tuning the phase shifts we can improve link performance. This is known as phase optimization or passive beamforming. We consider the problem of rate maximization in the uplink, which utilizes an IRS. However, using an IRS brings more challenges in terms of channel estimation. We propose two schemes to reduce the channel esti…
In this letter, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) enhanced full-duplex MIMO two-way communication system is studied. The system sum rate is maximized through jointly optimizing the source precoders and the IRS phase shift matrix. Adopting the idea of Arimoto-Blahut algorithm, the non-convex optimization problem is decoupled into three sub-problems, which are solved alternatingly. All the sub-problems can be solved efficiently with closed-form solutions. In addition, practical IRS assumptions, e.g., discrete phase shift levels, are also considered. Numerical results verify the convergence…
We analyze the outage probability of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted communication network. A tight upper bound on the outage probability is formulated based on the Chernoff inequality. Furthermore, through an exact asymptotic (a large number of reflecting elements) analysis based on a saddlepoint approximation, we derive closed-form expressions of the outage probability for systems with and without a direct link and obtain the corresponding diversity orders. Simulation results corroborate our theoretical analysis and show the inaccuracies inherent in using the central limit t…
We propose a new secure transmission scheme which uses directional modulation (DM) with artificial noise and is aided by the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS). Specifically, the direct path and IRS-enabled reflect path carry the same confidential signal and thus can be coherently added at the desired position to maximize the total received power, while the received signals at other positions are distorted. We derive a closed-form expression for the secrecy rate achieved by the proposed scheme. Using simulation results, we show that the proposed scheme can achieve two-dimensional secure tran…
We propose a novel concept of hybrid relay-reflecting intelligent surface (HR-RIS), in which a single or few elements are deployed with power amplifiers (PAs) to serve as active relays, while the remaining elements only reflect the incident signals. The design and optimization of the HR-RIS is formulated in a spectral efficiency (SE) maximization problem, which is efficiently solved by the alternating optimization (AO) method. The simulation results show that a significant improvement in the SE can be attained by the proposed HR-RIS, even with a limited power budget, with respect to the conven…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has recently drawn significant attention in wireless communication technologies. However, identifying, modeling, and estimating the RIS channel in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are considered challenging in recent studies. In this paper, a disassembled channel estimation framework for the RIS-MIMO system is proposed based on the eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) concept to separate the cascaded channel links and estimate each link separately. This estimation is based on modeling the RIS-MIMO channel as a keyhole MIMO system model. Numerical…
Millimeter-wave (30-300 GHz) and Terahertz-band communications (0.3-10 THz) are envisioned as key wireless technologies to satisfy the demand for Terabit-per-second (Tbps) links in the 5G and beyond eras. The very large available bandwidth in this ultra-broadband frequency range comes at the cost of a very high propagation loss, which combined with the low power of mm-wave and THz-band transceivers limits the communication distance and data-rates. In this paper, the concept of intelligent communication environments enabled by Ultra-Massive MIMO platforms is proposed to increase the communicati…
Intelligent reflective surface (IRS) is an emergent technology for future wireless communications. It consists of a large 2D array of passive scattering elements that control the electromagnetic properties of radio-frequency waves so that the reflected signals add coherently at the intended receiver or destructively to reduce co-channel interference. The promised gains of IRS-assisted communications depend on the accuracy of the channel state information. In this paper, we propose two novel channel estimation methods for an IRS-assisted multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication syste…
In this paper, we derive the uplink achievable rate expression of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided millimeter-wave (mmWave) systems, taking into account the phase noise at IRS and the quantization error at base stations (BSs). We show that the performance is limited only by the resolution of analog-digital converters (ADCs) at BSs when the number of IRS reflectors grows without bound. On the other hand, if BSs have ideal ADCs, the performance loss caused by IRS phase noise is a constant. Finally, our results validate the feasibility of using low-precision hardware at the IRS when BSs…
In this letter, the use of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to enhance the physical layer security of downlink wireless communication is investigated. Assuming a single-antenna legitimate user and a multi-antenna eavesdropper, we propose an effective algorithm to jointly optimize the active and passive beamforming. In the proposed algorithm, the optimal transmit beamforming vector at the BS under fixed IRS phase shifts is derived, and a low-complexity algorithm based on fractional programming (FP) and manifold optimization (MO) is proposed to obtain near optimal IRS phase shifts. Simulatio…
We propose and analyze secret key generation using intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted wireless communication networks. To this end, we first formulate the minimum achievable secret key capacity for an IRS acting as a passive beamformer in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers. Next, we develop an optimization framework for the IRS reflecting coefficients based on the secret key capacity lower bound. To derive a tractable and efficient solution, we design and analyze a semidefinite relaxation (SDR) and successive convex approximation (SCA) based algorithm for the proposed optimizati…
This letter studies a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) with multiple intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) deployed between users and remote radio heads (RRH). Specifically, we consider the uplink transmission where each RRH quantizes the received signals from the users by either point-to-point compression or Wyner-Ziv compression and then transmits the quantization bits to the BBU pool through capacity limited fronthhual links. To maximize the uplink sum rate, we jointly optimize the passive beamformers of IRSs and the quantization noise covariance matrices of fronthoul compression. An join…
Cognitive radio (CR) is an effective solution to improve the spectral efficiency (SE) of wireless communications by allowing the secondary users (SUs) to share spectrum with primary users. Meanwhile, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS), also known as reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), has been recently proposed as a promising approach to enhance energy efficiency (EE) of wireless communication systems through intelligently reconfiguring the channel environment. To improve both SE and EE, in this paper, we introduce multiple IRSs to a downlink multiple-input single-output (MISO) CR syst…
In this work, we propose a new single-RF MIMO architecture which enjoys high scalability and energy-efficiency. The transmitter in this proposal consists of a single RF illuminator radiating towards a reflecting surface. Each element on the reflecting surface re-transmits its received signal after applying a phase-shift, such that a desired beamforming pattern is obtained. For this architecture, the problem of beamforming is interpreted as linear regression and a solution is derived via the method of least-squares. Using this formulation, a fast iterative algorithm for tuning of the reflecting…
In this paper, we introduce an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to provide a programmable wireless environment for physical layer security. By adjusting the reflecting coefficients, the IRS can change the attenuation and scattering of the incident electromagnetic wave so that it can propagate in a desired way toward the intended receiver. Specifically, we consider a downlink multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast system where the base station (BS) transmits independent data streams to multiple legitimate receivers and keeps them secret from multiple eavesdroppers. By jointly optimiz…
Malicious jamming launched by smart jammer, which attacks legitimate transmissions has been regarded as one of the critical security challenges in wireless communications. Thus, this paper exploits intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to enhance anti-jamming communication performance and mitigate jamming interference by adjusting the surface reflecting elements at the IRS. Aiming to enhance the communication performance against smart jammer, an optimization problem for jointly optimizing power allocation at the base station (BS) and reflecting beamforming at the IRS is formulated. As the jammi…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a revolutionizing solution to enhance wireless communications by intelligently changing the propagation environment. Prior studies on IRS are based on an ideal reflection model with a constant amplitude and a variable phase shift. However, it is difficult and unrealistic to implement an IRS satisfying such ideal reflection model in practical applications. In this letter, we aim to investigate the phase-amplitude-frequency relationship of the reflected signals and propose a practical model of reflection coefficient for an IRS-aided wideband sy…
Reducing computational complexity is crucial in optimizing the phase shifts of Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) systems since IRS-assisted communication systems are generally deployed with a large number of reflecting elements (REs). This letter proposes a low-complexity algorithm, designated as Dimension-wise Sinusoidal Maximization (DSM), to obtain the optimal IRS phase shifts that maximize the sum capacity of a MIMO network. The algorithm exploits the fact that the objective function for the optimization problem is sinusoidal w.r.t. the phase shift of each RE. The numerical results show…
In this paper, we study the user localization and tracking problem in the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) aided multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, where a multi-antenna base station (BS) and multiple RISs are deployed to assist the localization and tracking of a multi-antenna user. By establishing a probability transition model for user mobility, we develop a message-passing algorithm, termed the Bayesian user localization and tracking (BULT) algorithm, to estimate and track the user position and the angle-of-arrival (AoAs) at the user in an online fashion. We also derive B…
In this paper, we consider channel estimation for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted millimeter wave (mmWave) systems, where an IRS is deployed to assist the data transmission from the base station (BS) to a user. It is shown that for the purpose of joint active and passive beamforming, the knowledge of a large-size cascade channel matrix needs to be acquired. To reduce the training overhead, the inherent sparsity in mmWave channels is exploited. By utilizing properties of Katri-Rao and Kronecker products, we find a sparse representation of the cascade channel and convert cascade ch…
This paper studies the estimation of cascaded channels in passive intelligent reflective surface (IRS)- aided multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems employing hybrid precoders and combiners. We propose a low-complexity solution that estimates the channel parameters progressively. The angles of departure (AoDs) and angles of arrival (AoAs) at the transmitter and receiver, respectively, are first estimated using inductive matrix completion (IMC) followed by root-MUSIC based super-resolution spectrum estimation. Forward-backward spatial smoothing (FBSS) is applied to address the coherence …
In this paper, we study an intelligent omni-surface (IOS)-assisted downlink communication system, where the link quality of a mobile user (MU) can be improved with a proper IOS phase shift design. Unlike the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in most existing works that only forwards the signals in a reflective way, the IOS is capable to forward the received signals to the MU in either a reflective or a transmissive manner, thereby enhancing the wireless coverage. We formulate an IOS phase shift optimization problem to maximize the downlink spectral efficiency (SE) of the MU. The optimal pha…
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) are two key techniques for enabling massive connectivity in future wireless networks. A massive MIMO-NOMA system can deliver remarkable spectral improvements and low communication latency. Nevertheless, the uncontrollable stochastic behavior of the wireless channels can still degrade its performance. In this context, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has arisen as a promising technology for smartly overcoming the harmful effects of the wireless environment. The disruptive IRS concept of controlling the p…
This paper investigates an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided cooperative communication network, where the IRS exploits large reflecting elements to proactively steer the incident radio-frequency wave towards destination terminals (DTs). As the number of reflecting elements increases, the reflection resource allocation (RRA) will become urgently needed in this context, which is due to the non-ignorable energy consumption. The goal of this paper, therefore, is to realize the RRA besides the active-passive beamforming design, where RRA is based on the introduced modular IRS architecture.…
In this paper, a three-dimensional (3D) geometry based stochastic model (GBSM) for a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system employing practical discrete intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is proposed. The proposed channel model supports the scenario where both transceivers and environments move. The evolution of clusters in the space domain and the practical discrete phase shifts are considered in the channel model. The steering vector is set at the base station for the cooperation with IRS. Through studying statistical properties, the non-stationary properties ar…
In this paper, secure wireless information and power transfer with intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is proposed for a multiple-input single-output (MISO) system. Under the secrecy rate (SR) and the reflecting phase shifts of IRS constraints, the secure transmit beamforming at access point (AP) and phase shifts at IRS are jointly optimized to maximize the harvested power of energy harvesting receiver (EHR). Due to the non-convexity of optimization problem and coupled optimization variables, firstly, we convert the optimization problem into a semidefinite relaxation (SDR) problem and a sub-o…
Malicious jamming launched by smart jammers can attack legitimate transmissions, which has been regarded as one of the critical security challenges in wireless communications. With this focus, this paper considers the use of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to enhance anti-jamming communication performance and mitigate jamming interference by adjusting the surface reflecting elements at the IRS. Aiming to enhance the communication performance against a smart jammer, an optimization problem for jointly optimizing power allocation at the base station (BS), and reflecting beamforming at th…
An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is invoked for enhancing the energy harvesting performance of a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) aided system. Specifically, an IRS-assisted SWIPT system is considered, where a multi-antenna aided base station (BS) communicates with several multi-antenna assisted information receivers (IRs), while guaranteeing the energy harvesting requirement of the energy receivers (ERs). To maximize the weighted sum rate (WSR) of IRs, the transmit precoding (TPC) matrices of the BS and passive phase shift matrix of the IRS should be jointly…
Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) are considered as the prospective multiple antenna technologies for beyond the fifth-generation (5G) networks. Cell-free MIMO systems powered by IRSs, combining both technologies, can further improve the performance of cell-free MIMO systems at low cost and energy consumption. Prior works focused on instantaneous performance metrics and relied on alternating optimization algorithms, which impose huge computational complexity and signaling overhead. To address these challenges, we propose a novel tw…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a promising and revolutionizing technology for future wireless networks. Most existing IRS studies focus on simple cooperative systems which usually have a single frequency band. In realistic non-cooperative multi-band networks, however, the existing IRS designs may be not applicable or have severe performance degradation. Thus, in the complex network environment, it is more rational to consider IRSs as public resources to be dynamically allocated to appropriate users. In this paper, we first introduce the auction theory to tackle the resourc…
In a wireless system with Intelligent Reflective Surfaces (IRS) containing many passive elements, we consider the problem of channel estimation. All the links from the transmitter to the receiver via each IRS elements (or groups) are estimated. As the estimation performance are dependent on the setting of the IRS, we design an optimal channel estimation scheme where the IRS elements follow an optimal series of activation patterns. The optimal design is guided by results for the minimum variance unbiased estimation. The IRS setting during the channel estimation period mimics a series of discret…
Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) constitute a disruptive wireless communication technique capable of creating a controllable propagation environment. In this paper, we propose to invoke an IRS at the cell boundary of multiple cells to assist the downlink transmission to cell-edge users, whilst mitigating the inter-cell interference, which is a crucial issue in multicell communication systems. We aim for maximizing the weighted sum rate (WSR) of all users through jointly optimizing the active precoding matrices at the base stations (BSs) and the phase shifts at the IRS subject to each BS'…
This work studies the modelling and the optimization of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems through cascaded line-of-sight (LoS) links. In Part I of this work, we build up a new IRS-aided MIMO channel model, named the cascaded LoS MIMO channel. The proposed channel model consists of a transmitter (Tx) and a receiver (Rx) both equipped with uniform linear arrays, and an IRS is used to enable communications between the transmitter and the receiver through the LoS links seen by the IRS. When modeling the reflection of electromagnetic waves a…
As communication systems that employ millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands must use large antenna arrays to overcome the severe propagation loss of mmWave signals, hybrid beamforming has been considered as an integral component of mmWave communications. Recently, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been proposed as an innovative technology that can significantly improve the performance of mmWave communication systems through the use of low-cost passive reflecting elements. In this paper, we study IRS-aided mmWave multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with hybrid beamforming arc…
Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) are regarded as promising enablers for future millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless communication, due to their ability to create favorable line-of-sight (LoS) propagation environments. In this paper, we investigate channel estimation in downlink IRS-assisted mmWave multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. By leveraging the sparsity of mmWave channels, we formulate the channel estimation problem as a fixed-rank constrained non-convex optimization problem. To tackle the non-convexity, an efficient algorithm is proposed by capitalizing on alternating mini…
