Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS), composed of a large number of hardware-efficient passive elements, is deemed as a potential technique for future wireless communications since it can adaptively enhance the propagation environment. In order to effectively utilize IRS to achieve promising beamforming gains, the problem of channel state information (CSI) acquisition needs to be carefully considered. However, most recent works assume to employ an ideal IRS, i.e., each reflecting element has constant amplitude, variable phase shifts, as well as the same response for the signals with different frequencies, which will cause severe estimation error due to the mismatch between the ideal IRS and the practical one. In this paper, we study channel estimation in practical IRS-aided orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with discrete phase shifts. Different from the prior works which assume that IRS has an ideal reflection model, we perform channel estimation by considering amplitude-phase shift-frequency relationship for the response of practical IRS. Aiming at minimizing normalized-mean-square-error (NMSE) of the estimated channel, a novel IRS time-varying reflection pattern is designed by leveraging the alternating optimization (AO) algorithm for the case of using low-resolution phase shifters. Moreover, for the high-resolution IRS cases, we provide another practical reflection pattern scheme to further reduce the complexity. Simulation results demonstrate the necessity of considering practical IRS model for channel estimation and the effectiveness of our proposed channel estimation methods.
An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) consists of passive reflective elements capable of altering impinging waveforms. The IRS-aided radar systems have recently been shown to improve detection and estimation performance by exploiting the target information collected via non-line-of-sight paths. However, the waveform design problem for an IRS-aided radar has remained relatively unexplored. In this paper, we consider a multi-IRS-aided orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) radar and study the theoretically achievable accuracy of target detection. In addition, we jointly design the O…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is considered as an enabling technology for future wireless communication systems since it can intelligently change the wireless environment to improve the communication performance. In this paper, an IRS-enhanced wideband multiuser multi-input single-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MU-MISO-OFDM) system is investigated. We aim to jointly design the transmit beamformer and the reflection of IRS to maximize the average sum-rate over all subcarriers. With the aid of the relationship between sum-rate maximization and mean square error (MSE) m…
We consider the problem of downlink channel estimation for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted millimeter Wave (mmWave) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. By exploring the inherent sparse scattering characteristics of mmWave channels, we show that the received signals can be expressed as a low-rank third-order tensor that admits a tensor rank decomposition, also known as canonical polyadic decomposition (CPD). A structured CPD-based method is then developed to estimate the channel parameters. Our analysis reveals that the training overhead required by our prop…
In this letter, we study efficient channel estimation for an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system to achieve minimum training time. First, a fast channel estimation scheme with reduced OFDM symbol duration is proposed for arbitrary frequency-selective fading channels. Next, under the typical condition that the IRS-user channel is line-of-sight (LoS) dominant, another fast channel estimation scheme based on the novel concept of sampling-wise IRS reflection variation is proposed. Moreover, the pilot signal and IRS training reflect…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is envisioned as a revolutionary technology for future wireless communication systems since it can intelligently change radio environment and integrate it into wireless communication optimization. However, most existing works adopted an ideal IRS reflection model, which is impractical and can cause significant performance degradation in realistic wideband systems. To address this issue, we first study the dual phase- and amplitude-squint effect of reflected signals and present a simplified practical IRS reflection model for wideband signals. Then, an IRS en…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a promising new technology for achieving spectrum and energy efficient wireless communication systems in the future. By adaptively varying the incident signals' phases/amplitudes and thereby establishing favorable channel responses through a large number of reconfigurable passive reflecting elements, IRS is able to enhance the communication performance of mobile users in its vicinity cost-effectively. In this paper, we study an IRS-enhanced orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system in which an IRS is deployed to assist the communication be…
In this paper, we study the resource allocation problem for an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted OFDM system. The system sum rate maximization framework is formulated by jointly optimizing subcarrier allocation, base station transmit beamforming and IRS phase shift. Considering the continuous and discrete hybrid action space characteristics of the optimization variables, we propose an efficient resource allocation algorithm combining multiple deep Q networks (MDQN) and deep deterministic policy-gradient (DDPG) to deal with this issue. In our algorithm, MDQN are employed to solve th…
Wireless powered mobile edge computing (WP-MEC) has been recognized as a promising technique to provide both enhanced computational capability and sustainable energy supply to massive low-power wireless devices. However, its energy consumption becomes substantial, when the transmission link used for wireless energy transfer (WET) and for computation offloading is hostile. To mitigate this hindrance, we propose to employ the emerging technique of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in WP-MEC systems, which is capable of providing an additional link both for WET and for computation offloading. …
Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) with subcarrier number modulation (OFDM-SNM) manifests its superior nature of high spectral efficiency (SE) and low complexity for signal estimation. To exploit the spatial gain of OFDM-SNM, we propose a relay assisted OFDM-SNM scheme for multi-hop cooperative systems in this letter. It is stipulated that a relay operated by decode-and-forward (DF) and half-duplex (HD) protocols exists in each hop. We analyze the outage performance of the relay assisted OFDM-SNM system. The average outage probability is approximated in closed form. Moreover, to…
In this paper, we investigate the modeling and design of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted optical communication systems which are deployed to relax the line-of-sight (LOS) requirement in multi-link free space optical (FSO) systems. The FSO laser beams incident on the optical IRSs have a Gaussian power intensity profile and a nonlinear phase profile, whereas the plane waves in radio frequency (RF) systems have a uniform power intensity profile and a linear phase profile. Given these substantial differences, the results available for IRS-assisted RF systems are not applicable to IRS…
In this paper, we develop an analytical channel model for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted free space optical (FSO) systems. Unlike IRS-assisted radio frequency systems, where it is typically assumed that a plane wave is incident on the IRS, in FSO systems, the incident wave is a Gaussian beam with non-uniform power distribution across the IRS. Taking this property into account, we develop an analytical end-to-end channel model for IRS-assisted FSO systems based on the Huygens-Fresnel principle. Our analytical model reveals the impact of the size, position, orientation, and phase-…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a promising technology being considered for future wireless communications due to its ability to control signal propagation. This paper considers the joint active and passive beamforming problem for an IRS-assisted radar, where multiple IRSs are deployed to assist the surveillance of multiple targets in cluttered environments. Specifically, we aim to maximize the minimum target illumination power at multiple target locations by jointly optimizing the active beamformer at the radar transmitter and the passive phase-shift matrices at the IRSs, subject to a…
This letter investigates a sum rate maximizationproblem in an intelligent reflective surface (IRS) assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) downlink network. Specif-ically, the sum rate of all the users is maximized by jointlyoptimizing the beams at the base station and the phase shiftat the IRS. The deep reinforcement learning (DRL), which hasachieved massive successes, is applied to solve this sum ratemaximization problem. In particular, an algorithm based on thedeep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) is proposed. Both therandom channel case and the fixed channel case are studied int…
In this paper, two Intelligent reflecting surfaces (double IRS) assisted single-user single input single output (SISO) communication system is considered. The cascaded channels (mobile user (MU)$\rightarrow$IRS-1$\rightarrow$base station (BS), MU$\rightarrow$IRS-2$\rightarrow$BS and MU$\rightarrow$IRS-1$\rightarrow$IRS-2$\rightarrow$BS channels) are estimated under Bayesian setting. Here, the goal is to evaluate the performance of the estimator in case of MU$\rightarrow$IRS-1$\rightarrow$BS and MU$\rightarrow$IRS-2$\rightarrow$BS channel links using Bayesian Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB). With…
In this work, we study the impact of the multiplicative phase noise in an IRS-assisted system. We consider an IRS-assisted system with multiplicative phase noise both at the BS and user. A novel channel estimation algorithm is proposed considering the phase noise. By utilizing the proposed channel estimates we investigate the system performance in the downlink, more specifically, we derive the ergodic capacity in closed form. Simulation results verify the correctness of the closed-form expression. We observe that the system becomes more robust against the phase noise as the number of reflectiv…
In this paper, we investigate the secure beamforming design in an intelligent reflection surface (IRS) assisted millimeter wave (mmWave) system, where the hybrid beamforming (HB) and the passive beamforming (PB) are employed by the transmitter and the IRS, respectively. To maximize the secrecy capacity, the joint optimization of HB and PB is formulated as a nonconvex problem with constant-modulus constraints. To efficiently solve such a challenging problem, the original problem is decomposed into a PB subproblem and an HB subproblem, then these two subproblems are sequentially solved by propos…
An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can greatly improve the channel quality over a frequency-flat channel, if it is configured to reflect the incident signal as a beam towards the receiver. However, the fundamental limitations of the IRS technology become apparent over practical frequency-selective channels, where the same configuration must be used over the entire bandwidth. In this paper, we consider a wideband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system that is supported by a fairly realistic IRS setup with two unbalanced states per element and also mutual coupling. We desc…
Most prior works on intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) merely consider point-to-point communications, including a single user, for ease of analysis. Nevertheless, a practical wireless system needs to accommodate multiple users simultaneously. Due to the lack of frequency-selective reflection, namely the set of phase shifts cannot be different across frequency subchannels, the integration of IRS imposes a fundamental challenge to frequency-multiplexing approaches such as frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) and the widely adopted technique called orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA). It motivates us …
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a competitive solution to address blockage issues in millimeter wave (mmWave) and Terahertz (THz) communications due to its capability of reshaping wireless transmission environments. Nevertheless, obtaining the channel state information of IRS-assisted systems is quite challenging because of the passive characteristics of the IRS. In this paper, we consider the problem of beam training/alignment for IRS-assisted downlink mmWave/THz systems, where a multi-antenna base station (BS) with a hybrid structure serves a single-antenna user aided by …
Recently, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted mmWave networks are emerging, which bear the potential to address the blockage issue of the millimeter wave (mmWave) communication in a more cost-effective way. In particular, IRS is built by passive and programmable electromagnetic elements that can manipulate the mmWave propagation channel into a more favorable condition that is free of blockage via judicious joint BS-IRS transmission design. However, the coexistence of IRSs and mmWave BSs complicates the network architecture, and thus poses great challenges for efficient beam managemen…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) technology offers more feasible propagation paths for millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication systems to overcome blockage than existing technologies. In this paper, we consider a downlink wireless system with the IRS and formulate a joint power allocation and beamforming design problem to maximize the weighted sum-rate, which is a multi-variable optimization problem. To solve the problem, we propose a novel alternating manifold optimization based beamforming algorithm. Simulation results show that our proposed optimization algorithm outperforms existing alg…
In this paper, we consider IRS-assisted transmissions from a multi-antenna access point (AP) to a receiver with uncertain channel information. By adjusting the magnitude of reflecting coefficients, the IRS can sustain its operations by harvesting energy from the AP's signal beamforming. Considering channel estimation errors, we model both the AP-IRS channel and the AP-IRS-receiver as a cascaded channel by norm-based uncertainty sets. This allows us to formulate a robust optimization problem to minimize the AP's transmit power, subject to the user's worst-case data rate requirement and the IRS'…
Security and energy efficiency have become crucial features in the modern-era wireless communication. In this paper, we consider an energy-efficient design for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted multiple-input multiple-output multiple-eavesdropper (MIMOME) wiretap channels (WTC). Our objective is to jointly optimize the transmit covariance matrix and the IRS phase-shifts to maximize the secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) of the considered system subject to a secrecy rate constraint at the legitimate receiver. To tackle this challenging non-convex problem in which the design variables a…
In this letter, we consider the fundamental problem of jointly designing the transmit beamformers and the phase-shifts of the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) / reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to minimize the transmit power, subject to quality-of-service constraints at individual users in an IRS-assisted multiuser multiple-input single-output downlink communication system. In particular, we propose a new successive convex approximation based second-order cone programming approach in which all the optimization variables are simultaneously updated in each iteration. Our proposed sch…
This paper studies an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system, in which one IRS is deployed to not only assist the wireless communication from a multi-antenna base station (BS) to a single-antenna communication user (CU), but also create virtual line-of-sight (LoS) links for sensing targets at areas with LoS links blocked. We consider that the BS transmits combined information and sensing signals for ISAC. Under this setup, we jointly optimize the transmit information and sensing beamforming at the BS and the reflective beamforming at th…
Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs)-assisted wireless communication promises improved system performance, while posing new challenges in channel estimation (CE) due to the passive nature of the reflecting elements. Although a few CE protocols for IRS-assisted multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems have appeared, they either require long channel training times or are developed under channel sparsity assumptions. Moreover, existing works focus on a single IRS, whereas in practice multiple such surfaces should be installed to truly benefit from the concept of reconfiguring propagation env…
Physical-layer key generation (PKG) based on wireless channels is a lightweight technique to establish secure keys between legitimate communication nodes. Recently, intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) have been leveraged to enhance the performance of PKG in terms of secret key rate (SKR), as it can reconfigure the wireless propagation environment and introduce more channel randomness. In this paper, we investigate an IRS-assisted PKG system, taking into account the channel spatial correlation at both the base station (BS) and the IRS. Based on the considered system model, the closed form ex…
This paper focuses on the fundamental problem of maximizing the achievable weighted sum rate (WSR) at information receivers (IRs) in an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted simultaneous wireless information and power transfer system under a multiple-input multiple-output (SWIPT-MIMO) setting, subject to a quality-of-service (QoS) constraint at the energy receivers (ERs). Notably, due to the coupling between the transmit precoding matrix and the passive beamforming vector in the QoS constraint, the formulated non-convex optimization problem is challenging to solve. We first decouple th…
We consider the problem of spatial channel covariance matrix (CCM) estimation for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems. Spatial CCM is essential for two-timescale beamforming in IRS-assisted systems; however, estimating the spatial CCM is challenging due to the passive nature of reflecting elements and the large size of the CCM resulting from massive reflecting elements of the IRS. In this paper, we propose a CCM estimation method by exploiting the low-rankness as well as the positive semi-definite (PSD) 3-level Toeplitz structure of the …
In this paper, the feasibility of adopting an intelligent reflective surface (IRS) in a cell-free wireless communication system is studied. The received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for this IRS-enabled cell-free set-up is optimized by adjusting phase-shifts of the passive reflective elements. Then, tight approximations for the probability density function and the cumulative distribution function for this optimal SNR are derived for Rayleigh fading. To investigate the performance of this system model, tight bounds/approximations for the achievable rate and outage probability are derived in clos…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been regarded as a promising and revolutionary technology for future wireless communication systems owing to its capability of tailoring signal propagation environment in an energy/spectrum/hardware-efficient manner. However, most existing studies on IRS optimizations are based on a simple and ideal reflection model that is impractical in hardware implementation, which thus leads to severe performance loss in realistic wideband/multi-band systems. To deal with this problem, in this paper we first propose a more practical and more tractable IRS reflectio…
In this paper, we present a novel mobile user tracking (UT) scheme for codebook-based intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided millimeter wave (mmWave) systems. The proposed UT scheme exploits the temporal correlation of the direction from the IRS to the mobile user for selecting IRS phase shifts that provide reflection towards the user. To this end, the user's direction is periodically estimated based on a generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) and the user's movement trajectory is extrapolated from several past direction estimates. The efficiency of the proposed UT scheme is evaluated in…
Multi-path fading seriously affects the accuracy of timing synchronization (TS) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. To tackle this issue, we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based TS scheme assisted by initial path acquisition in this paper. Specifically, the classic cross-correlation method is first employed to estimate a coarse timing offset and capture an initial path, which shrinks the TS search region. Then, a one-dimensional (1-D) CNN is developed to optimize the TS of OFDM systems. Due to the narrowed search region of TS, the CNN-based TS effectivel…
In this paper, the appealing features of a dual-polarized intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) are exploited to improve the performance of dual-polarized massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) with non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) under imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC). By considering the downlink of a multi-cluster scenario, the IRSs assist the base station (BS) to multiplex subsets of users in the polarization domain. Our novel strategy alleviates the impact of imperfect SIC and enables users to exploit polarization diversity with near-zero inter-subset interf…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is deemed as a promising and revolutionizing technology for future wireless communication systems owing to its capability to intelligently change the propagation environment and introduce a new dimension into wireless communication optimization. Most existing studies on IRS are based on an ideal reflection model. However, it is difficult to implement an IRS which can simultaneously realize any adjustable phase shift for the signals with different frequencies. Therefore, the practical phase shift model, which can describe the difference of IRS phase shift re…
Interest in free-space optics (FSO) is rapidly growing as a potential solution for the backhaul of next-generation mobile or low-orbit satellite communications. Various techniques have been suggested for employing an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in FSO systems, such as anomalous reflection, power amplification, and beam splitting. It is possible to deliver more power to the receiver (Rx) by collimating or focusing the reflected beam at the Rx lens. In this study, we propose a phase-shift design of an IRS for beam focusing. In addition, we propose a new pointing error model and an outag…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems have aroused extensive research interests due to the controllable communication environment and the performance of combating multi-path interference. However, as the premise of RIS-assisted OFDM systems, the accuracy of channel estimation is severely degraded by the increased possibility of insufficient cyclic prefix (CP) produced by extra cascaded channels of RIS and the nonlinear distortion lead by imperfect hardware. To address these issues, an enhanced extreme learning machine (ELM)-…
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…
