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 two-step algorithm that provides the long-term passive beamformers at the IRSs using statistical channel state information (S-CSI) and short-term active precoders and long-term power allocation at the access points (APs) to maximize the minimum achievable rate. Simulation results verify that the proposed scheme outperforms benchmark schemes and brings a significant performance gain to the cell-free MIMO systems powered by IRSs.
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…
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…
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…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a promising solution to enhance the wireless communication capacity both cost-effectively and energy-efficiently, by properly altering the signal propagation via tuning a large number of passive reflecting units. In this paper, we aim to characterize the fundamental capacity limit of IRS-aided point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems with multi-antenna transmitter and receiver in general, by jointly optimizing the IRS reflection coefficients and the MIMO transmit covariance matrix. First, we consider narrowband transmiss…
In this paper, channel estimation techniques and phase shift design for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-empowered single-user multiple-input multiple-output (SU-MIMO) systems are proposed. Among four channel estimation techniques developed in the paper, the two novel ones, single-path approximated channel (SPAC) and selective emphasis on rank-one matrices (SEROM), have low training overhead to enable practical IRS-empowered SU-MIMO systems. SPAC is mainly based on parameter estimation by approximating IRS-related channels as dominant single-path channels. SEROM exploits IRS phase shifts a…
An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS), consisting of reconfigurable metamaterials, can be used to partially control the radio environment and thereby bring new features to wireless communications. Previous works on IRS have particularly studied the range extension use case and under what circumstances the new technology can beat relays. In this paper, we study another use case that might have a larger impact on the channel capacity: rank improvement. One of the classical bottlenecks of point-to-point MIMO communications is that the capacity gains provided by spatial multiplexing are only lar…
In a practical massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) system, the number of antennas at a base station (BS) is constrained by the space and cost factors, which limits the throughput gain promised by theoretical analysis. This paper thus studies the feasibility of adopting the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to further improve the beamforming gain of the uplink communications in a massive MIMO system. Under such a novel system, the central question lies in whether the IRS is able to enhance the network throughput as expected, if the channel estimation overhead is taken into account.…
In this letter, the achievable rate maximization problem is considered for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems in an underlay spectrum sharing scenario, subject to interference power constraints at the primary users. The formulated non-convex optimization problem is challenging to solve due to its non-convexity as well as coupling design variables in the constraints. Different from existing works that are mostly based on alternating optimization (AO), we propose a penalty dual decomposition based gradient projection (PDDGP) algorithm to s…
With the capability of reconfiguring the wireless electromagnetic environment, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a new paradigm for designing future wireless communication systems. In this paper, we consider optical IRS for improving the performance of visible light communication (VLC) under a multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) setting. Specifically, we focus on the downlink communication of an indoor MIMO VLC system and aim to minimize the mean square error (MSE) of demodulated signals at the receiver. To this end, the MIMO channel gain of the IRS-aided VLC is first derived under…
In this paper, we study the problem of joint active and passive beamforming for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted massive MIMO systems, where multiple IRSs equipped with a large number of passive elements are deployed to assist a base station (BS) to simultaneously serve a small number of single-antenna users in the same time-frequency resource. Our objective is to maximize the minimum signal to interference plus noise (SINR) at users by jointly optimizing the transmit precoding vector at the BS and phase shift parameters at IRSs. We show that an interesting automatic interference …
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has gained tremendous attention recently as a disruptive technology for beyond 5G networks. In this paper, we consider the problem of secrecy rate maximization for an IRS-assisted Gaussian multiple-input multiple-output multi-antenna-eavesdropper (MIMOME) wiretap channel (WTC). In this context, we aim to jointly optimize the input covariance matrix and the IRS phase shifts to maximize the achievable secrecy rate of the considered system. To solve the formulated problem which is non-convex, we propose an iterative method based on the block successive maximiz…
This work investigates the effect of double intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in improving the spectrum efficient of multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) network operating in the millimeter wave (mmWave) band. Specifically, we aim to solve a weighted sum rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing the digital precoding at the transmitter and the analog phase shifters at the IRS, subject to the minimum achievable rate constraint. To facilitate the design of an efficient solution, we first reformulate the original problem into a tractable one by exploiting the majorization-min…
In this letter, we consider an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted Guassian multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel in which a multi-antenna transmitter communicates with a multi-antenna receiver in the presence of a multi-antenna eavesdropper. To maximize the secrecy rate of this channel, an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm is proposed to jointly optimize the transmit covariance R at transmitter and phase shift coefficient Q at IRS by fixing the other as a constant. When Q is fixed, existing numerical algorithm is used to search for global optimal R. When R is f…
Although the multi-antenna or so-called multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission has been the enabling technology for the past generations of radio-frequency (RF)-based wireless communication systems, its application to the visible light communication (VLC) still faces a critical challenge as the MIMO spatial multiplexing gain can be hardly attained in VLC channels due to their strong spatial correlation. In this paper, we tackle this problem by deploying the optical intelligent reflecting surface (OIRS) in the environment to boost the capacity of MIMO VLC. Firstly, based on the extr…
Terahertz (THz) communications open a new frontier for the wireless network thanks to their dramatically wider available bandwidth compared to the current micro-wave and forthcoming millimeter-wave communications. However, due to the short length of THz waves, they also suffer from severe path attenuation and poor diffraction. To compensate the THz-induced propagation loss, this paper proposes to combine two promising techniques, viz., massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS), in THz multi-user communications, considering their significant beamform…
This letter investigates the joint active and passive beamforming optimization for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided multiuser multiple-input multiple-output systems with the objective of maximizing the weighted sum-rate. We show that this problem can be solved via a matrix weighted mean square error minimization equivalence. In particular, for the optimization of the passive IRS beamforming, we first propose an iterative algorithm with excellent performance based on the manifold optimization. By using the matrix fractional programming technique to obtain a more tractable object funct…
In this paper, we propose a fairness-aware rate maximization scheme for a wireless powered communications network (WPCN) assisted by an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS). The proposed scheme combines user scheduling based on time division multiple access (TDMA) and (mechanical) angular displacement of the IRS. Each energy harvesting user (EHU) has dedicated time slots with optimized durations for energy harvesting and information transmission whereas, the phase matrix of the IRS is adjusted to focus its beam to a particular EHU. The proposed scheme exploits the fundamental dependence of the…
This paper studies the feasibility of deploying intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) in massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) systems to improve the performance of users in the service dead zone. To reduce the channel training overhead, we advocate a novel protocol for the uplink communication in the IRS-assisted massive MIMO systems. Under this protocol, the IRS reflection coefficients are optimized based on the channel covariance matrices, which are generally fixed for many coherence blocks, to boost the long-term performance. Then, given the IRS reflecting coefficients, the BS bea…
The application of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) depends on the knowledge of channel state information (CSI), and has been hindered by the heavy overhead of channel training, estimation, and feedback in fast-changing channels. This paper presents a new two-timescale beamforming approach to maximizing the average achievable rate (AAR) of IRS-assisted MIMO systems, where the IRS is configured relatively infrequently based on statistical CSI (S-CSI) and the base station precoder and power allocation are updated frequently based on quickly outdated instantaneous CSI (I-CSI). The key idea is…
This paper considers an active intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided wireless powered communication network (WPCN), where devices first harvest energy and then transmit information to a hybrid access point (HAP). Different from the existing works on passive IRS-aided WPCNs, this is the first work that introduces the active IRS in WPCNs. To guarantee fairness, the problem is formulated as an amplifying power-limited weighted sum throughput (WST) maximization problem, which is solved by successive convex approximation technique and fractional programming alternatively. To balance the perfor…
This paper considers cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output systems where the multiple-antenna access points (APs) assist the single-antenna user equipments (UEs) by wireless power transfer. The UEs utilize the energy harvested in the downlink to transmit uplink pilot and information signals to the APs. We consider practical Rician fading with the line-of-sight components of the channels being phase-shifted in each coherence block. The uplink spectral efficiency (SE) is derived for this model and the max-min fairness problem is considered where the optimization variables are the AP a…
The use of large arrays might be the solution to the capacity problems in wireless communications. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) grows linearly with the number of array elements $N$ when using Massive MIMO receivers and half-duplex relays. Moreover, intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) have recently attracted attention since these can relay signals to achieve an SNR that grows as $N^2$, which seems like a major benefit. In this paper, we use a deterministic propagation model for a planar array of arbitrary size, to demonstrate that the mentioned SNR behaviors, and associated power scaling …
This paper considers a MIMO secure wireless communication system aided by the physical layer security technique of sending artificial noise (AN). To further enhance the system security performance, the advanced intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is invoked in the AN-aided communication system, where the base station (BS), legitimate information receiver (IR) and eavesdropper (Eve) are equipped with multiple antennas. With the aim for maximizing the secrecy rate (SR), the transmit precoding (TPC) matrix at the BS, covariance matrix of AN and phase shifts at the IRS are jointly optimized subje…
The Terahertz band is envisioned to meet the demanding 100 Gbps data rates for 6G wireless communications. Aiming at combating the distance limitation problem with low hardware-cost, ultra-massive MIMO with hybrid beamforming is promising. However, relationships among wavelength, array size and antenna spacing give rise to the inaccuracy of planar-wave channel model (PWM), while an enlarged channel matrix dimension leads to excessive parameters of applying spherical-wave channel model (SWM). Moreover, due to the adoption of hybrid beamforming, channel estimation (CE) needs to recover high-dime…
Terahertz (THz) communications have been envisioned as a promising enabler to provide ultra-high data transmission for sixth generation (6G) wireless networks. To tackle the blockage vulnerability brought by severe path attenuation and poor diffraction of THz waves, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is put forward to smartly control the incident THz waves by adjusting the phase shifts. In this paper, we firstly design an efficient hardware structure of graphene-based IRS with phase response up to 306.82 degrees. Subsequently, to characterize the capacity of the IRS-enabled THz multiple-i…
In this paper, we investigate an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted cell-free multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communication system, where distributed multiple IRSs are dedicated deployed to assist distributed multiple base stations (BSs) for cooperative transmission. Our objective is to maximize the achievable sum-rate of the cell-free system by jointly optimizing the active transmit beamforming matrices at BSs and the passive reflecting beamforming matrices at IRSs, while the constraints on the maximum transmit power of each BS and the phase shift of each IRS element are sati…
This paper considers wireless uplink information and downlink power transfer in cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output systems. The single-antenna user equipments (UEs) utilize the energy harvested in the downlink to transmit uplink pilot and information signals to the multiple-antenna access points (APs). We consider Rician fading and maximum ratio processing based on either linear minimum mean-squared error (LMMSE) or least-squares (LS) channel estimation. We derive the average harvested energy by using a practical non-linear energy harvesting circuit model for both coherent and no…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has recently been emerged as an effective way for improving the performance of wireless networks by reconfiguring the propagation environment through a large number of passive reflecting elements. This game-changing technology is especially important for stepping into the Internet of Everything (IoE) era, where high performance is demanded with very limited available resources. In this paper, we study a backscatter-assisted wireless powered communication network (BS-WPCN), in which a number of energy-constrained users, powered by a power station (PS), trans…
Massive MIMO is attractive for wireless information and energy transfer due to its ability to focus energy towards desired spatial locations. In this paper, the overall power transfer efficiency (PTE) and the energy efficiency (EE) of a wireless-powered massive MIMO system is investigated where a multi-antenna base-station (BS) uses wireless energy transfer to charge single-antenna energy harvesting users on the downlink. The users may exploit the harvested energy to transmit information to the BS on the uplink. The overall system performance is analyzed while accounting for the nonlinear natu…
Recently, terahertz (THz) communication has drawn considerable attention as one of the promising technologies for the future wireless communications owning to its ultra-wide bandwidth. Nonetheless, one major obstacle that prevents the actual deployment of THz lies in its inherent huge attenuation. Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) represent two effective solutions for compensating the large pathloss in THz systems. In this paper, we consider an IRS-aided multi-user THz MIMO system with orthogonal frequency division multiple access, where the sparse …
The hybrid relay-reflecting intelligent surface (HR-RIS) has been recently introduced as an efficient solution to overcome the double path loss and limited beamforming diversity of the conventional fully passive reflecting surface. This motivates us to investigate the application of the HR-RIS in improving the secrecy capacity of millimeter wave multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems with the presence of multi-antenna eavesdropper. The joint optimization of the transmit beamformer and the relay-reflecting coefficients at RIS is tackled via alternating optimization. In the proposed solut…
Recently, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as an appealing technique that enables wireless communications with low hardware cost and low power consumption. In this letter, we consider an IRS-assisted point-to-point multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system, where a source communicates with its destination with the help of an IRS. Our goal is to maximize the spectral efficiency of this system by jointly optimizing the (active) precoding at the source and the (passive) phase shifters (PSs) at the IRS. However, this turns out to be an intractable mixed integer non-convex optimization…
This letter focuses on the non-convex joint optimization with a dynamic resource of multi-user for an intelligent reflecting surface-enhanced mmWave system, where all users are concentrated on the unique cluster beam. Firstly, the objective function of the above non-linear problem is converted into a quadratic programming form under the quality of service constraints. Further, a multi-blocks alternating optimization framework with dynamic power allocation is proposed to obtain the maximum sum-rate, where the relaxed ADMM algorithm is adopted to tackle the optimal fulldigital precoder and the c…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is envisioned to play a significant role in future wireless communication systems as an effective means of reconfiguring the radio signal propagation environment. In this paper, we study a new multi-IRS aided massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, where a multi-antenna BS transmits independent messages to a set of remote single-antenna users using orthogonal beams that are subsequently reflected by different groups of IRSs via their respective multi-hop passive beamforming over pairwise line-of-sight (LoS) links. We aim to select optimal IRSs…
Beijing Institute of Technology（北京理工大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；CentraleSupélec（中央理工-高等电力学院）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎-萨克雷大学）；King Abdullah University of Science and Technology（阿卜杜拉国王科技大学）
Integrating large intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) into millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multi-input-multi-ouput (MIMO) has been a promising approach for improved coverage and throughput. Most existing work assumes the ideal channel estimation, which can be challenging due to the high-dimensional cascaded MIMO channels and passive reflecting elements. Therefore, this paper proposes a deep denoising neural network assisted compressive channel estimation for mmWave IRS systems to reduce the training overhead. Specifically, we first introduce a hybrid passive/active IRS architecture, where v…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a promising technology to deliver the higher spectral and energy requirements in fifth-generation (5G) and beyond wireless networks while shaping the propagation environment. Such a design can be further enhanced with massive multiple-input-multiple-output (mMIMO) characteristics towards boosting the network performance. However, channel reciprocity, assumed in 5G systems such as mMIMO, appears to be questioned in practice by recent studies on IRS. Hence, contrary to previous works, we consider frequency division duplexing (FDD) to study the performance …
In this paper, we consider an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted Guassian multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel (WTC), and focus on enhancing its secrecy rate. Due to MIMO setting, all the existing solutions for enhancing the secrecy rate over multiple-input single-output WTC completely fall to this work. Furthermore, all the existing studies are simply based on an ideal assumption that full channel state information (CSI) of eavesdropper (Ev) is available. Therefore, we propose numerical solutions to enhance the secrecy rate of this channel under both full and no Ev…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-based transmission technology offers a promising solution to enhance wireless communication performance cost-effectively through properly adjusting the parameters of a large number of passive reflecting elements. This letter proposes a cosine similarity theorem-based low-complexity algorithm for adapting the phase shifts of an RIS that assists a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission system. A semi-analytical probabilistic approach is developed to derive the theoretical average bit error probability (ABEP) of the system. Furthermore, the val…
This paper investigates effect of malicious intelligence reflecting surface (IRS). The malicious IRS is utilized for performing attack by randomly reflecting data sequences of legitimate users (LUs) to a base station (BS). We find that the data sequences of LUs are correlative to the signals reflected by malicious IRS. The correlation undermines the performance of traditional eigenvalue decomposition (EVD)-based channel estimation (CE) methods. To address this challenge, we propose a empirical-distribution-based channel estimation approach in the presence of malicious IRS. The proposed method …
The paper studies a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted multi-user uplink massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with imperfect hardware. At the RIS, the paper considers phase noise, while at the base station, the paper takes into consideration the radio frequency impairments and low-resolution analog-to-digital converters. The paper derives approximate expressions for the ergodic achievable rate in closed forms under Rician fading channels. For the cases of infinite numbers of antennas and infinite numbers of reflecting elements, asymptotic data rates are derived t…
In this paper, we propose intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) assisted secure wireless communications with multi-input and multi-output antennas (IRS-MIMOME). The considered scenario is an access point (AP) equipped with multiple antennas communicates with a multi-antenna enabled legitimate user in the downlink at the present of an eavesdropper configured with multiple antennas. Particularly, the joint optimization of the transmit covariance matrix at the AP and the reflecting coefficients at the IRS to maximize the secrecy rate for the IRS-MIMOME system is investigated, with two different a…
In this work, we investigate a novel simultaneous transmission and reflection reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted multiple-input multiple-output downlink system, where three practical transmission protocols, namely, energy splitting (ES), mode selection (MS), and time splitting (TS), are studied. For the system under consideration, we maximize the weighted sum rate with multiple coupled variables. To solve this optimization problem, a block coordinate descent algorithm is proposed to reformulate this problem and design the precoding matrices and the transmitting and reflecting co…
We focus on the maximization of the exact ergodic capacity (EC) of a point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system assisted by an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS). In addition, we account for the effects of correlated Rayleigh fading and the intertwinement between the amplitude and the phase shift of the reflecting coefficient of each IRS element, which are usually both neglected despite their presence in practice. Random matrix theory tools allow to derive the probability density function (PDF) of the cascaded channel in closed form, and subsequently, the EC, which depend on…
Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) has recently appeared as a powerful technique for improving the downlink performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. By flexibly managing interference, RSMA can deliver high spectral and energy efficiency, as well as robustness to imperfect channel state information (CSI). In another development, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a method to control the wireless environment through software-configurable, near-passive, sub-wavelength reflecting elements. This article presents the potential of synergy between IRS and RS…
