Channel Estimation for Intelligent Reflecting Surface
in 6G Wireless Network via Deep Learning Technique
Redhwan Q. Shaddad Esam M. Saif
communication Engineering communication Engineering
Taiz University Taiz University
Taiz,Yemen Taiz,Yemen
rqs2006@gmail.com essam737422285@gmail.com
Ahmed H. Farhan
communication Engineering
Taiz University
Taiz,Yemen
ahmed.alshamerri.1997@gmail.c
om
Abstract— Channel estimation for the wireless link has several
challenges the hardest challenge is the randomness in the real
channel. In the 6G wireless networks, the Intelligent Reflecting
Surface (IRS) mitigate the problems in massive multiple input
multiple output (mMIMO) in 5G like high cost, low coverage and
high-power consumption. Communication network with
(mMIMO) and IRS must approach smart network to enhance
quality of service and reduce path loss. In this paper, simulation
of the direct channel and the cascade channel was implemented
with multipath for different users as point to multipoint
transmission to improve robustness of the estimation. Channel
estimation for the network makes base station (BS) and IRS work
with each other adaptively by using deep learning. The output
performance of the estimation is checked by root mean square
error (RMSE), training loss, complexity and time delay for
channel training. The validation RMSE in the direct channels
arrives to 0.375 while it arrives to 1.116 in the cascade channels.
Normalize mean square error (NMSE) is studied with respect to
signal to noise ratio (SNR) to show the more stable channel with
SNR.
Keywords— Intelligent Reflecting Surface, Deep Learning,
Channel Estimation, 6G Wireless Networks.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the last years, developments in communication networks and
techniques are increasing very fast. Multiple input multiple
output (MIMO) appeared in fourth generation (4G) long term
evolution (LTE) and moved forward in fifth generation (5G) to
be massive MIMO to enhance the data rate and reliability. The
complexity of the massive MIMO makes it high cost so this
reason leads to develop technique to solve these problems [1].
Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) was the robust solver that
mitigates these by using passive elements with low cost and
doesn't need to connect to the backhaul communication system.
The IRS enhances the coverage of the system by 1/3 of the
coverage of system without IRS and it so flexible and easy to
configure in the environment. Ertugrul and Yildirim Proposed
network channel configuration with respect to the domination
978-1-6654-4078-3/21/$31.00©2021 IEEE
Husam M. Saif Zaid Y. Mohammed
communication Engineering communication Engineering
Taiz University Taiz University
Taiz,Yemen Taiz,Yemen
husam713581382@gmail.com zaidmadhmoon@gmail.com
and position of the IRS. They give a good assumption that when
transmits the signal from the base station (BS) to the IRS with
channel non-line of sight (NLoS) so, the transmitted signal will
reflect from any object and the loss of this operation must be
taken in the calculations of the path loss. Qingqing and Zhang
optimized the reflecting beam by controlling the phase shift of
all IRS elements, maximized the signal to noise ratio (SNR) can
get by adding all paths components constructively and this
feature can increase the security by adding all the paths
components constructively in the desired user and adding them
destructively with the undesired user. The multipath was a
problem in the previous generations but in 5G and 6G utilized it
to enhance SNR and security. The IRS in indoor channel with
high density of users is much better than outdoor channel while
in the urban area can be assumed outdoor channel as indoor
channel because the buildings around the BS from all sides and
the high density of the users while in rural area it is not beneficial
to use IRS. Increase the number of passive reflecting elements
will increase the SNR. Implement of channel estimation and
Direction of Arrivals (DoA) estimation via deep learning by
using neural networks for massive MIMO has been realized end
to end performance [4,5].
The deep learning is used for channel estimation in [6,7,8]
depend on RMSE performance, training loss and learning rate
for the neural network but for massive MIMO. This paper used
the deep learning to predict the convenient channel for the user.
In this simulation, two types of channel are implemented the
direct channel which is line of sight (LoS) with the user and the
cascade channel which is from the BS to the IRS and reflect to
the user or both of them constructively.
II. SYSTEM MODEL AND PROBLEM FORMULATION
A. Channel generation
Massive MIMO with massive IRS are considered in the
the direct scenario ℎ , and channels for cascade scenario ℎ ,
millimeter wave (mmwave) band and generate the channels for
 , C is the transmitted signal. = ~ VW 0, Y Adaptive
R
‖R‖T
Wight Gaussian Noise (AWGN) is added to the channel
similarly the cascade channel
Z :@A, [ A \ A ; B C̅ E = (5)
where @A, is the channel between the IRS and the user and
[A ] ∅^ is diagonal matrix. And ] is the phase shift. \ A
is the channel between BS and IRS
A. preparing matrix of channels
The generated channels were complex matrix so it is divided to
real and imaginary parts to confirm estimation and plotting.

Fig. 1. Scenarios of the channel III. CHANNEL ESTIMATION VIA DEEP LEARNING

The data of the generated channels is fed to the neural network

as shown in Fig. 1. Generate channel is by the requirement of
the channel and calculate its feature or properties. The
requirements of the channel are the number of transmitter's
antenna in the BS, number of passive reflecting elements, the
number of the paths and the delay in signal arrival. The
properties of the channel are:
• Array response at the transmitter massive MIMO
and receiver single MIMO, and at the IRS.
1 , 1 sin ,..,
! !
which use adaptive moment estimation (ADAM) optimizer.
Decay rate of gradient moving average is 0.9 and the Maximum
number of epochs used for training is 20. The mini-batch size
is 64 for each training iteration. The network consists of 7 layers
the first layer is the input layer, the second and third layers is
conventional layers with 256 filters each filter is of size 3×3,
the fourth and fifth and sixth is fully connected layers and the
seventh is regression layer which is the output layer. Changes
in the learning rate to arrive to the minimum training loss and
1 sin # 1
root mean square error (RMSE) as describe in Algorithm 1.

$ ∅ 1, $ 1 sin ∅! , . . , $ 1 sin ∅! # 2 Algorithm 1 Generation and estimation of channels

, $ ,number of realizations = , number of
&

where ( is the space between antennas and λ is the wavelength

Input:
for the carrier frequency. and $ represent the number of users P , sampling frequency _` , abc, d e.
antennas in the BS and receiver respectively. Output: training channel direct f g , training channel
• Direction of arrival (DoA) cascade fgg , RMSE, training loss and NMSE.
It's generated by using random function because of the Procedure:
randomness of the real channel. Assume the gain is for isotropic
, $ ∅ and use them to calculate DoA and ] then add
1: generate channel H direct and HIRS by calculate
antenna i.e. (0 dB). all these effects are added to the channel
which is matrix of zeroes. In the direct channel matrix equal the
them to the channel;
≤ = do
[number of antennas in BS × number of antennas in receiver]
but in the cascade channel it will be [number of antennas in BS 2: for 1 ≤
3: for 1 ≤ h ≤ P do
× number of passive reflect elements ×number of antennas in
receiver].
The equation for generating channel between BS and IRS is 4: add AWGN to the channels generated;

i g je ki g l; no ki g l p
/
+ 0 1 34 5634 7 .84 :6.84 ;
-.
,
2 2/
5: prepare the direct channels matrix
2/ / 9
(3)
/ 2/ <

1 2/
is the complex gain. => represents the path of the signal. igg je kigg l; qo kigg l p
6: prepare the cascade channels matrix

5634 7 and :6.84/ ; are the directions of the signal which depend
2/ 2

on the azimuth and elevation angles. 34 and .84 9

7: end for
8: end for h
are the array
responses.
9: feed i g , igg to training network;
? @A, B C̅ E =
The received signal from the BS to the user is given by
(4) 10: show the training information (training loss and training
@A ∈ ℂ represent the direct channel between the BS
- RMSE)
F,
and user. C̅ ∑N< M O ̅ C , M is the power to user P , OQ̅
where
11: compute NMSE from Equation (7) with different SNR
The validation added to the data and set validation frequency to
30 to fit the training curve. To check the performance of the
neural network using RMSE.

v∑•€•5wxyzx
~ { w|}y { 7
RMSE (6)
where f‚ƒ`‚ is the target channels and f„ ƒ is the prediction
channels form the training network.
†wxyzx w|}y †
NMSE ∑{<
wxyzx
(7)

IV. RESULTES AND DISCUSSIONS

In this paper, the channels are generated according to these

values. The number of antennas in the BS M = 16, number of
passive elements in the IRS L = 32, F = 90 GHz and the number
of paths P = 4 with 8 users. To make the simulation more
robustness every channel generates with 30 realizations. The
channel is additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel so (a)
the noise added to it with different SNR. Then the complex
matrix is divided to real part and imaginary part. Time takes to
generate matrix dataset for the channels is 5.14 s.

? and the cascade channels and the output response Z is so

The different between direct channels and the output response

narrow with SNR 30 dB as shown in Table I and Table II. In the

] and multipath. The cascade scenario includes the channels

cascade scenario the effects of more parameters like phase shift

the IRS works as BS to the user with phase shift ].

between BS and IRS and the channels between IRS and users.

The RMSE checks the performance of the algorithm with

respect to number of iterations with different values of learning
rate. With the convent learning rate, the relation between
training loss and number of iterations appears linear logarithm
in the direct and cascade channel as shown in Fig. 2. In the direct
channel, it's arrives to zero training loss with 197 iterations and
0.0005 learning rate but in cascade it's takes 130 iterations to be
0.49 training loss with learning rate 0.0003 as shown in Fig.2(a)
for direct channels and Fig.2(b) for cascade channels (b)
respectively. Fig. 2. Training loss (a) for direct channels and (b) for cascade
Learning rate is specify to 0.0005 in the direct channels and to channels
0.0003 in the cascade channels. Decrease learning rate cause in
increase training loss and RMSE in the both types of channels.
Similarly increase learning rate cause to rapid changes in RMSE TABLE I PARAMETER AND RESPONSE OF DIRECT
and training loss on the first iterations and increase them in the CHANNELS
‡ˆ‰ Š‹Œ •Q
cascade channels while in the direct channels decrease NMSE
and training loss in the first iterations then return to increase H direct
them in the last iterations as shown in Fig. 2 for training loss and 0.0284 0.3465 + 0.3470 +
in Fig. 3 for RMSE. 0.9381i 0.9464i
The direct channels start with low RMSE and need more than -0.4487 0.9911 + 1.0168 +
200 iterations to reduce RMSE to 0.375 while in the cascade 0.1334i 0.1051i
channels start learning with high RMSE but 130 iterations are -0.0283 -0.6688 - -0.6627 -
enough to reduce RMSE to 1.116. Very fast decrease in RMSE 0.7434i 0.7577i
in the first iterations for both type of channels but after 60 0.5224 -0.0379 + -0.0504+
iterations it's starts to be slow decreases. The direct channel 0.9993i 1.0045i
needs more iteration to reduce RMSE while in cascade 130
iteration is enough to arrive low RMSE as shown in Fig. 3.
TABLE II PARAMETER AND RESPONSE OF CASCADE As describe above, the realizations are 30 channels so from
CHANNELS every channel have got 30 approximated copy. the overall

‡ˆ‰ Š‹Œ Ž Š‹Œ ‹• •Q

number of channels is 900 and every 30 channels are together.
H From the side of prediction, the training networks predict the
cascade cascade channels better than the direct channels as shown in
0.7936 -0.0908 0.5000 0.5847 0.6047 Fig. 5.
- 0.9958i + + + Compare the direct and cascade channels from the stability with
0.0000i 1.8650i 1.8644i SNR, the cascade channel is more stable than the direct channel
0.3864 -0.4060- 0.3852 0.9985 1.0158 and it can work with low SNR as shown in Fig. 5. The time of
0.9138i + + + training of the direct channel is 1.45 minutes while in cascade
0.3188i 1.5694i 1.5459i channel it takes 15 minutes with core i7 laptop. By increase SNR
0.3344 -0.6283 0.0936 0.9290 0.9924 to 40 dB, direct channel stop reducing NMSE while in the
- 0.7779i + + + cascade channel it still reduces it.
0.4912i 0.9769i 1.0203i Compare the result in this paper with the result for LS, MLP,
-0.6439 0.9719 - -0.241 0.2423 0.2363 SF-CCNN in [5], the result in this paper is better but the system
0.2350i + + + in [5] include 64 antennas in BS and 100 passive elements in
0.4381i 0.3614i 0.3599i RIS.

(a) (a)

(b) (b)
Fig. 3. RMSE with number of iterations (a) for direct channels Fig. 4. The actual and predicted channels (a)for direct scenario
and (b) for cascade channels and (b) for cascade scenario
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V. CONCULUTIONS

This work has improved the low RMSE with observation of that
the cascade channels are more complex than direct channels
and need more time for processing while it's more stable with
SNR than the direct channels. In future work, implementation
must consider scatters object in both of channel direct and
cascade to get more real and reliable implementation. Doppler
spread is neglected in this work because the users in urban area
move slowly because of the crowded way.

VI. REFERENCES

[1] Redhwan Q. Shaddad; Ahmed A. Saeed; Refaat Q. Naji; Abdulmajeed M.

Baalawi. "Hybrid Traffic Dispersion and Network Densification Scheme
for 5G Millimeterwave Wireless Networks." 2019 First International
Conference of Intelligent Computing and Engineering (ICOICE). IEEE,
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[2] Basar, Ertugrul, and Ibrahim Yildirim. "SimRIS channel simulator for
reconfigurable intelligent surface-empowered communication
systems." 2020 IEEE Latin-American Conference on Communications
(LATINCOM). IEEE, 2020.