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Intelligent Reflecting Surface Enhanced Wireless Network Joint Active and Passive Beamforming Design
Intelligent Reflecting Surface Enhanced Wireless Network Joint Active and Passive Beamforming Design
Intelligent Reflecting Surface Enhanced Wireless Network Joint Active and Passive Beamforming Design
Abstract—Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is envisioned to above challenging goals. Specifically, IRS is a planar array
have abundant applications in future wireless networks by smartly consisting of a large number of passive elements (e.g., low-
reconfiguring the signal propagation for performance enhance- cost printed dipoles), where each element is able to induce a
ment. Specifically, an IRS consists of a large number of low-
cost passive elements each reflecting the incident signal with a certain phase shift (by a smart controller) independently on
certain phase shift to collaboratively achieve beamforming and the incident electromagnetic wave. As the key component of
suppress interference at one or more designated receivers. In conventional reflectarrays, passive reflecting surface has found
this paper, we study an IRS-enhanced point-to-point multiple- a variety of applications in radar and satellite communications,
input single-output (MISO) wireless system where one IRS is which, however, is rarely used in terrestrial wireless commu-
deployed to assist in the communication from a multi-antenna
access point (AP) to a single-antenna user. As a result, the user nication. This is because traditional reflecting surfaces only
simultaneously receives the signal sent directly from the AP as have fixed phase shifters once fabricated, which are difficult
well as that reflected by the IRS. We aim to maximize the total to meet the dynamics of wireless networks with time-varying
received signal power at the user by jointly optimizing the (active) channels. However, recent advances in RF micro electromechan-
transmit beamforming at the AP and (passive) reflect beamforming ical systems (MEMS) and metamaterial (e.g., metasurface) have
by the phase shifters at the IRS. We first propose a centralized
algorithm based on the technique of semidefinite relaxation (SDR) made the reconfigurability of reflecting surfaces possible, even
by assuming the global channel state information (CSI) available via controlling the phase shifters in real time [3]. By smartly
at the IRS. Since the centralized implementation requires excessive adjusting the phase shifts of all elements at an IRS, the reflected
channel estimation and signal exchange overheads, we further signals can add coherently at the desired receiver to improve
propose a low-complexity distributed algorithm where the AP and the received signal power or destructively at the non-intended
IRS independently adjust the transmit beamforming and the phase
shifts in an alternating manner until the convergence is reached. receiver to avoid interference and enhance security/privacy.
Simulation results show that significant performance gains can be It is worth noting that the proposed IRS differs significantly
achieved by the proposed algorithms as compared to benchmark from other existing related technologies such as amplify-and-
schemes. Moreover, it is verified that the IRS is able to drastically forward (AF) relay, backscatter communication, and active in-
enhance the link quality and/or coverage over the conventional telligent surface based M-MIMO [4]. First, compared to AF
setup without the IRS.
Index Terms—Intelligent reflecting surface, passive array, beam- relay that assists in source-destination transmission by actively
forming, phase shifter optimization, distributed algorithm. generating new signals, IRS does not use a transmitter module
but only reflects the ambient RF signals as a passive array, which
I. I NTRODUCTION thus incurs no additional power consumption. Second, different
Although there has been a quantum leap in spectrum ef- from the traditional backscatter communication of the radio
ficiency of wireless networks in the last few decades thanks frequency identification (RFID) tag that communicates with the
to various technological advances such as ultra-dense network receiver by reflecting the incident wave sent from the reader, IRS
(UDN), massive multiple-input multiple-output (M-MIMO), and is utilized to enhance the existing communication link perfor-
millimeter wave (mmWave) communications, the network ener- mance instead of delivering any information of its own. As such,
gy consumption and hardware cost are still critical issues faced the direct-path signal (from reader to receiver) in backscatter
in practical implementation [1]. For example, UDNs almost communications is the undesired interference and hence needs
linearly scale the circuit and cooling energy consumption with to be canceled/suppressed at the receiver. However, in IRS-
the number of newly deployed base stations (BSs), while costly enhanced communications, both the direct-path and reflect-path
radio frequency (RF) chains and complex signal processing signals carry the same useful information and thus should be
techniques are needed for efficient communication at mmWave coherently added at the receiver to maximize the total received
frequencies. On the other hand, adding an excessively large power. Third, IRS is also different from the active intelligent
number of active components such as small-cell BSs/relays surface based M-MIMO due to their different array architectures
in wireless networks also causes a more severe interference (passive versus active) and operating mechanisms (reflect versus
issue. Therefore, research on finding both spectral and energy transmit). Furthermore, IRSs possess other advantages, such as
efficient techniques with low hardware cost is still imperative low profile, lightweight, and conformal geometry, which enable
for realizing sustainable and green fifth-generation (5G) wireless them to be easily attached/removed on/from the wall or ceiling,
networks and beyond [2]. thus providing high flexibility and superior compatibility for
In this paper, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is proposed practical implementation [5]. For example, by installing IRSs
as a promising green and cost-effective solution to achieve the on the walls which are in line-of-sight (LoS) of an access point
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modeled as a concatenation of three components, namely, AP- Let v = [v1 , · · · , vN ]H where vn = ejθn , ∀ n. Then, con-
IRS link, IRS reflecting with phase shifts, and IRS-user link. straints in (7) are equivalent to |vn | = 1, ∀ n = 1, · · · , N .
Therefore, it differs from the conventional AF relay channel By applying the change of variables hH r ΘG = v Φ where
H
H 2 2
since the relay amplifies not only its received source signal Φ = diag(hr )G, we have hr ΘG + hd = v Φ + hH
H H H
d .
but also its own receiver noise, and forwards the amplified (as Thus, problem (P2) is equivalent to
opposed to “reflected”) signal to the destination. In this paper,
(P3) : max v H ΦΦH v + v H Φhd + hH
d Φ v
H
(8)
we consider linear beamforming at the AP, with w ∈ CM ×1 v
denoting the transmit beamforming vector. Denote by p̄ the s.t. |vn | = 1, ∀ n = 1, · · · , N. (9)
maximum transmit power at the AP, i.e., w2 ≤ p̄, where
· denotes the Euclidean norm of a complex vector. Then, the Problem (P3) is a non-convex quadratically constrained quadrat-
total signal received at the user can be expressed as ic program (QCQP), which can be reformulated as a homoge-
neous QCQP. Specifically, by introducing an auxiliary variable
r ΘG + hd )ws + z,
y = (hH H
(1) t, problem (P3) can be equivalently written as
where s is independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) random (P4) : max v̄ H Rv̄ (10)
v̄
variable with zero mean and unit variance, and z denotes s.t. |v̄n | = 1, ∀ n = 1, · · · , N + 1, (11)
additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) at the user receiver
with zero mean and variance σ 2 . Accordingly, the signal power where
received at the user is given by ΦΦH Φhd v
R= , v̄ = .
hH
d Φ
H
0 t
2
r ΘG + hd )w| .
γ = |(hH H
(2)
However, problem (P4) is NP-hard in general [13]. Note that
B. Problem Formulation v̄ H Rv̄ = tr(Rv̄v̄ H ). Define V = v̄v̄ H , which needs to satisfy
V 0 and rank(V ) = 1. Since the rank-one constraint is
In practice, the proposed system can be applied to either non-convex, we apply SDR to relax this constraint. As a result,
wireless power or information transfer. In the former case, problem (P4) is reduced to
the harvested energy is generally modeled as a concave and
increasing function of the received signal power γ. In the latter (P5) : max tr(RV ) (12)
V
case, the information achievable rate is a logarithmic function
s.t. Vn,n = 1, ∀ n = 1, · · · , N + 1, (13)
of the receive SNR, which also increases with γ. Thus, in this
paper, we focus on maximizing the received signal power in (2) V 0. (14)
by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming w and the phase It can be observed that problem (P5) is a standard convex
shifts θ, subject to the maximum transmit power constraint at the semidefinite program (SDP) and hence it can be optimally
AP. The corresponding optimization problem can be formulated solved by existing convex optimization solvers such as CVX
as [14]. Generally, the relaxed problem (P5) may not lead to a
(P1) : max |(hH 2 rank-one solution, i.e., rank(V ) = 1, which implies that the
r ΘG + hd )w|
H
(3)
w,θ optimal objective value of (P5) only serves an upper bound
s.t. w2 ≤ p̄, (4) of (P4). Thus, additional steps are needed to construct a rank-
0 ≤ θn ≤ 2π, ∀ n = 1, · · · , N. (5) one solution from the optimal higher-rank solution to problem
(P5). Specifically, we first obtain the eigenvalue decomposition
Although all the constraints are convex, problem (P1) is a non- of V as V = U ΣU H , where U = [e1 , · · · , eN +1 ] and
convex optimization problem due to the non-concave objective Σ = diag(λ1 , · · · , λN +1 ) are a unitary matrix and a diagonal
function with respect to w and θ. In general, there is no standard matrix, respectively, both with the size of (N + 1) × (N + 1).
method for solving such non-convex optimization problems Then, we obtain a suboptimal solution to (P4) as v̄ = U Σ1/2 r,
optimally. In the next two sections, we propose a centralized where r ∈ C(N +1)×1 is a random vector generated according
algorithm as well as a distributed algorithm for solving (P1) to r ∈ CN (0, IN +1 ) with CN (0, IN +1 ) denoting the the cir-
by applying the SDR and alternating optimization techniques, cularly symmetric complex Gaussian (CSCG) distribution with
respectively. zero mean and covariance matrix IN +1 . With independently
generated Gaussian random vectors r, the objective value of
III. C ENTRALIZED A LGORITHM (P4) is approximated as the maximum one attained by the best
In this section, we first apply SDR to solve problem (P1) by v̄ among all r’s. Finally, the solution v to problem (P3) can
j arg([ v̄ v̄ ](1:N ) )
assuming that the global CSI is available at the IRS. Then, a be recovered by v = e N +1 where [x](1:N ) denotes
centralized algorithm is proposed for implementing this solution. the vector that contains the first N elements in x. It has been
For any given phase shifts θ, it can be verified that the shown that such an SDR approach followed by sufficiently large
maximum-ratio transmission (MRT) is the optimal transmit number of randomizations of r guarantees an π4 -approximation
beamforming solution to problem (P1) [12], i.e., w∗ = of the optimal objective value of problem (P3) [13].
√ (hH ΘG+hH )H
p̄ hrH ΘG+hdH wMRT . By substituting w∗ to (3), (P1) To implement the above solution, the following centralized
r d
can be simplified as the following equivalent problem algorithm is proposed. First, the user sends a pilot signal while
both the AP and IRS perform channel estimation to obtain hH d
H 2 and hH
(P2) : max hH
r ΘG + hd (6) r , respectively. Second, the AP sends a pilot signal while
θ
the IRS performs channel estimation to obtain G. Third, the
s.t. 0 ≤ θn ≤ 2π, ∀ n = 1, · · · , N. (7) AP sends the obtained CSI knowledge of hH d to the IRS via
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a dedicated wireless control link, as shown in Fig. 1. With Algorithm 1 Distributed Algorithm.
the above protocol, the CSI of all links is available at the 1: Initialize and iteration number k = 1.
IRS and thus it can compute w and θ by solving problem 2: Let the IRS be in the receiving mode and the user broadcast
(P1).2 Finally, the IRS controller sends the optimized transmit a pilot signal. The IRS estimates phase arg(hH r ) and the AP
beamforming w back to the AP for transmission. Although estimates the √ channel hd . The AP sets transmit beamform-
hd
the above centralized design achieves the best performance, ing as wk = p̄ h d
.
its required channel estimation and signal exchange overheads 3: repeat
may be prohibitive in practice, especially when the number of 4: Let the IRS be in the receiving mode and the AP
antennas at the AP and/or that of elements at the IRS are large. broadcast a pilot signal with transmit beamforming wk .
The IRS estimates arg(gnH w) and computes the phase
IV. D ISTRIBUTED A LGORITHM shift θ k+1 by using (19) with given wk .
To facilitate practical implementation, we propose a low- 5: Let the IRS be in the reflecting mode with given θ k+1 and
complexity distributed algorithm in this subsection based on the user broadcast a pilot signal. The AP estimates the
alternating optimization. Specifically, the transmit beamforming composite channel hH r ΘG + hd and computes the new
H
at the AP and the phase shifts at the IRS are optimized transmit beamforming w k+1
by using (20) with given
iteratively in an alternating manner with one being fixed in θ k+1 .
each iteration, until both reach the convergence or a maximum 6: Update k = k + 1.
number of iterations is executed in practice. It is worth pointing 7: until the fractional increase of the objective value is below
out that the alternating optimization itself does not necessarily a threshold > 0 or the maximum number of iterations is
imply a distributed implementation, while exploiting the special reached.
structure of our formulated problem enables us to avoid channel
feedback/signal exchange between the AP and IRS and also
reduce the channel estimation complexity as compared to the the AP-user direct link to achieve coherent signal construction at
centralized algorithm. We first present the alternating optimiza- the user. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the obtained
tion based method to solve (P1) as follows. phase θn∗ is independent of the amplitude of hn,r .
For any given transmit beamforming w, the objective function Next, we optimize the transmit beamforming for given θ.
of (P1) satisfies the following inequality: As in Section III, the composite AP-user channel is given
|(hH by hH ΘG + hH d and hence MRT is optimal, i.e., wMRT =
r ΘG + hd )w| = |hr ΘGw + hd w|
H H H
√ (hrH H H
r ΘG+hd )
(a) p̄ hH ΘG+hH . Recall that arg(hH d w)(i.e., ϕ0 ) is needed for
≤ |hH
r ΘGw| + |hd w|,
H
(15) r d
solving problem (P1’). However, arg(hH d wMRT ) is generally
where the equality in (a) holds if and only if arg(hH r ΘGw) =
different at different iterations, thus it needs to be fed back
arg(hH from the AP to the IRS for solving problem (P1’). To enable a
d w) ϕ0 , with arg(·) denoting the component-wise
phase of a complex vector. Next, we show that there always distributed implementation, we constrain the phase of hH d w to
exists a solution θ that satisfies (a) with equality as well as be a constant (e.g., 0) for all iterations. The key observation is
the phase shifter constraints in (5). By applying the change of that an arbitrary (common) phase rotation can be added to the
variables hHr ΘGw = v a where v = [e
H jθ1
, · · · , ejθN ]H and beamforming vector without changing the beamforming gain.
a = diag(hr )Gw, problem (P1) is reduced to (by ignoring the
H As such, the transmit beamforming vector is modified as
constant term |hHd w|) √ (hH ΘG + hH
d )
H
w∗ = p̄ rH ejα , (20)
(P1’) : max |v H a| (16) hr ΘG + hH
d
v
s.t. |vn | = 1, ∀ n = 1, · · · , N, (17) where α is adaptively chosen by the AP in each iteration such
∗ H ∗
that hHd w is a real number, i.e., ϕ0 = arg(hd w ) = 0. As a
arg(v a) = ϕ0 .
H
(18)
result, (P1’) becomes a local optimization problem at the IRS
It can be verified that the optimal solution to problem (P1’) is where the optimal solution can be obtained by using (19).
given by v ∗ = ej(ϕ0 −arg(a)) = ej(ϕ0 −arg(diag(hr )Gw)) . Thus,
H
The distributed algorithm to realize the above alternating
the corresponding nth phase shift at the IRS is given by optimization is given in Algorithm 1 in detail. Compared to
the centralized algorithm in Section III, the distributed algorithm
θn∗ = ϕ0 − arg(hH
n,r gn w)
H
has the following advantages. First, there is no channel feedback
= ϕ0 − arg(hH
n,r ) − arg(gn w),
H
(19) needed between the AP and IRS. Second, only phases arg(hH r )
and arg(gnH w) need to be estimated at the IRS instead of the
where hH n,r is the nth element of hr and gn is the nth row
H H
full CSI hH r and G. Third, there is no need to run the SDP
vector of G. Note that gn w combines the transmit beamforming
H
solver since closed-form solutions are available.
and the AP-IRS channel, and thus can be regarded as the
equivalent channel perceived by the nth reflecting element at the V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
IRS. Therefore, (19) suggests that the nth phase shift should be We consider a uniform linear array (ULA) at the AP and a
set such that the phase of the signal that passes through the AP- uniform rectangular array (URA) at the IRS with N = Nx Ny
IRS and IRS-user links is aligned with that of the signal over where Nx and Ny denote the number of reflecting elements in
2 We assume that the centralized algorithm is performed at the IRS rather than the horizontal and vertical directions, respectively. Specifically,
the AP since otherwise the estimated channel matrix G needs to be fed back the ULA is positioned in parallel to the URA at the same
to the AP from the IRS, which incurs more feedback overheads. altitude. For the purpose of exposition, we fix Ny = 10
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G 24
$3 ,56 22
G GY 20
8
A. SNR versus AP-User Distance
6
As shown in Fig. 2, we consider the setup where the AP 4
and IRS are located d0 = 51 m apart and the user lies on a 2
horizontal line that is in parallel to the one that connects the AP 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
AP−user horizontal distance, d (m)
and IRS, with the vertical distance between these two lines being
dv = 2 m. Denote the horizontal distance between the AP and Fig. 4. Receive SNR versus AP-user horizontal distance, d.
user by d. Accordingly, the AP-user and IRS-user link distances
are given by d1 = d2 + d2v m and d2 = (d0 − d)2 + d2v
m, respectively. As such, we can study the receive SNR of a
user located between the AP and IRS by varying the value of a larger AP-user distance does not necessarily lead to a worse
d m. In Fig. 3, we first show the convergence of the proposed user SNR in IRS-enhanced wireless networks. This is because
distributed algorithm. It is observed that for all setups, at most the user farther away from the AP is closer to the IRS and thus
three iterations are needed for convergence, which suggests a it is able to receive stronger reflected signals from the IRS. As
low implementation complexity. For performance comparison, a result, the user close to either the AP (e.g., d = 17 m) or IRS
we consider the following schemes for simulations: 1) Upper (e.g., d = 47 m) can achieve better SNR than a user far away
bound: the optimal objective value of (P5); 2) Joint AP and IRS from both of them (e.g., d = 40 m). This result suggests that the
beamforming design by the centralized algorithm proposed in signal coverage can be effectively extended by deploying only
Section III; 3) Joint AP and IRS beamforming design by the a passive IRS rather than installing an additional AP or active
distributed algorithm relay. For example, for a target SNR of 8 dB, the coverage
√ hd proposed in Section IV; 4) AP-user MRT: of the network without the IRS is about 33 m whereas this
we set w = p̄ h to achieve MRT based on the AP-user
d √ value is improved to about 50 m by applying the proposed joint
direct channel; 5) AP-IRS MRT: we set w = p̄ ggnn to achieve
beamforming designs with an IRS.
MRT based on the AP-IRS rank-one channel; √ hd 6) Benchmark
scheme without the IRS by setting w = p̄ h d
. Note that for On the other hand, it is also observed from Fig. 4 that the
schemes 4) and 5) with given w, the phase shifts are optimized AP-user MRT scheme performs close to optimal when the user
by using (19). is nearer to the AP, while it results in considerable SNR loss
In Fig. 4, we compare the receive SNR of all schemes when the user is nearer to the IRS. This is expected since in the
versus the horizontal distance between the AP and user, d. former case, the user received signal is dominated by the AP-
First, it is observed that the proposed centralized and distributed user direct link whereas the IRS-user link is dominant in the
algorithms both achieve near-optimal SNR as compared to the latter case. Moreover, it can be observed that the AP-IRS MRT
performance upper bound and also significantly outperform scheme behaves oppositely as the user moves away from the
other benchmark schemes. Second, for the scheme without the AP towards IRS. This further demonstrates that the proposed
IRS, one can observe that the user farther away from the AP joint beamforming designs can dynamically adjust the AP’s
suffers more SNR loss due to signal attenuation. However, this beamforming to strike an optimal balance between the signal
problem is alleviated by deploying an IRS, which implies that power to the user and IRS, respectively.
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30 link, the user receive SNR is not sensitive to the number of
reflecting elements. For the case of d = 43 m as shown in Fig.
25 5 (b) when the user is neither close to the AP nor close to the
IRS, it is observed that the SNR gain is generally lower than
20 N 2 . This is because in this case the signal energy received at the
Receive SNR (dB)
VI. C ONCLUSION
0
30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 In this paper, we have proposed a new approach to enhance
Number of reflecting elements, N
the performance of wireless networks by deploying passive
(a) d = 15 m and d = 50 m IRSs. Specifically, the active transmit beamforming at the AP
and the passive reflect beamforming of the phase shifters at
14
Upper bound
the IRS are jointly optimized to maximize the signal power
13 Joint design, centralized received at the user in an IRS-enhanced point-to-point MISO
Joint design, distributed
12 AP−user MRT system. By leveraging the SDR and alternating optimization
AP−IRS MRT 20% increase techniques, respectively, we propose both centralized and dis-
11 Without IRS
tributed designs. In particular, the low-complexity distributed
Receive SNR (dB)
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