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’s power constraint and unit modulus constraint. Both the BSs and the users are equipped with multiple antennas, which enhances the spectral efficiency by exploiting the spatial multiplexing gain. Due to the nonconvexity of the problem, we first reformulate it into an equivalent one, which is solved by using the block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm, where the precoding matrices and phase shifts are alternately optimized. The optimal precoding matrices can be obtained in closed form, when fixing the phase shifts. A pair of efficient algorithms are proposed for solving the phase shift optimization problem, namely the Majorization-Minimization (MM) Algorithm and the Complex Circle Manifold (CCM) Method. Both algorithms are guaranteed to converge to at least locally optimal solutions. We also extend the proposed algorithms to the more general multiple-IRS and network MIMO scenarios. Finally, our simulation results confirm the advantages of introducing IRSs in enhancing the cell-edge user performance.

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 optimized. To tackle this challenging optimization problem, we first adopt the classic block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm for decoupling the original optimization problem into several subproblems and alternatively optimize the TPC matrices and the phase shift matrix. For each subproblem, we provide a low-complexity iterative algorithm, which is guaranteed to converge to the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) point of each subproblem. The BCD algorithm is rigorously proved to converge to the KKT point of the original problem. We also conceive a feasibility checking method to study its feasibility. Our extensive simulation results confirm that employing IRSs in SWIPT beneficially enhances the system performance and the proposed BCD algorithm converges rapidly, which is appealing for practical applications.

Intelligent reflection surface (IRS) has recently been recognized as a promising technique to enhance the performance of wireless systems due to its ability of reconfiguring the signal propagation environment. However, the perfect channel state information (CSI) is challenging to obtain at the base station (BS) due to the lack of radio frequency (RF) chains at the IRS. Since most of the existing channel estimation methods were developed to acquire the cascaded BS-IRS-user channels, this paper is the first work to study the robust beamforming based on the imperfect cascaded BSIRS- user channels at the transmitter (CBIUT). Specifically, the transmit power minimization problems are formulated subject to the worst-case rate constraints under the bounded CSI error model and the rate outage probability constraints under the statistical CSI error model, respectively. After approximating the worst-case rate constraints by using the S-procedure and the rate outage probability constraints by using the Bernsteintype inequality, the reformulated problems can be efficiently solved. Numerical results show that the negative impact of the CBIUT error on the system performance is greater than that of the direct CSI error.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided mobile edge computing (MEC) framework is proposed, where several UAVs having different trajectories fly over the target area and support the user equipments (UEs) on the ground. We aim to jointly optimize the geographical fairness among all the UEs, the fairness of each UAV’ UE-load and the overall energy consumption of UEs. The above optimization problem includes both integer and continues variables and it is challenging to solve. To address the above problem, a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning based trajectory control algorithm is proposed for managing the trajectory of each UAV independently, where the popular Multi-Agent Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (MADDPG) method is applied. Given the UAVs’ trajectories, a low-complexity approach is introduced for optimizing the offloading decisions of UEs. We show that our proposed solution has considerable performance over other traditional algorithms, both in terms of the fairness for serving UEs, fairness of UE-load at each UAV and energy consumption for all the UEs.

In this paper, we consider the sum power minimization problem via jointly optimizing user association, power control, computation capacity allocation, and location planning in a mobile edge computing (MEC) network with multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). To solve the nonconvex problem, we propose a low-complexity algorithm with solving three subproblems iteratively. For the user association subproblem, the compressive sensing-based algorithm is accordingly proposed. For the computation capacity allocation subproblem, the optimal solution is obtained in closed form. For the location planning subproblem, the optimal solution is effectively obtained via one-dimensional search method. To obtain a feasible solution for this iterative algorithm, a fuzzy c-means clustering-based algorithm is proposed. The numerical results show that the proposed algorithm achieves better performance than the conventional approaches.

This paper considers an artificial noise (AN)- aided secure MIMO wireless communication system. To enhance the system security performance, the advanced intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is invoked, and 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 subject to constrains of transmit power limit and unit modulus of IRS phase shifts. Then, the secrecy rate maximization (SRM) problem is formulated, which is a non-convex problem with multiple coupled variables. To tackle it, we propose to utilize the block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm to alternately update the variables while keeping SR non-decreasing. Specifically, the optimal TPC matrix and AN covariance matrix are derived by Lagrangian multiplier method, and the optimal phase shifts are obtained by Majorization-Minimization (MM) algorithm. Since all variables can be calculated in closed form, the proposed algorithm is very efficient. We also extend the SRM problem to the more general multiple-IRs scenario and propose a BCD algorithm to solve it. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of system security enhancement via an IRS.