This paper investigates a wireless powered sensor network (WPSN), where multiple sensor nodes are deployed to monitor a certain external environment. A multi-antenna power station (PS) provides the power to these sensor nodes during wireless energy transfer (WET) phase, and consequently the sensor nodes employ the harvested energy to transmit their own monitoring information to a fusion center (FC) during wireless information transfer (WIT) phase. The goal is to maximize the system sum throughput of the sensor network, where two different scenarios are considered, i.e., PS and the sensor nodes belong to the same or different service operator(s). For the first scenario, we propose a global optimal solution to jointly design the energy beamforming and time allocation. We further develop a closed-form solution for the proposed sum throughput maximization. For the second scenario in which the PS and the sensor nodes belong to different service operators, energy incentives are required for the PS to assist the sensor network. Specifically, the sensor network needs to pay in order to purchase the energy services released from the PS to support WIT. In this case, the paper exploits this hierarchical energy interaction, which is known as energy trading. We propose a quadratic energy trading based Stackelberg game, linear energy trading based Stackelberg game, and social welfare scheme, in which we derive the Stackelberg equilibrium for the formulated games, and the optimal solution for the social welfare scheme. Finally, numerical results are provided to validate the performance of our proposed schemes.

This work exploits the potential of a novel simultaneous transmission and reflection reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) in improving the security in a multiple-input single-output (MISO) network, where three transmission protocols, namely, energy splitting (ES), mode selection (MS), and time splitting (TS), are studied. The objective is to maximize the weighted sum secrecy rate (WSSR) by jointly designing the beamforming (BF) and the transmitting and reflecting coefficients (TARCs). A path-following based technique is first developed to covert the non-convex problem and design the BF and the TARCs in an alternating manner. Then, for the ES scheme, the TARCs are solved by a penalty concave convex procedure (PCCP) method. Besides, the proposed method is extended to the MS by solving a mixed-integer problem. While for the TS scheme, a two-layer optimization method is proposed. Finally, the simulation results validate the superiority of STAR-RIS.

This paper aims to investigate the benefit of using intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in multi-user multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) systems, in the presence of eavesdroppers. We maximize the weighted sum secrecy rate by jointly designing the secure beamforming (BF), the artificial noise (AN), as well as the phase shift of the IRS. An alternating optimization (AO) method is proposed to deal with the formulated non convex problem. In particular, the secure beamforming and AN jamming matrix are optimally designed via the successive convex approximation (SCA) approach for given phase shift, which can be derived by considering the alternating direction method of multiplier (ADMM) and element-wise block coordinate decent (EBCD) methods. Finally, simulation results are presented to show the benefit of the IRS in terms of improving the secrecy performance, when compared to other methods.

This paper studies an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided wireless powered sensor network (WPSN). Specifically, a power station (PS) provides wireless energy to multiple internet of thing (IoT) devices which supports them to deliver their own messages to an access point (AP). Moreover, we deploy an IRS to enhance the performance of the WPSN by intelligently adjusting the phase shift of each reflecting element. To evaluate the performance of the IRS assisted WPSN, we maximize its sum throughput to jointly optimize the phase shift matrices and the transmission time allocations. Due to the non-convexity of the formulated optimization problem, we first derive the optimal phase shifts of the wireless information transfer (WIT) in closed-form. Consequently, a semi-definite programming (SDP) relaxed approach is considered to jointly design the phase shift matrix of the wireless energy transfer (WET) and the transmission time allocations. In addition, we propose a low complexity scheme to gain insights and reduce the computational complexity incurred by the SDP relaxed scheme. Specifically, the optimal solutions of the phase shifts and the transmission time allocation are derived in closed-form by the Majorization-Minimization (MM) algorithm, the Lagrange dual method and the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. Finally, numerical results are presented to validate the proposed schemes and confirm the beneficial role of the IRS in comparison to the benchmark schemes, where the proposed IRS assisted scheme achieves almost 100% higher sum throughput, in comparison to the counterpart without IRS.

This article studies secure communication in an Internet of Things (IoT) network, where the confidential signal is sent by an active refracting reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-based transmitter, and a passive reflective RIS is utilized to improve the secrecy performance of users in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers. Specifically, we aim to maximize the weighted sum secrecy rate by jointly designing the power allocation, transmit beamforming (BF) of the refracting RIS, and the phase shifts of the reflective RIS. To solve the nonconvex optimization problem, we propose a linearization method to approximate the objective function into a linear form. Then, an alternating optimization (AO) scheme is proposed to jointly optimize the power allocation factors, BF vector, and phase shifts, where the first one is found using the Lagrange dual method, while the latter two are obtained by utilizing the penalty dual decomposition method. Moreover, considering the demands of green and secure communications, by applying Dinkelbach’s method, we extend our proposed scheme to solving a secrecy energy maximization problem. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design.

This paper proposes a new transmission policy for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) empowered wireless powered internet of things systems. Particularly, an energy station (ES) wirelessly charges for multiple IoT devices during downlink wireless energy transfer (WET) and then these devices deliver their own message to an access point (AP) during uplink wireless information transfer (WIT). Also, an IRS is deployed to improve energy harvesting and data transmission capabilities. To enhance self-sustainability of the IRS, the IRS harvests energy from the ES based on the harvest-then-transmit protocol. In this paper, we maximize the sum throughput via optimizing the phase shifts of the IRS, the transfer time scheduling as well as the power splitting ratio. Due to the non-convexity of the formulated problem, we divide the problem into two sub-problems, each of which can be handled separately. Then, we adopt an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm with the semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation. Also, we consider a special case where the circuit power consumption of IoT devices can be neglected. In this case, we derive a closed form solution for the optimal transmission time slots, power allocation and phase shift by the Lagrange dual method. Finally, numerical evaluations validate effectiveness of the proposed scheme, which significantly benefits from the IRS in improving network throughput.