Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are an emerging transmission technology for application to wireless communications. RISs can be realized in different ways, which include (i) large arrays of inexpensive antennas that are usually spaced half of the wavelength apart; and (ii) metamaterial-based planar or conformal large surfaces whose scattering elements have sizes and inter-distances much smaller than the wavelength. Compared with other transmission technologies, e.g., phased arrays, multi-antenna transmitters, and relays, RISs require the largest number of scattering elements, but each of them needs to be backed by the fewest and least costly components. Also, no power amplifiers are usually needed. For these reasons, RISs constitute a promising software-defined architecture that can be realized at reduced cost, size, weight, and power (C-SWaP design), and are regarded as an enabling technology for realizing the emerging concept of smart radio environments (SREs). In this paper, we (i) introduce the emerging research field of RIS-empowered SREs; (ii) overview the most suitable applications of RISs in wireless networks; (iii) present an electromagnetic-based communication-theoretic framework for analyzing and optimizing metamaterial-based RISs; (iv) provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of research; and (v) discuss the most important research issues to tackle. Owing to the interdisciplinary essence of RIS-empowered SREs, finally, we put forth the need of reconciling and reuniting C. E. Shannon’s mathematical theory of communication with G. Green’s and J. C. Maxwell’s mathematical theories of electromagnetism for appropriately modeling, analyzing, optimizing, and deploying future wireless networks empowered by RISs.

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Smart Radio Environments Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: How It Works, State of Research, and The Road Ahead

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 non-convexity 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.

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Multicell MIMO Communications Relying on Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces

In this chapter we deal with the following nonlinear fractional programming problem: 

$$P:\mathop{{\max }}\limits_{{x \in s}} q(x) = (f(x) + \alpha )/((x) + \beta )$$

where f, g: R n → R, α, β ∈ R, S ⊆ R n . To simplify things, and without restricting the generality of the problem, it is usually assumed that, g(x) + β + 0 for all x ∈ S,S is non-empty and that the objective function has a finite optimal value.

Nonlinear Fractional Programming

What is a reconfigurable intelligent surface? What is a smart radio environment? What is a metasurface? How do metasurfaces work and how to model them? How to reconcile the mathematical theories of communication and electromagnetism? What are the most suitable uses and applications of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces in wireless networks? What are the most promising smart radio environments for wireless applications? What is the current state of research? What are the most important and challenging research issues to tackle? 
These are a few of the many questions that we investigate in this short opus, which has the threefold objective of introducing the emerging research field of smart radio environments empowered by reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, putting forth the need of reconciling and reuniting C. E. Shannon's mathematical theory of communication with G. Green's and J. C. Maxwell's mathematical theories of electromagnetism, and reporting pragmatic guidelines and recipes for employing appropriate physics-based models of metasurfaces in wireless communications.

Smart Radio Environments Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: How it Works, State of Research, and Road Ahead.

This paper presents a literature review on recent applications and design aspects of the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in the future wireless networks. Conventionally, the network optimization has been limited to transmission control at two endpoints, i.e., end users and network controller. The fading wireless channel is uncontrollable and becomes one of the main limiting factors for performance improvement. The IRS is composed of a large array of scattering elements, which can be individually configured to generate additional phase shifts to the signal reflections. Hence, it can actively control the signal propagation properties in favor of signal reception, and thus realize the notion of a smart radio environment. As such, the IRS’s phase control, combined with the conventional transmission control, can potentially bring performance gain compared to wireless networks without IRS. In this survey, we first introduce basic concepts of the IRS and the realizations of its reconfigurability. Then, we focus on applications of the IRS in wireless communications. We overview different performance metrics and analytical approaches to characterize the performance improvement of IRS-assisted wireless networks. To exploit the performance gain, we discuss the joint optimization of the IRS’s phase control and the transceivers’ transmission control in different network design problems, e.g., rate maximization and power minimization problems. Furthermore, we extend the discussion of IRS-assisted wireless networks to some emerging use cases. Finally, we highlight important practical challenges and future research directions for realizing IRS-assisted wireless networks in beyond 5G communications.

Toward Smart Wireless Communications via Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces: A Contemporary Survey

We investigate transmission optimization for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted multi-antenna systems from the physical-layer security perspective. The design goal is to maximize the system secrecy rate subject to the source transmit power constraint and the unit modulus constraints imposed on phase shifts at the IRS. To solve this complicated non-convex problem, we develop an efficient alternating algorithm where the solutions to the transmit covariance of the source and the phase shift matrix of the IRS are achieved in closed form and semi-closed form, respectively. The convergence of the proposed algorithm is guaranteed theoretically. Simulation results validate the performance advantage of the proposed optimized design.

Secrecy Rate Maximization for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Multi-Antenna Communications

We investigate transmission optimization for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted multi-antenna systems from the physical-layer security perspective. The design goal is to maximize the system secrecy rate subject to the source transmit power constraint and the unit modulus constraints imposed on phase shifts at the IRS. To solve this complicated non-convex problem, we develop an efficient alternating algorithm where the solutions to the transmit covariance of the source and the phase shift matrix of the IRS are achieved in closed form and semi-closed forms, respectively. The convergence of the proposed algorithm is guaranteed theoretically. Simulations results validate the performance advantage of the proposed optimized design.

This letter analytically compares the energy efficiency (EE) between the full-duplex (FD) and the half-duplex (HD) decode-and-forward relaying communications. Different from previous studies, we perform the comparison-based upon a less pessimistic EE analysis for the HD relaying and obtain new insightful conclusions. Specifically, we show that the maximum EE achieved by the FD relaying is always smaller than the HD counterpart if we only impose a relay transmit power constraint. Furthermore, by including a minimum spectral efficiency constraint, the converse is verified true under certain conditions that can be explicitly characterized. The theoretical EE comparison is also supported by simulation results.

Is Full-Duplex Relaying More Energy Efficient Than Half-Duplex Relaying?

Full-duplex (FD) relaying is a promising technology for the next generation communication systems. In this paper, we aim to jointly optimize the source and relay transmit powers to maximize the energy efficiency (EE) for both amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) FD relay systems. The considered problem is challenging, which cannot be directly addressed by the classical Dinkelbach’s algorithm. We first develop an iterative algorithm based on concave-convex procedure (CCCP) to find a locally optimal solution. Furthermore, to reduce the computational complexity, we propose an efficient non-iterative method that only needs to solve a single convex problem and meanwhile achieves near-optimal performance. Simulation results show that the proposed solutions can achieve superior EE performance compared to conventional schemes.

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Energy Efficient Joint Power Optimization for Full-Duplex Relaying

This letter investigates the optimization of beamforming design in a system with integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), where the base station (BS) sends signals for simultaneous multiuser communication and radar sensing. We aim at maximizing the energy efficiency (EE) of the multiuser communication while guaranteeing the sensing requirement in terms of individual radar beampattern gains. The problem is a complicated nonconvex fractional program which is challenging to be solved. By appropriately reformulating the problem and then applying the techniques of successive convex approximation (SCA) and semidefinite relaxation (SDR), we propose an iterative algorithm to address this problem. In theory, we prove that the introduced relaxation of the SDR is rigorously tight. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

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Zhenyao He

Papers

Secrecy Rate Maximization for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Multi-Antenna Communications

Secrecy Rate Maximization for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Multi-Antenna Communications

Is Full-Duplex Relaying More Energy Efficient Than Half-Duplex Relaying?

Energy Efficient Joint Power Optimization for Full-Duplex Relaying

Energy Efficient Beamforming Optimization for Integrated Sensing and Communication