Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is emerging as a transformative technology for next-generation wireless communication and sensing systems. In this letter, we consider the problem of adaptive beamforming (ABF) for a single-antenna receiver aided by a nearby IRS, where the receiver aims to extract signals from a desired direction in the presence of$K$strong,unknowninterferences. Specifically, we propose to maximize the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) by optimizing the reflection coefficients of the IRS. Unlike conventional ABF methods, we do not have direct access to the signal-plus-interference covariance matrix. Instead, only a limited number of quadratic compressive measurements can be obtained. To close this gap, we present a sample-efficient analytical solution via implicit inference of the interference covariance matrix. Simulation results demonstrate that our method significantly improves the SINR over state-of-the-art approaches.

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is composed of numerous passive reflecting elements and can be mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to achieve six-dimensional (6D) movement by adjusting the UAV’s three-dimensional (3D) location and 3D orientation simultaneously. Hence, in this paper, we investigate a new UAV-enabled passive 6D movable antenna (6DMA) architecture by mounting an IRS on a UAV and address the associated joint deployment and beamforming optimization problem. In particular, we consider a passive 6DMA-aided multicast system with a multi-antenna base station (BS) and multiple remote users, aiming to jointly optimize the IRS’s location and 3D orientation, as well as its passive beamforming to maximize the minimum received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) among all users under the practical angle-dependent signal reflection model. However, this optimization problem is challenging to be optimally solved due to the intricate relationship between the users’ SNRs and the IRS’s location and orientation. To tackle this challenge, we first focus on a simplified case with a single user, showing that one-dimensional (1D) orientation suffices to achieve the optimal performance. Next, we show that for any given IRS’s location, the optimal 1D orientation can be derived in closed form, based on which several useful insights are drawn. To solve the max-min SNR problem in the general multi-user case, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm by alternately optimizing the IRS’s beamforming and location/orientation via successive convex approximation (SCA) and hybrid coarse- and fine-grained search, respectively. To avoid undesirable local sub-optimal solutions, a Gibbs sampling (GS) method is proposed to generate new IRS locations and orientations for exploration in each AO iteration. Numerical results validate our theoretical analyses and demonstrate the superiority of our proposed AO algorithm with GS to conventional AO and other baseline deployment strategies with location or orientation optimization only.

Terahertz (THz) communication systems suffer severe blockage issues, which may significantly degrade the communication coverage and quality. Bending beams, capable of adjusting their propagation direction to bypass obstacles, have recently emerged as a promising solution to resolve this issue by engineering the propagation trajectory of the beam. However, traditional bending beam generation methods rely heavily on the specific geometric properties of the propagation trajectory and can only achieve sub-optimal performance. In this paper, we propose a new and general bending beamforming method by adopting the convex optimization techniques. In particular, we formulate the bending beamforming design as a max-min optimization problem, aiming to optimize the analog or digital transmit beamforming vector to maximize the minimum received signal power among all positions along the bending beam trajectory. However, the resulting problem is non-convex and difficult to be solved optimally. To tackle this difficulty, we apply the successive convex approximation (SCA) technique to obtain a high-quality suboptimal solution. Numerical results show that our proposed bending beamforming method outperforms the traditional method and shows robustness to the obstacle in the environment.

Target-mounted intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) introduce a novel degree of freedom (DoF) in controlling the target’s radar cross section (RCS), thereby enabling numerous advanced applications in wireless sensing and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems. Nevertheless, a comprehensive analytical framework characterizing the impact of IRS reflection coefficients on wireless sensing performance remains largely unexplored in existing literature. To address this gap, this paper investigates sensing mutual information (SMI) in a general scenario where a sensing transmitter (TX) sends random signals to multiple targets each equipped with an IRS, and multiple sensing receivers (RXs) process the received echoes. We derive a closed-form tight upper bound on SMI and propose an efficient manifold optimization-based method to maximize it by jointly optimizing the transmit precoder and IRS reflection coefficients. Simulation results validate our analysis and demonstrate substantial enhancements in SMI achieved by the proposed method.

We study the problem of interference cancelation with the aid of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS), where the objective is to determine the reflection coefficients at the IRS such that the interference signals are canceled at the receiver. Specifically, we are interested in a “blind” scenario where the channel state information (CSI) between the interference sources and the receiver is unknown. To tackle this challenging problem, we propose a sample-efficient blind approach which utilizes a small number of average received signal power measurements to automatically identify a reflection coefficient vector that is orthogonal to the cascaded interference channels and thus nullifies the interference signals at the receiver. Simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively cancel the interference signals and enhance the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR).

In this article, we consider the problem of joint transceiver design for millimeter-wave (mmWave)/terahertz (THz) multiuser MIMO integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems. Such a problem is formulated into a nonconvex optimization problem, with the objective of maximizing a weighted sum of communication users’ rates and the passive radar’s signal-to-clutter-and-noise ratio (SCNR). By exploring a low-dimensional subspace property of the optimal precoder, a low-dimensional subspace property-inspired block-coordinate-descent (LS-BCD)-based algorithm is proposed with remarkably reduced computational complexity. Our analysis reveals that the hybrid analog/digital beamforming structure can attain the same performance as that of a fully digital precoder, provided that the number of radio frequency (RF) chains is no less than the number of resolvable signal paths. Also, through expressing the precoder as a sum of a communication-precoder and a sensing-precoder, we develop an analytical solution to the joint transceiver design problem by generalizing the idea of block diagonalization (BD) to the ISAC system. Simulation results show that with a proper tradeoff parameter, the proposed methods can achieve a decent compromise between communication and sensing, where the performance of each communication/sensing task experiences only a mild performance loss as compared with the performance attained by optimizing exclusively for a single task.

In this paper, we propose an analytical solution for recovering a low-rank positive semi-definite (PSD) matrix from its rank-one measurements. We show that by utilizing a set of structured measurement vectors, we can analytically determine the null space of this low-rank PSD matrix. Based on the result, the PSD matrix can be efficiently recovered. Our analysis shows that the proposed method only requires$(N-K)(2K+1) + K^{2}$measurements to guarantee exact recovery of the PSD matrix, where$N$and$K$respectively denote the dimension and the rank of the PSD matrix. Numerical results show that the proposed method achieves a considerable improvement over existing state-of-the-art methods in terms of both sample complexity and computational efficiency. Specifically, the proposed method helps improve the computational efficiency by an order of magnitude as compared with existing methods.

We investigate a twin-timescale joint beamforming problem for multiple intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs)-assisted multi-user mm Wave orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, where the base station (BS) employs a hybrid analog and digital precoder. To alleviate the burden of frequent channel state information (CSI) acquisition and reduce design complexity, we devise the passive beamforming vector and the analog precoder based on statistical CSI, while the digital precoder is designed based on low-dimensional instantaneous CSI. Specifically, the former long-term optimization can be formulated as a stochastic optimization problem. To address this problem, we propose two different solutions. The first method devises the passive beamforming vector and the analog precoder by maximizing the ergodic channel gain. We also propose a deep unrolling-based method to provide a unified framework for the stochastic optimization problem. Our simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and computational efficiency of the proposed methods.

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been widely recognized as an efficient technique to reconfigure the electro-magnetic environment in favor of wireless communication performance. In this paper, we propose a new application of IRS for device-free target sensing via joint location and orientation estimation. In particular, different from the existing works that use IRS as an additional anchor node for localization/sensing, we consider mounting IRS on the sensing target, thus estimating the IRS's location and orientation as that of the target by leveraging IRS's controllable signal reflection. To this end, we first propose a three-dimensional beam training method to acquire essential angle information between the IRS and the sensing transmitter as well as a set of distributed sensing receivers. Next, based on the estimated angle information, we formulate two optimization problems to estimate the location and orientation of the IRS/target, respectively, which are solved by invoking the Taylor-series expansion and manifold optimization. Simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve high estimation accuracy and draw useful insights into the performance of target-mounted IRS sensing systems.

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been widely recognized as an efficient technique to reconfigure the electromagnetic environment in favor of wireless communication performance. In this paper, we propose a new application of IRS for device-free target sensing via joint location and orientation estimation. In particular, different from the existing works that use IRS as an additional anchor node for localization/sensing, we consider mounting IRS on the sensing target, whereby estimating the IRS’s location and orientation as that of the target by leveraging IRS’s controllable signal reflection. To this end, we first propose a tensor-based method to acquire essential angle information between the IRS and the sensing transmitter as well as a set of distributed sensing receivers. Next, based on the estimated angle information, we formulate two optimization problems to estimate the location and orientation of the IRS/target, respectively, and obtain the locally optimal solutions to them by invoking two iterative algorithms, namely, gradient descent method and manifold optimization. In particular, we show that the orientation estimation problem admits a closed-form solution in a special case that usually holds in practice. Furthermore, theoretical analysis is conducted to draw essential insights into the proposed sensing system design and performance. Simulation results verify our theoretical analysis and demonstrate that the proposed methods can achieve high estimation accuracy which is close to the theoretical bound.

The sum-rate maximization for intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS)-aided multi-user MIMO is a recent open problem. The challenge lies in the coefficient designs for reflecting phase shifts (at the IRS) and precoder/decoders (at the BS/users). By imposing two additional constraints, i.e., 1) each IRS only serves one user, 2) no interference exists between users, this paper proposes a novel space-orthogonal scheme for multiple IRSs- aided multi-user MIMO in millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) communications. Based on a new zero-interference criterion, we can successively find high-quality solutions for the IRSs' phase shifts and precoder/decoders one by one. Specifically, we first propose a null-space singular value decomposition (SVD) approach to determine a part of the precoder/decoders. Then, two solutions are developed for IRSs’ phase shifts, namely, the segment matching (SM) and the phase iterative evolution (PIE) solutions. Finally, the remanent part of the precoder/decoders are calculated by SVD with water-filling under the zero-interference constraint. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed scheme.

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) are two appealing technologies in millimeter-wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) communications. The challenge of combining these two technologies lies in joint design for active beamforming (at the base-station (BS)/users) and passive beamforming (at the IRSs). In this paper, we consider a multi-IRS-aided multi-user MIMO scenario and propose a novel space-orthogonal scheme by applying zero-forcing techniques. Specifically, we first propose a multi-IRS-based zero-interference criterion, under which multi-user interference can be eliminated regardless of the IRS’s phase shifts. Based on this criterion, we decompose the precoder/decoder matrix into a product of two matrices, with one of them devised for interference cancellation and the other one of them devised for achievable rate maximization. Next, an approximate space-orthogonal technique referred to as partial zero-forcing (IRS-PZF) is proposed for proposed for devising the former matrix whose objective is to cancel the multi-user interference; while two efficient phase-shift schemes are proposed for the IRS passive beamforming, namely, water-filling segment matching (WSM) and phase iterative evolution (PIE), which balance between performance and complexity. Finally, we calculate the latter matrix of the precoder/decoder by applying the singular value decomposition (SVD) for the effective BS-user channels, so as to maximize the users’ achievable rates. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed scheme compared with the benchmarks.

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a competitive solution to address blockage issues in millimeter wave (mmWave) and Terahertz (THz) communications due to its capability of reshaping wireless transmission environments. Nevertheless, obtaining the channel state information of IRS-assisted systems is quite challenging because of the passive characteristics of the IRS. In this paper, we consider the problem of beam training/alignment for IRS-assisted downlink mmWave/THz systems, where a multi-antenna base station (BS) with a hybrid structure serves a single-antenna user aided by IRS. By exploiting the inherent sparse structure of the BS-IRS-user cascade channel, the beam training problem is formulated as a joint sparse sensing and phaseless estimation problem, which involves devising a sparse sensing matrix and developing an efficient estimation algorithm to identify the best beam alignment from compressive phaseless measurements. Theoretical analysis reveals that the proposed method can identify the best alignment with only a modest amount of training overhead. Simulation results show that, for both line-of-sight (LOS) and NLOS scenarios, the proposed method obtains a significant performance improvement over existing state-of-art methods. Notably, it can achieve performance close to that of the exhaustive beam search scheme, while reducing the training overhead by 95%.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) creates a platform to exploit the synergy between two powerful functionalities that have been developing separately. However, the interference management and resource allocation between sensing and communication have not been fully studied. In this paper, we consider the design of perceptive mobile networks (PMNs) by adding sensing capability to current cellular networks. To avoid full-duplex operation, we propose the PMN with distributed target monitoring terminals (TMTs) where passive TMTs are deployed over wireless networks to locate the sensing target (ST). To manage the interference between sensing and communication, we jointly optimize the transmit and receive beamformers towards the communication user equipment (UEs) and the ST by alternating-optimization (AO) and prove its convergence. To reduce computation complexity and obtain physical insights, we further investigate the use of linear transceivers, including zero forcing and beam synthesis (B-syn). Our analysis revealed interesting physical insights: 1) instead of forming dedicated sensing signals, it is more efficient to redesign the communication signals for both communication and sensing purposes and “leak” communication energy for sensing; 2) the amount of energy leakage from one UE to the ST depends on their relative locations.

Large intelligent surface (LIS) has recently emerged as a potential low-cost solution to reshape the wireless propagation environment for improving the spectral efficiency. In this article, we consider a downlink millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system, where an LIS is deployed to assist the downlink data transmission from a base station (BS) to a user equipment (UE). Both the BS and the UE are equipped with a large number of antennas, and a hybrid analog/digital precoding/combining structure is used to reduce the hardware cost and energy consumption. We aim to maximize the spectral efficiency by jointly optimizing the LIS's reflection coefficients and the hybrid precoder (combiner) at the BS (UE). To tackle this non-convex problem, we reformulate the complex optimization problem into a much more friendly optimization problem by exploiting the inherent structure of the effective (cascade) mmWave channel. A manifold optimization (MO)-based algorithm is then developed. Simulation results show that by carefully devising LIS's reflection coefficients, our proposed method can help realize a favorable propagation environment with a small channel matrix condition number. Besides, it can achieve a performance comparable to those of state-of-the-art algorithms, while at a much lower computational complexity.

We study the problem of downlink beamforming training and channel estimation for millimeter wave (mmWave) OFDM systems, where a hybrid analog and digital beamforming structure is employed at the transmitter (i.e., base station) and an omni-directional antenna or an antenna array is used at the receiver (i.e., user). To efficiently probe the channel, we form multiple directional beams simultaneously at the transmitter and steer them towards different directions. The objective is to devise the beam training sequence and develop an efficient algorithm to estimate the channel. By exploiting the sparse scattering nature of mmWave channels, the above problem is formulated as one of sparse encoding and signal recovery, which involves finding a sparse sensing matrix to compress the sparse channel and an efficient channel estimation algorithm to recover the sparse channel from compressive measurements. In this article, we propose a sparse bipartite graph code-based algorithm, where a set of bipartite graphs are employed to encode the sparse channel and a simple decoding procedure that relies on the presence of a No-Multiton-graph (NM-graph) is used to reconstruct the sparse channel. Theoretical analysis shows that our proposed method can help achieve a substantial training overhead reduction. Simulations are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and its performance advantage over compressed sensing-based methods.

In this letter, we consider channel estimation for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted millimeter wave (mmWave) systems, where an IRS is deployed to assist the data transmission from the base station (BS) to a user. It is shown that for the purpose of joint active and passive beamforming, the knowledge of a large-size cascade channel matrix needs to be acquired. To reduce the training overhead, the inherent sparsity in mmWave channels is exploited. By utilizing properties of Katri-Rao and Kronecker products, we find a sparse representation of the cascade channel and convert cascade channel estimation into a sparse signal recovery problem. Simulation results show that our proposed method can provide an accurate channel estimate and achieve a substantial training overhead reduction.