Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Assisted Passive Covert Wireless Detection

This paper proposes a three-step joint rate optimization method for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted coal mine wireless communication systems. Different from terrestrial IRS-assisted communication scenarios, in coal mines, IRSs can be installed flexibly on the tops of rectangular tunnels to address the issues of signals being blocked and interfered with by mining equipment. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the IRS deployment position, the transmit power and IRS phase shifts to achieve the maximum effective achievable rate at user stations equipped with the proposed system. However, due to the complex channel models of coal mines, the optimization problem of IRS deployment position is non-convex. To solve this problem, two auxiliary variables along with logarithmic operations and Taylor approximation are introduced. On this basis, a three-step joint rate optimization involving the transmit power, IRS phase shifts and IRS deployment position is proposed to maximize the effective achievable rates at the user station. The simulation results show that compared with other rate optimization schemes, the effective achievable rates at the user station using the proposed joint rate optimization scheme can be improved by approximately 12.32% to 54.17% for different parameter configurations. It is also pointed out that the deployment position of the IRS can converge to the same optimal position independent of the initial deployment position. Moreover, we investigate the effects of the roughness of the tunnel walls in a coal mine on the effective achievable rates at the user station, and the simulation results indicate that the proposed three-step joint rate optimization scheme performs better in the coal mine scenario regardless of the roughness.

This work considers covert communications with the aid of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS). We jointly design the transmit power and IRS's reflection phase shifts and amplitudes to enhance covert communication performance. To this end, we first derive the total detection error rate at a warden. We then determine the IRS's optimal phase shifts and develop an effective one-dimensional search method to identify the IRS's optimal amplitudes. We show that the IRS can significantly improve the achievable covertness. In addition, optimizing the IRS's amplitudes on top of its phase shifts significantly outperforms fixing them as unit in covert communications.

The integration of intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) into free-space optical (FSO) communication systems is considered as a promising and innovative approach to overcoming existing challenges due to the strict line-of-sight (LoS) requirements faced by conventional FSO setups, thereby ensuring more flexible and controllable links and expanding the communication coverage area. Nonetheless, the configuration of IRS-assisted FSO systems remains relatively novel, requiring investigation into optimizing IRS placement to enhance system performance while mitigating interference and obstacles in dynamic environmental conditions. This work aims to evaluate the improvement of the system performance achieved through optimized IRS positioning while accounting for the main degrading factors inherent in FSO systems and IRS design. We present a comprehensive model for a multilink terrestrial IRS-assisted FSO system, taking into consideration key degrading factors such as pointing errors stemming from both transmitter and IRS jitter, IRS dimensions, and turbulence-induced fading. Furthermore, we derive closed-form expressions for the probability density function of channel coefficients, average bit error rate, and outage probability. Our results indicate that optimal IRS placement is in proximity to the transmitter, taking into account all channel impairments. Furthermore, we showed that optimal IRS placement tends to shift towards the receiver side as the IRS jitter increases. Consequently, the analysis presented offers valuable insights for efficiently designing IRS-assisted FSO systems, particularly regarding IRS placement in the presence of pointing errors.

This article investigates physical-layer security (PLS) of a typical wireless-powered communication (WPC) system with the aid of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in the presence of a passive eavesdropper for Internet of Things (IoT), and proposes three IRS-aided secure WPC modes. Specifically, in mode-I, the IRS is deployed between hybrid access point (HAP) and wireless user (U) for co-located power station (PS) and access point (AP). In mode-II, the IRS is deployed between AP and U for separate PS and AP, while in mode-III, the IRS is deployed between PS and U for separate PS and AP. For each mode, the optimal phase shift is designed to maximize the reception of energy and information at the legitimate receiver. We comprehensively analyze the performance of each mode, and derive the closed-form expressions of connection outage probability (COP), secrecy outage probability (SOP), and effective secrecy throughput (EST) for each mode, respectively. The theoretical analysis and simulation results reveal that from the perspective of reliability, mode-I can achieve the best COP with the increased number of IRS elements, while mode-II and mode-III have a similar COP. From the perspective of security, mode-II can achieve the best SOP with the increased number of IRS elements, while mode-I and mode-III have a similar SOP. Moreover, under the condition of small transmission power at HAP/PS or small number of IRS elements, mode-I has the best EST, while as the power or the number increases, the EST of mode-II becomes the best one.

In this paper, we investigate covert communication in an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system, where a legitimate transmitter (Alice) applies NOMA for downlink and uplink transmissions with a covert user (Bob) and a public user (Roy) aided by an IRS. Specifically, we propose new IRS-assisted downlink and uplink NOMA schemes to hide the existence of Bob’s covert transmission from a warden (Willie), which cost-effectively exploits the phase-shift uncertainty of the IRS and the non-orthogonal signal transmission of Roy as the cover medium without requiring additional uncertainty sources. Assuming the worst-case covert communication scenario where Willie can optimally adjust the detection threshold for his detector, we derive an analytical expression for the minimum average detection error probability of Willie achieved by each of the proposed schemes. To further enhance the covert communication performance, we propose to maximize the covert rates of Bob by jointly optimizing the transmit power and the IRS reflect beamforming, subject to given requirements on the covertness against Willie and the quality-of-service at Roy. Simulation results demonstrate the covertness advantage of the proposed schemes and confirm the accuracy of the derived analytical results. Interestingly, it is found that covert communication is impossible without using IRS or NOMA for the considered setup while the proposed schemes can always guarantee positive covert rates.

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a cost-efficient technique to improve the wireless network’s capacity and performance. Existing works on IRS have mainly considered IRS being deployed in the environment to dynamically control the wireless channels between the base station (BS) and its served users in favor of their communications. In contrast, we propose in this paper a new integrated IRS-BS architecture by deploying IRSs inside the BS’s antenna radome to directly reconfigure the signal radiation to/from the BS’s antennas. In other words, the IRSs can be considered as auxiliary passive arrays with real-time reconfigurability equipped at the BS to enhance its communication performance cost-effectively. Since the distance between the integrated IRSs and BS’s antenna array is practically small (in the order of several to tens of wavelengths), the path loss among them is significantly reduced as compared to conventional IRS deployed much farther away from the BS, while the real-time control of the IRS’s reflection by the BS becomes easier to implement. However, the resultant near-field channel model also becomes drastically different from its far-field counterpart for conventional far-away IRSs in the literature. Thus, we propose an element-wise channel model for IRS to characterize the channel vector between each single-antenna user and the antenna array of the BS, which includes the direct (without any IRS’s reflection) as well as the single and double IRS-reflection channel components. Based on this channel model, we formulate a problem to optimize the reflection coefficients of all IRS reflecting elements for maximizing the uplink sum-rate of the users. By considering two typical cases with/without perfect channel state information (CSI) at the BS, the formulated problem is solved efficiently by adopting the successive refinement method and iterative random phase algorithm (IRPA), respectively. Numerical results validate the substantial capacity gain of the integrated IRS-BS architecture over the conventional multi-antenna BS without integrated IRS. Moreover, the proposed algorithms significantly outperform other benchmark schemes in terms of sum-rate, and the IRPA without CSI can approach the performance upper bound with perfect CSI as the training overhead increases.

In many intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided communication systems, the IRS is deployed to provide a line-of-sight (LOS) link between the transmitter and receiver. In order to maximize the efficiency of the system, deploying the IRS at the correct position and orientation is important. We propose a method to find the optimal IRS orientation that maximizes the received power or achievable rate at locations within a desired geographical area. As shown through both analytical and simulation results, the proposed methodology on optimizing IRS orientation based on the receiver or transmitter locations significantly improves the overall system performance. For example, there is an approximately 8.1 bps/Hz achievable rate improvement by installing the IRS at the optimal orientation compared to an arbitrary orientation in a typical deployment scenario.

In this paper, we build up a new intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel model, named the cascaded LoS MIMO channel, that is applicable to both near-field and far-field scenarios. The proposed channel model consists of a transmitter (Tx) and a receiver (Rx) both equipped with uniform linear arrays (ULAs), and an IRS is used to enable communications between the transmitter and the receiver through the line-of-sight (LoS) links seen by the IRS. When modeling the reflection of electromagnetic waves at the IRS, we take into account the curvature of the wavefront on different reflecting elements. Based on the established channel model, we show that an IRS-assisted MIMO channel is able to support spatial multiplexing solely by the cascaded LoS links. We generalize the notion of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Rayleigh distance</i> originally coined for the single-hop MIMO channel to <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">full multiplexing region (FMR)</i> for the cascaded LoS MIMO channel, where the FMR is the union of all the Tx-IRS and IRS-Rx distance pairs that enable full multiplexing communication. We derive an inner bound of the FMR under a special passive beamforming (PB) strategy named reflective focusing, and provide the corresponding orientation settings of the antenna arrays that achieve full multiplexing.

Passive technologies like ambient backscatter communication (AmBC) and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) hold enormous potential for ubiquitous connectivity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in future wireless networks. However, despite many research efforts, AmBC has so far been unable to fulfil its potential for widespread deployment, due to the weakness of backscatter signal in the presence of strong direct-link interference from the original RF source. This limits the bit error rate (BER) and hence the transmission rate and range of AmBC systems. Meanwhile, the IRS offers new degrees of freedom in enhancing a variety of systems by transforming their propagation medium and signals. In this work, we devise a novel scheme to improve the detection performance of an AmBC system using an IRS located in its proximity. The IRS augments the backscatter signal quality at the receiver by adjusting its phase shifts to balance signal strengths, ultimately improving the performance of energy detection at the receiver. Our results clearly show that an IRS of reasonable size can considerably improve the BER performance of ambient backscatter, which is an important improvement for low power IoT systems.

A Survey of Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces: Performance Analysis, Extensions, Potential Challenges, and Open Research Issues

This paper investigates secure broadcast communications in intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided millimeter wave (mmWave) symbiotic radio (SR) networks, where the IRS and the base station (BS) are cooperating. Specifically, the IRS assists secure broadcasting for the BS by smartly reconfiguring the phase shifts of the signals from the BS, while delivering its own information to an Internet-of-Things device (IoD). We aim at maximizing the minimum secrecy rate of multiple users by jointly designing the hybrid precoder at the BS and the passive beamformer at the IRS, subject to the rate constraints of both the multiple users and the IoD. The design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem, which is intractable. To handle it, we develop a computationally efficient iterative algorithm based on the successive convex approximation, the efficiency and superiority of which have been validated by simulation results.

Combining intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) offers a new degree of freedom to improve the coverage performance. However, it is more challenging to secure the air-ground transmission, due to the line-of-sight (LoS) links established by UAV. Since IRS is a promising solution for wireless environment reconfiguration, in this paper, we propose an aerial IRS-assisted secure transmission design in wireless networks. In particular, an access point (AP) equipped with a uniform planar array serves several single-antenna legitimate users in the presence of multiple single-antenna eavesdroppers, whose precise positions are unknown. An IRS is mounted on the UAV to help establish desired virtual LoS links between the AP and legitimate users, while ensuring their security. We aim to maximize the worst-case sum secrecy rate by jointly optimizing the hovering position of UAV, the transmit beamforming of AP and the phase shifts of IRS, subject to the requirement of minimum rate for legitimate users. To tackle this non-convex problem, we first decompose it into three subproblems, which are transformed into convex ones via successive convex approximation. An alternating algorithm is then proposed to solve them iteratively. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and the security improvement by the joint optimization.

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as an innovative and disruptive solution to boost the spectral and energy efficiency and enlarge the coverage of wireless communication systems. However, the existing literature on IRS mainly concentrates on wireless communication systems assisted by single or multiple distributed IRSs, which are not always effective. In view of this issue, this paper considers a special double-IRS-assisted wireless communication system, where IRS1 and IRS2 are deployed near the base station (BS) and the user, respectively, and the transmitted signals reach the user via the cascaded BS-IRS1-IRS2-user channel only. We cooperatively optimize transmit and passive beamforming on the two IRSs based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to maximize the received signal power. Simulation indicates that despite no direct line-of-sight (LoS) path from the BS to the user, an excellent signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is available at the receiver with the aid of two IRSs, which demonstrates that it is feasible to assist communication by double reflection links composed of two IRSs. Additionally, we unexpectedly find that when the positions of the two IRSs are fixed, by exchanging the positions of the BS and the user, the obtainable SNRs are similar.

In this letter, we consider an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided wireless relaying system, where a decode-and-forward relay (R) is employed to forward data from a source (S) to a destination (D), aided by <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> passive reflecting elements. We consider two practical IRS deployment strategies, namely, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">single-IRS deployment</i> where all reflecting elements are mounted on one single IRS that is deployed near S, R, or D, and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">multi-IRS deployment</i> where the reflecting elements are allocated over three separate IRSs which are deployed near S, R, and D, respectively. Under the line-of-sight (LoS) channel model, we characterize the capacity scaling orders with respect to an increasing <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> for the IRS-aided relay system with different IRS deployment strategies. For single-IRS deployment, we show that deploying the IRS near R achieves the highest capacity as compared to that near S or D. While for multi-IRS deployment, we propose a practical cooperative IRS passive beamforming design which is analytically shown to achieve a larger capacity scaling order than the single-IRS deployment (i.e., near R or S/D) when <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is sufficiently large. Numerical examples are provided, which validate our theoretical results.

Multi-UAV and IRS placement for secure data transmission in NOMA-enabled wireless networks