Wireless Powered Intelligent Reflecting Surface for Improving Broadcasting Channels

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a promising technology for the 6G networks and attracts much attention. However, existing research seldom considers its energy demand. In this paper, we study an IRS assisted multiple-input single-output downlink broadcasting system where there exist one access point (AP), multiple users and a wireless powered IRS. We focus on the broadcasting data transmission which includes two phases. In the first phase, the AP transmits broadcasting data to users and energy signals for IRS energy harvesting (EH). In the second phase, the AP broadcasts messages with the assistance of the IRS. We aim at maximizing the transmission throughput by designing the phase duration scheduling, the transmit beamforming at the AP in each phase, the energy signal covariance matrix and the IRS reflect beamforming with discrete phase shifts. We first propose a semidefinite relaxation (SDR) based transmission design by also employing one-dimensional line search and further proposing a randomization process. Then, a low complexity transmission design has been further developed. Simulation results demonstrate that the SDR based design can almost achieve the optimal and the low complexity design can perform close to the SDR based design with much lower complexity.