On the Energy-Efficiency Maximization for IRS-Assisted MIMOME Wiretap Channels

TL;DR

This paper proposes an energy-efficient design for IRS-assisted MIMOME wiretap channels, optimizing transmit and IRS parameters to maximize secrecy energy efficiency while considering power constraints and system complexity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel PDDAPG algorithm for joint optimization in IRS-assisted MIMOME channels, with analysis of complexity and practical insights on IRS size effects.

Findings

IRS improves secrecy energy efficiency when IRS power consumption is low.

The proposed algorithm's complexity scales linearly with IRS elements and antennas.

Large IRSs are not always beneficial for energy efficiency.

Abstract

Security and energy efficiency have become crucial features in the modern-era wireless communication. In this paper, we consider an energy-efficient design for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted multiple-input multiple-output multiple-eavesdropper (MIMOME) wiretap channels (WTC). Our objective is to jointly optimize the transmit covariance matrix and the IRS phase-shifts to maximize the secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) of the considered system subject to a secrecy rate constraint at the legitimate receiver. To tackle this challenging non-convex problem in which the design variables are coupled in the objective and the constraint, we propose a penalty dual decomposition based alternating gradient projection (PDDAPG) method to obtain an efficient solution. We also show that the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm grows only linearly with the number of reflecting elements at the IRS, as well as with the number of antennas at transmitter/receivers' nodes. Our results confirm that using an IRS is helpful to improve the SEE of MIMOME WTC compared to its no-IRS counterpart only when the power consumption at IRS is small. In particular, and a large-sized IRS is not always beneficial for the SEE of a MIMOME WTC.