Joint Beamforming and Phase Shift Design for Hybrid-IRS-aided Directional Modulation Network

TL;DR

This paper proposes two optimization algorithms for joint beamforming and phase shift design in a hybrid IRS-aided directional modulation network, balancing performance and power consumption with improved achievable rates.

Contribution

It introduces two novel algorithms, Max-SNR-FP and Max-SNR-EAR, for optimizing beamforming and phase shifts in hybrid IRS systems, enhancing rate performance.

Findings

Proposed methods achieve rates 35% higher than no IRS and random phase IRS.

Hybrid IRS with the proposed algorithms outperforms passive IRS by about 17%.

Max-SNR-EAR offers lower complexity with slight performance trade-off.

Abstract

To make a good balance between performance, cost, and power consumption, a hybrid intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided directional modulation (DM) network is investigated in this paper, where the hybrid IRS consists of passive and active reflecting elements. To maximize the achievable rate, two optimization algorithms, called maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)-fractional programming (FP) (Max-SNR-FP) and maximum SNR-equal amplitude reflecting (EAR) (Max-SNR-EAR), are proposed to jointly design the beamforming vector and phase shift matrix (PSM) of hybrid IRS by alternately optimizing one and giving another. The former employs the successive convex approximation and FP methods to derive the beamforming vector and hybrid IRS PSM, while the latter adopts the maximum signal-to-leakage-noise ratio method and the criteria of phase alignment and EAR to design them. Simulation results show that the rates harvested by the proposed two methods are slightly lower than those of active IRS with higher power consumption, which are 35 percent higher than those of no IRS and random phase IRS, while passive IRS achieves only about 17 percent rate gain over the latter. Moreover, compared to Max-SNR-FP, the proposed Max-SNR-EAR method makes an obvious complexity degradation at the price of a slight performance loss.