Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided MIMO Cognitive Radio Systems

Abstract

In cognitive radio (CR) systems, the spectrum efficiency (SE) of the secondary users (SUs) is always limited by the interference temperature constraint imposed on the primary users (PUs). Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been recently proposed as a revolutionary technique which can help to enhance the SE of wireless communications. In this paper, we propose to employ an IRS to assist the SUs’ data transmission in the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) CR system. By jointly optimizing the transmit precoding (TPC) of the SU transmitter (ST) and the phase shifts of the IRS, we aim to maximize the achievable weighted sum rate (WSR) of SUs subject to the ST's total power, the PU's interference temperature and unit modulus constraints. To solve this complicated optimization problem in which the variables are coupled, the block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm is introduced to alternately solve the subproblems. For each subproblem, the Lagrange dual or inner approximation method is adopted with a low complexity. Simulation results confirm the benefits of employing IRS in a MIMO CR system. The performance comparisons of the proposed algorithm with several other benchmarks are carried out by evaluating the impacts of various parameters on the WSR.