RIS-NOMA integrated low-complexity transceiver architecture: Sum rate and energy efficiency perspective

This paper aims to explore reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) integration in a millimeter wave (mmWave) communication system with low-complexity transceiver architecture under imperfect CSI assumption. Towards this, we propose a RIS-aided system with a fully analog (FA) architecture at the base station. However, to overcome the disadvantage of single-user transmission due to the single RF-chain, we employ NOMA. For such a system, we formulate sum rate (SR) and energy efficiency (EE) maximization problems to obtain the joint transmit beamformer, RIS phase shift matrix, and power allocation solutions under minimum rate constraint. We first tackle the fractional objectives of both problems by reformulating the SR and EE maximization problems into equivalent quadratic forms using the quadratic transform. On the other hand, we employ successive convex approximation and the semi-definite relaxation technique to handle the non-convex minimum rate and unit modulus constraint of the RIS phase shifts, respectively. Next, we propose an alternating optimization-based algorithm that iterates over the transmit beamformer, power allocation, and RIS phase shift subproblems. Further, we also show that the quadratic reformulation is equivalent to the WMSE-based reformulation for the case of SR maximization problem. Our numerical results show that the proposed RIS-NOMA integrated FA architecture system outperforms the optimally configured fully digital architecture in terms of SR at low SNR and EE for a wide range of SNR while still maintaining low hardware complexity and cost. Finally, we present the numerical performance analysis of the RIS-NOMA integrated low-complexity system for various system configuration parameters.

Optimal Beamforming and Outage Analysis for Max Mean SNR under RIS-aided Communication

This paper considers beamforming for a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided multiple input single output (MISO) communication system in the presence of Rician multipath fading. Our aim is to jointly optimize the transmit beamformer and RIS phase shift matrix for maximizing the mean signal-to-noise (SNR) of the combined signal received over direct and indirect links. While numerical solutions are known for such optimization problems, this is the first paper to derive closed-form expressions for the optimal beamformer and the phase shifter for a closely related problem. In particular, we maximize a carefully constructed lower bound of the mean SNR, which is more conducive to analytical treatment. Further, we show that effective channel gain under optimal beamforming follows Rice distribution. Next, we use these results to characterize a closed-form expression for the outage probability under the proposed beamforming scheme, which is subsequently employed to derive an analytical expression for the ergodic capacity. Finally, we numerically demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed beamformer solution in comparison with the existing algorithmically obtained optimal solution for the exact mean SNR maximization.