Beamforming and data detection in intelligent reflecting surfaces‐assisted communication using deep learning

Abstract

SummaryIn this article, we propose two deep neural network (DNN) architectures for an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)‐assisted network with a single transmitter and multiple receivers. The first DNN is designed to obtain an optimal beamforming weight vector that maximizes the achievable sum rate over the IRS‐aided network. The beamforming vector is designed based on a pilot‐based channel estimation procedure, which requires only a small fraction of the available number of reflecting surfaces on the IRS to be active. The obtained vector is fed to the second DNN, which is designed for detecting information symbols from the transmitter. Our simulation study shows that the achievable rate obtained using the designed beamforming vector approaches the maximum achievable rate quickly, as the number of active elements increases. The impact of the number of active elements and the beamforming vector on the performance of the detector is also studied, in terms of the bit error rate (BER). We show that the BER performance of the second DNN is close to that of the optimal maximum likelihood detector. Further, we study the effect of the channel estimation errors on the performance of the DNNs. Moreover, we study the effect of the hyperparameters of the architectures on the training time and performance, in terms of root mean squared error and accuracy.