Energy Efficiency Maximization via Joint Active and Passive Beamforming Design for Multiuser MISO IRS-Aided SWIPT

This letter studies a multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system. Specifically, a multi-antenna base station (BS) transmits data along with energy to a set of users to decode data and harvest energy by adopting the power splitting (PS) simultaneously. The energy efficiency indicator (EEI) is introduced to trade off between data rate and harvested energy, which is maximized by jointly optimizing beamforming vectors at the BS, PS ratio at each user, and phase shifts at the IRS. To solve this non-convex optimization problem, we first adopt the majorization-minimization (MM) approach to construct a concave-convex fractional function which can be handled via the Dinkelbach algorithm and then propose an efficient algorithm for solving two subproblems based on the alternating optimization (AO). For the first subproblem, semi-definite relaxation (SDR), MM approach, and Dinkelbach algorithm are adopted, while for the second sub-problem, a new manifold approach is proposed to handle the unit-modulus constraints due to IRS passive reflection. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed algorithm compared to other baseline schemes.