Joint Beamforming for IRS-Aided Multi-Cell MISO System: Sum Rate Maximization and SINR Balancing

This paper studies joint beamforming problems for an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided multi-cell multiple-input single-output (MISO) system, and the goal is to maximize the sum rate by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming vectors at BSs and the reflective beamforming vector at the IRS, subject to the individual maximum transmit power constraints at BSs, and the reflection constraints at the IRS. Due to the formulated optimization problem is highly non-convex, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm based on successive convex approximation (SCA) such that the transmit and reflective beamforming vectors can be optimized alternately. We further consider the SINR balancing beamforming design scheme by maximizing the minimum SINR among all users to enhance the fairness among users, in which the transmit and reflective beamforming vectors are optimized in an alternating manner. The transmit beamforming vectors are optimized by the second-order-cone programming (SOCP) based on bisection method and the reflective beamforming vector is updated based on the technique of semidefinite relaxation (SDR). Simulation results show that the two proposed algorithms considerably outperform the benchmark zero-forcing (ZF) scheme. Moreover, the AO algorithm based on SCA has good communication performance than the other two schemes. And the AO algorithm based on bisection search guarantees the fairness for all users.