Optimal Beamforming for IRS-Assisted SWIPT System with an Energy-Harvesting Eavesdropper

Abstract

In this paper, we study a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system aided by the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) technology, where an AP transmits confidential information to the legitimate information receiver (IR) in the presence of an energy harvesting (EH) receiver that could be a potential eavesdropper. We aim to maximize the secrecy rate at the legitimate IR by jointly optimizing the information beamforming vector and the energy transfer beamforming vector at the access point (AP), and the phase shift matrix at the IRS, subject to the minimum harvested power required by the EH receiver. The semi-definite relaxation (SDR) approach and the alternating optimization (AO) method are proposed to convert the original non-convex optimization problem to a series of semi-definite programs (SDPs), which are solved iteratively. Numerical results show that the achievable secrecy rate of the proposed IRS-assisted SWIPT system is higher than that of the SWIPT system without the assistance of the IRS.