Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Multi-User OFDMA: Channel Estimation and Training Design

Understand

To achieve the full passive beamforming gains of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS), accurate channel state information (CSI) is indispensable but practically challenging to acquire, due to the excessive amount of channel parameters to be estimated which increases with the number of IRS reflecting elements as well as that of IRS-served users.

• To tackle this challenge, we propose in this paper two efficient channel estimation schemes for different channel setups in an IRS-assisted multi-user broadband communication system employing the orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA).
• The first channel estimation scheme, which estimates the CSI of all users in parallel simultaneously at the access point (AP), is applicable for arbitrary frequency-selective fading channels.
• In contrast, the second channel estimation scheme, which exploits a key property that all users share the same (common) IRS-AP channel to enhance the training efficiency and support more users, is proposed for the typical scenario with line-of-sight (LoS) dominant user-IRS channels.