Outage Constrained Max–Min Secrecy Rate Optimization for IRS-Aided SWIPT Systems With Artificial Noise

This study focuses on an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) enabled simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system with the coexistence of legitimate users (LUs) and Eavesdroppers (Eves). The main objective is to jointly optimize the transmit beamforming and artificial noise covariance matrix at the access point, the phase shift matrix at the IRS, and the power splitting ratio at the LUs, to maximize the system’s min-secrecy rate. Due to the imperfect channel state information of Eves, an outage rate constraint is contained. The formulated problem is a challenging nonconvex optimization problem since it involves nonconvex objective function and constraints, and the outage rate constraint does not have simple closed form expression. To address this problem, an algorithm based on the alternating optimization method is proposed, which breaks down the nonconvex problem into three subproblems. The algorithm employs several techniques to solve these subproblems. Specifically, the outage rate constraint is approximated using the Bernstein-type inequality. And the Taylor formula, semi-definite relaxation, and successive convex approximation methods are employed to transform the nonconvex subproblems into convex ones. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm compared to baseline algorithms under different conditions.