Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted mmWave Integrated Sensing and Communication Systems

This paper proposes an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system operating in the millimeter-wave band. Specifically, the ISAC system consists of a radar subsystem and a communication subsystem to detect multiple targets and communicate with the users simultaneously. The IRS is used to configure the radio propagation environment by changing the phase of the radio signal to enhance the communication transmission rate. In the proposed scheme, we first derive a closed-form solution for the radar signal covariance matrix to generate a radar beampattern in the angle of interest. Then, we jointly optimize the beamforming vector of the communication subsystem and the IRS phase shifts to enhance the communication transmission rate. To decouple the multiple variables to be optimized, the alternating optimization and quadratic transformation methods are applied to determine the communication beamforming vector and the IRS phase shifts. Specifically, we utilize the majorization minimization and the complex circle manifold methods to compute the IRS phase shifts. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and demonstrate that an IRS can improve the performance of ISAC systems.