Flying IRS: QoE-Driven Trajectory Optimization and Resource Allocation Based on Adaptive Deployment for WPCNs in 6G IoT

6G Internet of Things (IoT) is envisioned to provide large-scale network connections and high data transmission rates to satisfy the diverse needs of IoT nodes. The wireless powered communication network (WPCN) is the essential part of the future 6G IoT, which can provide nodes with reliable and efficient data and energy transmission. In complex environments, wireless power transmissions are inefficient due to transmission distance and obstacles. To address these concerns, we propose a novel quality of experience (QoE)-driven framework for aerial intelligent reflective surface (IRS)-assisted WPCN, which exploits the maneuverability of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to improve the network performance. In the framework, we construct a nonlinear satisfaction function to quantify the QoE and design an adaptive reflective units configuration scheme based on the QoE to reduce resource consumption (e.g., energy) while satisfying the QoE requirements. The optimization problem of maximizing average throughput is formulated by jointly optimizing the aerial IRS flight trajectory, node association variable, time slot allocation ratio, and IRS phase. The existence of coupling between optimization variables and the nonconvexity lead to the difficulty of solving the optimization problem directly. To effectively solve the above optimization problem, the block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm is utilized to decompose the optimization problem into four subproblems to be solved separately. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can significantly enhance the throughput compared with other schemes.