A Joint Optimization Framework for Sum-Rate Maximization in Air Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Assisted MIMO-NOMA Systems

In this article, a novel multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communication system for Internet of Things (IoT) is proposed, where the aerial reconfigurable intelligent surface (ARIS) and nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) are used as the sum rate enhancement pathway. The base station (BS) has multiple antennas that transmit superimposed signals to multiple users. The passive ARIS serves as a flexible transmit relay to reduce path loss and improve channel gains. Users are divided into several groups based on their channel status, each sharing a radio frequency (RF) chain. To maximize the sum rate of all users, the placement of ARIS, the passive/active beamforming design and the power allocation among users are jointly optimized. As the joint optimization for user grouping, passive/active beamforming and power distribution is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP) which is nonconvex and coupled and hence, obtaining an optimal solution is challenging. In this article, the problem is decoupled into three subproblems and solved alternately efficiently. The numerical results demonstrate that the suggested MIMO-ARIS-NOMA system can achieve higher sum rate performance than traditional schemes.