Energy-Efficient Design for IRS-Assisted MEC Networks with NOMA

Abstract: Energy-efficient design is of crucial importance in wireless internet of things (IoT) networks. In order to serve massive users while achieving an energy-efficient operation, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted mobile edge computing (MEC) network with non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is studied in this paper. The energy efficiency (EE) is maximized by jointly optimizing the offloading power, local computing frequency, receiving beamforming, and IRS phase-shift matrix. The problem is challenging to solve due to the non-convex fractional objective functions and the coupling among the variables. A semidefinite programming relaxation (SDR) based alternating algorithm is developed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed design outperforms the benchmark schemes in terms of EE. Applying IRS and NOMA can effectively improve the performance of the MEC network.