Beyond Diagonal IRS Assisted Ultra Massive THz Systems: A Low Resolution Approach

Abstract: The terahertz communications have the potential to revolutionize data transfer with unmatched speed and facilitate the development of new high-bandwidth applications. This paper studies the performance of downlink terahertz system assisted by beyond diagonal intelligent reconfigurable surface (BD-IRS). For enhanced energy efficiency and low cost, a joint precoding and BD-IRS phase shift design satisfying the $1$-bit resolution constraints to maximize the spectral efficiency is presented. The original problem is non-linear, NP-hard, and intricately coupled, and obtaining an optimal solution is challenging. To reduce the complexity, we first transform the optimization problem into two problems and then iteratively solve them to achieve an efficient solution. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach for the BD-IRS assisted terahertz system significantly enhances the spectral efficiency compared to the conventional diagonal IRS assisted system.