Robust Beamforming Optimization for STAR-RIS Empowered Multi-User RSMA Under Hardware Imperfections and Channel Uncertainty

Abstract: This study explores the synergy between rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) and simultaneous transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) as a unified framework to enable ubiquitous, intelligent, and resilient connectivity in future sixth-generation networks, while improving spectral and energy efficiency. Specifically, we investigate a STAR-RIS-assisted multi-user RSMA system and develop an intelligent optimization strategy that jointly designs the transmitter's active beamforming, the common stream rate allocation, and the passive beamforming vectors for the STAR-RIS transmission and reflection regions, considering transceiver hardware impairments and imperfect channel state information (CSI). In addition, system robustness is ensured via a bounded channel estimation error model that captures CSI imperfections and guarantees resilience against worst-case errors. To address the highly non-convex problem, we propose an iterative optimization algorithm that decomposes it into two sub-problems. Firstly, active beamforming vectors for the common and private signals are determined by reformulating the original problem into a convex semi-definite programming (SDP) form using successive convex approximation (SCA) and semi-definite relaxation (SDR). Secondly, passive beamforming vectors are optimized through a convex SDP reformulation by exploiting SCA and SDR techniques. Moreover, when higher-rank solutions arise, Gaussian randomization is applied to obtain rank-one solutions. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed strategy achieves significant performance gains over benchmark schemes and exhibits fast convergence.