Secrecy communications of intelligent reflecting surfaces aided NOMA networks

This paper investigates the physical layer security of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks, where a remote user is regarded as an eavesdropper to intercept the information of nearby user. To evaluate the security performance of IRS-aided NOMA networks, a problem of maximizing achievable secrecy rate is formulated via jointly optimizing the beamforming and phase shifting. More specifically, we aim to tackle the non-convex problem by optimizing beamforming vector as well as phase shifting matrix with the assistance of block coordinate descent (BCD) and minorization maximization (MM) algorithms. Numerical results illustrate that: 1) The secrecy rates of IRS-aided NOMA with BCD and MM algorithms are superior to that of orthogonal multiple access schemes; 2) With increasing the number of reflecting elements, the secrecy rates of IRS-aided NOMA networks are achieved carefully; and 3) The IRS-aided NOMA networks are capable of relieving the transmission pressure of base station.