IRS-Assisted Data and Energy Transfer MAC Protocol

In the next-generation wireless networks, an enormous number of devices are expected to communicate with one another. However, due to the battery limitation of devices and insufficient energy supplement, data transmission efficiency of the network can be reduced. Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) can work as helper for energy harvesting. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol that utilizes Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) with IRS. In the proposed protocol, devices can transmit data to the Hybrid Access Point (H-AP) simultaneously through NOMA and achieve sufficient energy from the H-AP with the help of IRS. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol has notable improvement in the system throughput and energy efficiency.