IRS-Aided Communication System with Phase Noise and Hardware Impairments: Performance Analysis and Characterization

Recently, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a revolutionary technology that can reconfigure the radio propagation environment by dynamically altering the phase of wireless signals via a large number of reflecting units. In contrast to the vast literature on the performance analysis of IRS-enabled systems, this paper considers the theoretical characterization of the combined effect of IRS phase error and transceiver hardware impairments (HIs) on the performance of an IRS-aided wireless communication system. Specifically, when the direct link is unavailable, the system performance is evaluated by deriving the closed-form expressions of spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE). Further, for the case where a direct link is present, we approximated the SE through an upper bound. Lastly, numerical results are shown to demonstrate the proposed analysis's efficacy.