On the Trade-Off between Energy Efficiency and Spectral Efficiency in RIS-Aided Multi-User MISO Downlink

As reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have been gradually brought to reality, a large amount of research has been conducted to investigate the immense benefits of RISs. That is because RISs enable us to artificially direct the radio wave propagating through the environment at a relatively low cost. This paper investigates the trade-off between spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) in the RIS-aided multi-user multiple-input single-output downlink. We develop an optimization framework for designing the transmitting precoding at the base station and the phase shift values at the RIS to balance the EE-SE trade-off. The proposed iterative optimization framework for the design includes quadratic transform, alternating optimization, and weighted minimization mean-square error conversion. Simulation results illustrate our optimization framework algorithm exhibits effectiveness and a fast convergence rate.