This paper investigates intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided multi-antenna wireless powered communications in a multi-link interference channel, where multiple IRSs are deployed to enhance the downlink/uplink communications between each pair of hybrid access point (HAP) and wireless device. Our objective is to maximize the system sum throughput by optimizing the allocation of communication resources. To attain this objective and meanwhile balance the performance-cost tradeoff, we propose three transmission schemes: the IRS-aided asynchronous (Asy) scheme, the IRS-aided time-division multiple access (TDMA) scheme, and the IRS-aided synchronous (Syn) scheme. For the resulting three non-convex design problems, we propose a general algorithmic framework capable of suboptimally addressing all of them. Numerical results show that our proposed IRS-aided schemes noticeably surpass their counterparts without IRSs in both system sum throughput and total transmission energy consumption at the HAPs. Moreover, although the IRS-aided Asy scheme consistently achieves the highest sum throughput, the IRS-aided TDMA scheme is more appealing in scenarios with substantial cross-link interference and limited IRS elements, while the IRS-aided Syn scheme is preferable in low cross-link interference scenarios.

翻译：本文研究多链路干扰信道中智能反射面（IRS）辅助的多天线无线供能通信系统，其中部署多个IRS以增强每对混合接入点（HAP）与无线设备之间的下行/上行通信。我们的目标是通过优化通信资源分配来最大化系统总吞吐量。为实现该目标并同时平衡性能与成本的权衡，我们提出了三种传输方案：IRS辅助异步（Asy）方案、IRS辅助时分多址（TDMA）方案以及IRS辅助同步（Syn）方案。针对由此产生的三个非凸设计问题，我们提出了一个通用的算法框架，能够次优地求解所有问题。数值结果表明，在系统总吞吐量和HAP总传输能耗方面，我们提出的IRS辅助方案均显著优于无IRS的对应方案。此外，尽管IRS辅助Asy方案始终获得最高的总吞吐量，但在强跨链路干扰且IRS单元数量有限的场景中，IRS辅助TDMA方案更具吸引力；而在低跨链路干扰场景中，IRS辅助Syn方案更为可取。