IRS‐Assisted Secure Communication: Maximizing Secrecy Energy Efficiency in MISO Network

ABSTRACT This paper studied the deployment of intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) to prevent potential eavesdropper in MISO communication network, and provided users with confidential, energy efficiency and secure services. A key metric, secrecy energy efficiency (SEE), which measures the number of securely transmitted bits per unit of energy consumed, was significantly enhanced through the deployment of IRSs. SEE captures the balance between achieving a high secrecy rate and minimizing power consumption. In order to maximize the SEE of MISO communication network, an efficient alternating optimization algorithm was proposed, which effectively resisted multiple eavesdroppers by designing appropriate secrecy beamforming vector and phase shift vector. Simulation results reveal that the two conflicting performance metrics of secrecy rate and total power consumption are balanced in multi‐IRS‐assisted secure communication. The results also highlight the superiority of the proposed method over existing benchmark schemes, showing notable improvements in both SEE and secrecy rate when multiple IRSs are integrated.