Channel Estimation for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Backscatter Communication

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a promising technology to improve the performance of backscatter communication systems by smartly reconfiguring the multi-reflection channel. To fully exploit the passive beamforming gain of IRS in backscatter communication, channel state information (CSI) is indispensable but more practically challenging to acquire than conventional IRS-assisted systems, since IRS passively reflects signals over both the forward and backward (backscattering) links between the reader and tag. To address this issue, we propose in this letter a new and efficient channel estimation scheme for the IRS-assisted backscatter communication system. To minimize the mean-square error (MSE) of channel estimation, we formulate and solve an optimization problem by designing the IRS training reflection matrix for channel estimation under the constraints of unit-modulus elements and full rank. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed channel estimation scheme as compared to other baseline schemes.