Channel estimation for intelligent reflecting surface aided multi-user MISO terahertz system

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is considered as a promising application in terahertz (THz) communications since it is able to enhance the THz communication with no additional power consumptions. In this letter, we consider the channel estimation problem for an IRS-aided THz multi-user multi-input single-output (MISO) system with lens antenna array. The main challenge of the problem is that we need to estimate multiple channels and some of the channels are cascaded. To deal with the problem, we propose a two-stage channel estimation scheme, where we set different IRS modes to estimate different channels for each stage. In stage 1, we set the IRS to an absorbing mode and estimate the channel without IRS. Removing the influence of the prior estimated channel, in stage 2, we estimate the channel with IRS by setting the IRS to a perfect reflecting mode. And we decompose the total channel estimation problem into a series of independent problems, where we estimate each independent channel component with a least square method