Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel transmission mode selection scheme for an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)assisted buffer-aided relaying protocol, capable of boosting throughput and reducing delay in a two-hop wireless network. The IRS is composed of multiple passive elements and acts as a low-cost multi-antenna relay node, which is capable of relaying (reflecting) an incident signal to the receiver in a full-duplex manner. The proposed protocol has multiple relay activation modes, such as an IRS-assisted full-duplex mode, a virtual fullduplex mode, and multiple half-duplex modes, and constitutes a unified full-duplex transmission. Our performance results demonstrate that the proposed IRS-assisted unified full-duplex buffer-aided relaying transmission outperforms the benchmark schemes.