Improved Spectral Efficiency in STAR-RIS Aided Uplink Communication Using Rate Splitting Multiple Access

In this paper, a phase-shift coupled simultaneous transmitting/refracting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS)-aided uplink (UL) rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) system is investigated to achieve improved spectral efficiency. The considered UL RSMA system splits the rate for each user by dividing their message into multiple sub-messages and these sub-messages are transmitted to the base station (BS) via STAR-RIS as direct link between BS and user is absent. In particular, we formulate a resource allocation design problem which aim to maximize the overall rate-throughput of the considered system under the joint optimization of power allocation, decoding order, user-fairness and beamforming design at STAR-RIS for various operating modes of STAR-RIS modes, which is mixed- integer non-linear programming (MINLP). To solve the formulated non-convex complex problem, we first transform the original sum-rate maximization into its simplified form and then solved it using an alternating optimization algorithm where the sub-problems of power allocation and beamforming design under given decoding order are solved alternatively using general convex approximation and fractional programming approaches. Numerical simulation and computational complexity analysis validate that the proposed solution attains fast convergence. Moreover, the proposed RSMA scheme in STAR-RIS aided UL system outperforms the conventional nonorthogonal multiple access and orthogonal multiple access schemes in terms of overall rate-throughput and user-fairness.