Fairness Optimization of RSMA for Uplink Communication based on Intelligent Reflecting Surface

In this paper, we propose a rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) scheme for uplink wireless communication systems with intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided. In the considered model, IRS is adopted to overcome power attenuation caused by path loss. We construct a max-min fairness optimization problem to obtain the resource allocation, including the receive beamforming at the base station (BS) and phase-shift beamforming at IRS. We also introduce a successive group decoding (SGD) algorithm at the receiver, which trades off the fairness and complexity of decoding. In the simulation, the results show that the proposed scheme has superiority in improving the fairness of uplink communication.