Analysis of mobility impact on interference in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) technology seems to be a promising candidate for solving the radio frequency (RF) spectrum occupancy problem. CRs strive to utilize the white holes in the RF spectrum in an opportunistic manner. Because interference is an inherent and a very critical design parameter for all sorts of wireless communication systems, many of the recently emerging wireless technologies prefer smaller size coverage with reduced transmit power in order to decrease interference. Prominent examples of short-range communication systems trying to achieve low interference power levels are CR relays in CR networks and femtocells in next generation wireless networks (NGWNs). It is clear that a comprehensive interference model including mobility is essential especially in elaborating the performance of such short-range communication scenarios. Therefore, in this study, a physical layer interference model in a mobile radio communication environment is investigated by taking into account all of the basic propagation mechanisms such as large- and small-scale fading under a generic single primary user (PU) and single secondary user (SU) scenario. Both one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) random walk models are incorporated into the physical layer signal model. The analysis and corresponding numerical results are given along with the relevant discussions.     

A spectrum auction algorithm based on joint power control and beamforming in small cell networks

Spectrum auction is considered as a suitable approach to efficiently allocate spectrum among unlicensed users. However, in previous studies of spectrum auction, competition can hardly be reflected in the traditional spectrum allocation and the spectrum efficiency is still not high after the allocation. In this paper, we enhance the factor of competition in the auctions, in which bidders need to pay for the competition and the interference to macro cell users (MUs). We consider a communication system with one macro cell and several small cells, thus a licensed radio spectrum is shared by both MUs and small cell users (SUs). A truthful auction algorithm is proposed for spectrum allocation and the spectrum is divided into multiple channels in different time slots, so that SUs can make their choice for bidding under the guidance of history. In order to raise the communication quality, we propose a power control and beamforming algorithm in the heterogeneous network to enhance the system performance. Simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in the small cell network.     

Spectrum efficient power allocation schemes for OFDM cognitive radio with statistical interference constraints

In this paper, we study the power allocation problem for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based cognitive radio (CR) system. In a departure from the conventional power allocation schemes available in the literature for OFDM-based CR, we propose power allocation schemes that are augmented with spectral shaping. Active interference cancellation (AIC) is an effective spectral shaping technique for OFDM-based systems. Therefore, in particular, we propose AIC-based optimal and suboptimal power allocation schemes that aim to maximize the downlink transmission capacity of an OFDM-based CR system operating opportunistically within the licensed primary users (PUs) radio spectrum in an overlay approach. Since the CR transmitter may not have the perfect knowledge about the instantaneous channel quality between itself and the active PUs, the interference constraints imposed by each of the PUs are met in a statistical sense. We also study an optimal power allocation scheme that is augmented with raised cosine (RC) windowing-based spectral shaping. For a given power budget at the CR transmitter and the prescribed statistical interference constraints by the PUs, we demonstrate that although the on-the-run computational complexity of the proposed AIC-based optimal power allocation scheme is relatively higher, it may yield better transmission rate for the CR user compared to the RC windowing-based power allocation scheme. Further, the AIC-based suboptimal scheme has the least on-the-run computational complexity, and still may deliver performance that is comparable to that of the RC windowing-based power allocation scheme. The presented simulation results also show that both the AIC-based as well as the RC windowing-based power allocation schemes lead to significantly higher transmission rates for the CR user compared to the conventional (without any spectral shaping) optimal power allocation scheme.     

一种基于授权信道特性的认知无线电频谱检测算法

针对认知无线电系统中频谱检测的频率直接影响系统容量以及与授权用户产生冲突的概率问题,分析了授权用户频谱使用的特性, 对授权用户行为进行统计建模, 提出一种自适应频谱检测算法. 引入控制因子, 在保证认知无线电系统稳定性的约束下, 自适应调整频谱感知的频率从而提高频谱利用率并减小系统冲突概率和检测开销, 进而降低了系统的能量消耗. 仿真结果表明, 该算法在保证不对授权用户产生干扰和一定的系统稳定性条件下, 有效地提高了系统的容量,并且具有良好的实用性和灵活性. 关键词： 认知无线电 自适应频谱检测 绿色通信 最大似然     

A single-channel single-winner auction model for homogeneous channel allocation in CRNs

Cognitive radio (CR) is a novel intelligent technology which enables opportunistic access to temporarily unused licensed frequency bands. A key functionality of CR is to distribute free channels efficiently amongst Secondary Users (SUs) boosting spectrum usage to assist the escalating wireless applications world wide. In this context, this paper introduces a channel allocation mechanism which enables SUs (CR enabled unlicensed users) to dynamically access unused spectrum bands to fulfill their spectrum needs. We model the channel allocation problem as a sealed-bid single-sided auction which primarily aims at maximizing the overall spectrum utilization. Market based spectrum auctions in CR networks motivate licensed users to participate and lease their under utilized radio resources to gain monetary benefits. Sequential bidding is applied to this model for auctioning homogeneous channels, which reduces communication overhead. Bid submission takes into account two major CR constraints, namely, dynamics in spectrum opportunities and differences in channel availability time, which on incorporation provide disruption free data transmission to the SUs. We reduce resource wastage in this model by performing multiple auction rounds. Application of second price auction determines winning bidders and their respective payments to auctioneer. The design of our auction mechanism is supported with the proofs of truthfulness and individually rational properties. Furthermore, experimental results indicate that our model outperforms an existing auction method. Spectrum utilization values show 22 to 75% improvement in our model with changing number of SUs, and 23 to 93% improvement in our model with changing number of channels.     

Cross-layer design based hybrid MAC protocol for cognitive radio network

A minimal interrupted communication link setup is the primary objective of the MAC layer. The MAC layer is responsible for accessing the communication channel. At MAC, a control channel is used in the selection of collision free paths for data transfer. Therefore, the design of the control channel plays a pivotal role in achieving desired QoS in cognitive radio (CR) technology. Various schemes of control channel design help the CR network (CRN) to obtain better performance. The reported work focuses on a hybrid MAC protocol. The novelty of the scheme lies in the process of hybridization. A cross-layer framework is proposed for hybridization. The cross-layering has been done between network and MAC layer to achieve hybridization between different control channel design approaches. The broad categorization of control channel designs is between licensed in-band and dedicated unlicensed out-band approaches. In the in-band control channel design approach, the opportunistic use of data channel as control channel fulfills the decorum of CR technology. As soon as the primary user activity rises in the data channels, the in-band approach suffers from poor performance. On the other hand, the dedicated unlicensed out-band control channel design approach provides global coverage and all-time availability but suffers from channel saturation and intruder attacks. Interference in the control channel limits the use of out-band design. This motivates authors to develop a hybrid MAC protocol that can float between licensed in-band design and unlicensed out-band design to access the control channel. The hybridization is possible by sharing a primary user free channel list (PCL) among CR nodes. In conventional hybrid MAC protocols, the PCL is shared as a control beacon in the channel. Extra packet requirement as control beacon affects the performance of CR scenario. The proposed cross-layer design based hybrid MAC protocol avoids the need of an extra control beacon for PCL transmission. Further, the hybridization helps in achieving advantages of both in-band and out-band control channel design approaches. The simulation results show that the proposed hybrid MAC protocol performs satisfactorily in terms of packet delivery ratio, average throughput, average delay and control overhead. The performances are also tested in the worst scenarios.     

Resource allocation for LTE-based cognitive radio network with queue stability and interference constraints

We consider the problem of interference management and resource allocation in a cognitive radio network (CRNs) where the licensed spectrum holders (primary users) share their spare capacity with the non-licensed spectrum holders (secondary users). Under such shared spectrum usage the transmissions of the secondary users should have a minimal impact on the quality of service (QoS) and the operating conditions of the primary users. Therefore, it is important to distinguish the two types of users, and formulate the problem of resource allocation considering hard restrictions on the user-perceived QoS (such as packet end-to-end delay and loss) and physical-layer channel characteristics (such as noise and interference) of the primary users. To achieve this goal, we propose to assign the bandwidth and transmission power to minimize the total buffer occupancy in the system subject to capacity constraints, queue stability constraints, and interference requirements of the primary users. We apply this approach for resource allocation in a CRN built upon a Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) long-term evolution (LTE) standard platform. Performance of the algorithm is evaluated using simulations in OPNET environment. The algorithm shows consistent performance improvement when compared with other relevant resource allocation techniques.     

Network capacity of cognitive radio relay network

After successful dynamic spectrum access, cognitive radio (CR) must be able to relay the message/packets to the destination node by utilizing existing primary system(s) (PS) and/or cooperative/cognitive radio nodes in the cognitive radio network. In this paper, we pioneer the exploration of the fundamental behaviors of interference between CRs and PS in such a relay network via network coding. Interference on PS’s network capacity is shown to be unavoidable and unbounded in the one-hop relay network. Extending to the tandem structure, interference is unbounded but avoidable by appropriate constraints. In cooperative relay network, interference is bounded and avoidable. Moreover, parallel cooperative relay network can accommodate more CR transmission pairs. Such an analysis can be generalized to arbitrary networks. We derive that interference is avoidable when at least one route from CR’s source to the sink bypasses the bottlenecks of PS. Then under the constraint of no interference to PS, we derive CR’s maximum network capacity in such a network. Link allocation to achieve the maximum network capacity can be formulated and solved as a linear programming problem. Consequently, given any network topology, we can determine whether CR’s interference is avoidable, and maximize CR’s network capacity without interfering PS’s network capacity. Simulation results on randomly generated network topologies show that CR’s network capacity achieves on average 1.3 times of PS’s network capacity with interference avoidance constraint, and demonstrates spectrum efficiency at networking throughput and high availability.     

A virus spreading model for cognitive radio networks

Since cognitive radio (CR) networks could solve the spectrum scarcity problem, they have drawn much research in recent years. Artificial intelligence(AI) is introduced into CRs to learn from and adapt to their environment. Nonetheless, AI brings in a new kind of attacks specific to CR networks. The most powerful one is a self-propagating AI virus. And no spreading properties specific to this virus have been reported in the literature. To fill this research gap, we propose a virus spreading model of an AI virus by considering the characteristics of CR networks and the behavior of CR users. Several important observations are made from the simulation results based on the model. Firstly, the time taken to infect the whole network increases exponentially with the network size. Based on this result, CR network designers could calculate the optimal network size to slow down AI virus propagation rate. Secondly, the anti-virus performance of static networks to an AI virus is better than dynamic networks. Thirdly, if the CR devices with the highest degree are initially infected, the AI virus propagation rate will be increased substantially. Finally, it is also found that in the area with abundant spectrum resource, the AI virus propagation speed increases notably but the variability of the spectrum does not affect the propagation speed much.     

On spectrum sensing in cognitive radio CDMA networks with beamforming

In this paper, the performance of cognitive radio (CR) code division multiple access (CDMA) networks is analyzed in the presence of receive beamforming at the base stations (BSs). More precisely, we analyze, through simulations, the performance achievable by a CR user, with and without spectrum sensing, in a three-cell scenario. Uplink communications are considered. Three different schemes for spectrum sensing with beamforming are presented, together with a scheme without spectrum sensing. CR users belong to a cognitive radio network (CRN) which is coexisting with a primary radio network (PRN). Both the CRN and the PRN are CDMA based. The CRN is assumed to utilize beamforming for its CR users. Soft hand-off (HO) and power control are considered in both the CRN and the PRN. The impact of beamforming on the system performance is analyzed, considering various metrics. In particular, we evaluate the performance of the proposed systems in terms of outage probability, blocking probability, and average data rate of CR users. The results obtained clearly indicate that significant performance improvements can be obtained by CR users with the help of beamforming. The impact of several system parameters on the performance of the three considered spectrum sensing schemes with beamforming is analyzed. Our results, in terms of probability of outage, show that the relative improvement brought by the use of beamforming is higher in the absence of spectrum sensing (reduction of 80%) than in the presence of spectrum sensing (reduction of 42%).     

Cooperative spectrum sensing protocols and evaluation with IEEE 802.15.4 devices

Spectrum Sensing is one of the important tasks for wireless devices. By sensing the spectrum, wireless devices sense their radio environment and perform spectrum access accordingly to reduce collisions. Due to radio propagation effects and inherent noise in the measurements, performance of todays wireless technologies with individual spectrum sensing cannot solve the hidden node problem. Cooperative sensing is seen as a way to improve the performance of wireless devices improving the radio bandwidth utilization and minimizing interference among wireless devices. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work which provides protocols for cooperative sensing and presents experimental results with IEEE 802.15.4 devices. We present and implement protocols and applications for primary, secondary and cooperative users with a dedicated control channel. Thereby, the secondary user receiver serves as a first cooperative node in the system which reduces collisions between primary and secondary users. We evaluate the system performance with receiver sensing and additional cooperative nodes. We also propose a mechanism to extend the protocol for multiple secondary users sharing the same control channel. Based on the evaluations, we also provide recommendations for usage of cooperative sensing with focus on IEEE 802.15.4.     

5G-based wideband cognitive radio system design with cooperative spectrum sensing

Since the 5G bandwidth is very large, there are a large number of non-continuous idle spectrum in 5G communication. In this paper, we have designed transmitter and receiver of a 5G-based wideband cognitive radio (CR) system with cooperative spectrum sensing, in order to improve transmission performance and avoid interference signals. Each CR user marks the spectrum availability for getting the sub-basis function through doing Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) with the product of spectrum marker vector and random phase vector. The cooperative spectrum sensing can be realized by cascading the sub-basis functions of all the users. Multiple access of the CR system is also proposed to access much non-continuous idle spectrum. The simulation results have shown that the proposed CR system can avoid the interference effectively and outperform the spread spectrum system obviously.     

Route selection for interference minimization to primary users in cognitive radio ad hoc networks: A cross layer approach

An opportunistic routing problem in a cognitive radio ad hoc network is investigated with an aim to minimize the interference to primary users (PUs) and under the constraint of a minimum end-to-end data rate for secondary users (SUs). Both amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relaying techniques are considered for message forwarding by SU nodes in the network. Unlike popular transmit power control based solutions for interference management in cognitive radio networks, we adopt a cross layer approach. The optimization problem is formulated as a joint power control, channel assignment and route selection problem. Next, closed form expression for transmission power is derived and corresponding channel selection scheme and routing metric are designed based on this solution. The proposed route selection schemes are shown to depend not only on gains of the interference channels between SUs and PUs but also on the values of the spectrum sensing parameters at the SU nodes in the network. Two distributed routing schemes are proposed based on our analysis; (i) optimal_DF and (ii) suboptimal_AF. The routing schemes could be implemented using existing table driven as well as on demand routing protocols. Extensive simulation results are provided to evaluate performance of our proposed schemes in random multihop networks. Results show significant reduction in PUs’ average interference experience and impressive performance as opportunistic routing schemes can be achieved by our schemes compared to traditional shortest path based routing schemes. Performance improvement is also reported over prominent recent schemes.     

Group sparse Lasso for cognitive network sensing robust to model uncertainties and outliers

To account for variations in the frequency, time, and space dimensions, dynamic re-use of licensed bands under the cognitive radio (CR) paradigm calls for innovative network-level sensing algorithms for multi-dimensional spectrum opportunity awareness. Toward this direction, the present paper develops a collaborative scheme whereby CRs cooperate to localize active primary user (PU) transmitters and reconstruct a power spectral density (PSD) map portraying the spatial distribution of power across the monitored area per frequency band and channel coherence interval. The sensing scheme is based on a parsimonious model that accounts for two forms of sparsity: one due to the narrow-band nature of transmit-PSDs compared to the large portion of spectrum that a CR can sense, and another one emerging when adopting a spatial grid of candidate PU locations. Capitalizing on this dual sparsity, an estimator of the model coefficients is obtained based on the group sparse least-absolute-shrinkage-and-selection operator (GS-Lasso). A novel reduced-complexity GS-Lasso solver is developed by resorting to the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMoM). Robust versions of this GS-Lasso estimator are also introduced using a GS total least-squares (TLS) approach to cope with both uncertainty in the regression matrices, arising due to inaccurate channel estimation and grid-mismatch effects, and unexpected model outliers. In spite of the non-convexity of the GS-TLS criterion, the novel robust algorithm has guaranteed convergence to (at least) a local optimum. The analytical findings are corroborated by numerical tests.     

A tree-structured DFT filter bank based spectrum detector for estimation of radio channel edge frequencies in cognitive radios

Cognitive Radio (CR) aims to provide efficient spectrum utilization in spectrum scarce wireless environments. One of the key CR functionalities is the spectrum sensing, which allows CRs to monitor the electromagnetic spectrum and detect unused bands of spectrum. Wideband spectrum sensing needs to be employed for better spectrum opportunity detection and interference avoidance both in the case of commercial and military applications. Accurate sensing needs to be employed for blocker detection in commercial systems such as LTE for the design of transmit/receive path. In military radios, the challenge lies in the robust detection of the location of the center frequencies and bandwidths of individual radio channels in the wideband input signal. In this paper, an energy detector based on tree-structured discrete Fourier transform based filter bank (TDFTFB) is proposed for detecting the edges of the channels in the spectrum. The proposed method is compared with the conventional wavelets based method for complexity and performance. The design example and simulations show that the gate count resource utilization of the proposed detection scheme is 22.9% lesser than the wavelets method at the cost of a slight degradation (0.5%) in detection accuracy. Over-the-air tests performed using Universal Software Radio Peripheral 2 (USRP2) and MATLAB/SIMULINK showed that the present method is not input specific whereas the conventional wavelet based approach depends on the spectral location of the input.     

认知无线电网络中基于抢占式排队论的频谱切换模型

针对认知无线电网络中认知用户广义传输时间的优化问题, 提出了一种基于抢占式续传优先权M/G/m排队理论的频谱切换模型. 在该排队模型中, 为了最小化认知用户广义传输时间, 采用混合排队-并列式服务的排队方式. 在此基础上, 深入分析多个认知用户、多个授权信道、多次频谱切换条件下认知用户信道使用情况, 从而推导出广义传输时间表达式. 最后探讨了该模型下自适应频谱切换策略. 仿真结果表明, 相比于已有的频谱切换模型, 该模型不仅能够更加完整地描述认知用户频谱切换行为, 而且使得认知用户传输时延更小, 广义传输时间更短. 此外, 认知无线电网络允许的认知用户服务强度增加, 能够容纳的认知用户数量增多. 因此, 该模型提升了认知用户频谱切换的性能, 更好地实现了认知用户与授权用户的频谱共享.     

Enabling next generation small cells through femtorelays

Today’s society is driven by ever-growing information needs, which cause increased demand for ubiquitous and very high speed wireless communications. In search for the urgent need of improved coverage and capacity, cellular networks are currently undergoing a major transformation from an architecture comprised of thoroughly planned macrocell base stations (MBSs) to a much more heterogeneous architecture where the macrocell network is underlaid by one or several tiers of unevenly deployed small cells. However, this new set of technologies is not exempt of several challenges. Backhaul is still an unresolved issue, i.e. which is the best technology for the small cell to reach the core network. In the case of uncoordinated co-channel deployments where the macrocell and small cell tier share the spectrum (e.g. femtocells or metrocells), the interference is also a major problem. In this paper, a new concept and architecture called femtorelays is introduced as a novel solution for next generation small cell problems. A femtorelay is a small cell access point that enables improved cellular coverage within indoor environments while increasing the overall system capacity through spatial frequency reuse. Working as an open-access small cell, it provides dual-backhaul connectivity to the core network for registered and unregistered users. One of the backhaul connections is the internet-based, and the second one is the relay-based operating on the spectrum owned by the wireless carrier. The radio interference between the macrocell and the small cell is overcome by servicing the macrocell interfering users at the femtorelay. Unlike the traffic from subscribers, this traffic will be forwarded to the network through the relay-based backhaul. The internal architecture, the approach employed to make the technology fit in existing networks, and future evolution of the basic femtorelays for larger scenarios are also presented. Finally, performance results show the potential of this technology to outperform other existing solutions.     

Spectral efficiency maximization for IRS-assisted wireless communication in cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we consider the Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted cognitive radio (CR) network, in which the IRS is applied to improve the spectral efficiency of secondary users. In specific, the advantages of applying IRS is double: it can not only improve the transmission rate of the secondary users, but also reduce the interference from the secondary users to the primary users, which allow the secondary users to increase the transmission power correspondingly. The original problem is formulated by simultaneously consider the maximum power limitation of the secondary users and the Quality of Service (QoS) requirement of the primary users, which expressed by the interference temperature (IT). The formulated problem is non-convex and difficult to solve directly. We apply the alternating optimization (AO) algorithm to split the original problem into two sub-problems. For the first sub-problem, we transform it into a convex problem and for the second sub-problem, we use the successive convex approximation method to obtain the corresponding results. The simulation experiments show that the performance of our proposed scheme is better than existing schemes.     

Opportunistic spectrum access for TDMA-based cognitive radio networks

In this paper, opportunistic spectrum access is proposed for TDMA-based cognitive radio networks. In TDMA-based networks, the time is divided into slots with fixed length one by one. If a primary user (PU) needs to transmit data, one or several slots will be used. Otherwise, the slots are idle and can be utilized by secondary users (SUs). When SUs want to use the licensed channel, they should sense the channel at the beginning period of each slot. Then SUs exchange their sensing results and make the same decision about the channel state (idle or used by PUs), which could reduce the probability of false sensing. The aforementioned duration is called spectrum sensing phase. When SUs decide there is an idle channel, they contend to use the channel at the rest time of the slot. The duration is called access phase. In this period, SUs contend the channel with backoff counters. When the remaining time is less than one data transmission duration, SUs cannot transmit data packets. Therefore, the remaining time is wasted. To solve this problem, SUs transmit control packets with small length in the remaining time instead. The SU who exchange control packets successfully reserves the channel and sends a data packet prior to other SUs in access phase of the next idle slot. Obviously, this reserved transmission is without collision. The independent spectrum sensing, channel state decision and control packets reservation influence the performance of SUs. The proposed scheme is formulated with all above factors. Simulations which consist with the numerical results show the proposed access scheme achieve higher throughput than the existed scheme without channel reservation.