Cognitive radio channel with cooperative multi-antenna secondary systems

Recently, a cooperative cognitive radio network (CCRN) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cognitive radio (CR) network have been proposed and investigated individually as promising paradigms for CR networks. Herein, we consider applying the MIMO techniques to a CCRN in order to achieve increased spectral efficiency. Assuming that the system comprises a single-input single-output (SISO) primary user (PU) pair and a multi-input single-output (MISO) secondary user (SU) pair, we propose jointly optimizing the beamforming vector and power allocation for the SU transmitter in order to maximize the rate for the SU while meeting the rate requirement for the PU. As the problem is nontrivial, we circumvent it using the uplink and downlink duality and equality of the left and right eigenvalues. Further, we introduce an iterative algorithm with a proof of convergence. From the numerical results, the proposed algorithm converges in a small number of iterations and outperforms the zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming algorithm while providing an upper bound for the CCRN-MIMO performance. Furthermore, the application of the proposed algorithm is not limited to CCRN-MIMO; it can also be extended to the conventional relay MIMO and/or MU-MIMO with a quality-of-service (QoS) requirement.