Generic Multiuser Coordinated Beamforming for Underlay Spectrum Sharing

The beamforming techniques have been recently studied as possible enablers for underlay spectrum sharing. The existing beamforming techniques have several common limitations: they are usually system model specific, cannot operate with arbitrary number of transmit/receive antennas, and cannot serve arbitrary number of users. Moreover, the beamforming techniques for underlay spectrum sharing do not consider the interference originating from the incumbent primary system. This work extends the common underlay sharing model by incorporating the interference originating from the incumbent system into generic combined beamforming design that can be applied on interference, broadcast or multiple access channels. The paper proposes two novel multiuser beamforming algorithms for user fairness and sum rate maximization, utilizing newly derived convex optimization problems for transmit and receive beamformers calculation in a recursive optimization. Both beamforming algorithms provide efficient operation for the interference, broadcast and multiple access channels, as well as for arbitrary number of antennas and secondary users in the system. Furthermore, the paper proposes a successive transmit/receive optimization approach that reduces the computational complexity of the proposed recursive algorithms. The results show that the proposed complexity reduction significantly improves the convergence rates and can facilitate their operation in scenarios which require agile beamformers computation.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure

Reliable and Efficient Cognitive Radio Communications Using Directional Antennas

Cognitive Radio (CR) is a promising solution that enhances spectrum utilization by allowing an unlicensed or Secondary User (SU) to access licensed bands in a such way that its imposed interference on a license holder Primary User (PU) is limited, and hence fills the spectrum holes in time and/or frequency domains. Resource allocation, which involves scheduling of available time and transmit power, represents a crucial problem for the performance evaluation of CR systems. In this dissertation, we study the spectral efficiency maximization problem in an opportunistic CR system. Specifically, in the first part of the dissertation, we consider an opportunistic CR system where the SU transmitter (SUtx) is equipped to a Reconfigurable Antenna (RA). RA, with the capabilities of dynamically modifying their characteristics can improve the spectral efficiency, via beam steering and utilizing the spectrum white spaces in spatial (angular) domain. In our opportunistic CR system, SUtx relies on the beam steering capability of RA to detect the direction of PU\u27s activity and also to select the strongest beam for data transmission to SU receiver (SUrx). We study the combined effects of spectrum sensing error and channel training error as well as the beam detection error and beam selection error on the achievable rates of an opportunistic CR system with a RA at SUtx. We also find the best duration for spectrum sensing and channel training as well as the best transmit power at SUtx such that the throughput of our CR system is maximized subject to the Average Transmit Power Constraint (ATPC) and Average Interference Constraint (AIC). In the second part of the dissertation, we consider an opportunistic Energy Harvesting (EH)-enabled CR network, consisting of multiple SUs and an Access Point (AP), that can access a wideband spectrum licensed to a primary network. Assuming that each SU is equipped with a finite size rechargeable battery, we study how the achievable sum-rate of SUs is impacted by the combined effects of spectrum sensing error and imperfect Channel State Information (CSI) of SUs–AP links. We also design an energy management strategy that maximizes the achievable sum-rate of SUs, subject to a constraint on the average interference that SUs can impose on the PU