RF-Powered Cognitive Radio Networks: Technical Challenges and Limitations

The increasing demand for spectral and energy efficient communication networks has spurred a great interest in energy harvesting (EH) cognitive radio networks (CRNs). Such a revolutionary technology represents a paradigm shift in the development of wireless networks, as it can simultaneously enable the efficient use of the available spectrum and the exploitation of radio frequency (RF) energy in order to reduce the reliance on traditional energy sources. This is mainly triggered by the recent advancements in microelectronics that puts forward RF energy harvesting as a plausible technique in the near future. On the other hand, it is suggested that the operation of a network relying on harvested energy needs to be redesigned to allow the network to reliably function in the long term. To this end, the aim of this survey paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the recent development and the challenges regarding the operation of CRNs powered by RF energy. In addition, the potential open issues that might be considered for the future research are also discussed in this paper.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, Accepted in IEEE Communications Magazin

Interference-Assisted Wireless Energy Harvesting in Cognitive Relay Network with Multiple Primary Transceivers

We consider a spectrum sharing scenario, where a secondary network coexists with a primary network of multiple transceivers. The secondary network consists of an energy-constrained decode-and-forward secondary relay which assists the communication between a secondary transmitter and a destination in the presence of the interference from multiple primary transmitters. The secondary relay harvests energy from the received radio-frequency signals, which include the information signal from the secondary transmitter and the primary interference. The harvested energy is then used to decode the secondary information and forward it to the secondary destination. At the relay, we adopt a time switching policy due to its simplicity that switches between the energy harvesting and information decoding over time. Specifically, we derive a closed-form expression for the secondary outage probability under the primary outage constraint and the peak power constraint at both secondary transmitter and relay. In addition, we investigate the effect of the number of primary transceivers on the optimal energy harvesting duration that minimizes the secondary outage probability. By utilizing the primary interference as a useful energy source in the energy harvesting phase, the secondary network achieves a better outage performance.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, To be presented at IEEE GLOBECOM 201

Cooperation and Underlay Mode Selection in Cognitive Radio Network

In this research, we proposes a new method for cooperation and underlay mode selection in cognitive radio networks. We characterize the maximum achievable throughput of our proposed method of hybrid spectrum sharing. Hybrid spectrum sharing is assumed where the Secondary User (SU) can access the Primary User (PU) channel in two modes, underlay mode or cooperative mode with admission control. In addition to access the channel in the overlay mode, secondary user is allowed to occupy the channel currently occupied by the primary user but with small transmission power. Adding the underlay access modes attains more opportunities to the secondary user to transmit data. It is proposed that the secondary user can only exploits the underlay access when the channel of the primary user direct link is good or predicted to be in non-outage state. Therefore, the secondary user could switch between underlay spectrum sharing and cooperation with the primary user. Hybrid access is regulated through monitoring the state of the primary link. By observing the simulation results, the proposed model attains noticeable improvement in the system performance in terms of maximum secondary user throughput than the conventional cooperation and non-cooperation schemes

Full-Duplex Cooperative Cognitive Radio Networks with Wireless Energy Harvesting

This paper proposes and analyzes a new full-duplex (FD) cooperative cognitive radio network with wireless energy harvesting (EH). We consider that the secondary receiver is equipped with a FD radio and acts as a FD hybrid access point (HAP), which aims to collect information from its associated EH secondary transmitter (ST) and relay the signals. The ST is assumed to be equipped with an EH unit and a rechargeable battery such that it can harvest and accumulate energy from radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted by the primary transmitter (PT) and the HAP. We develop a novel cooperative spectrum sharing (CSS) protocol for the considered system. In the proposed protocol, thanks to its FD capability, the HAP can receive the PT's signals and transmit energy-bearing signals to charge the ST simultaneously, or forward the PT's signals and receive the ST's signals at the same time. We derive analytical expressions for the achievable throughput of both primary and secondary links by characterizing the dynamic charging/discharging behaviors of the ST battery as a finite-state Markov chain. We present numerical results to validate our theoretical analysis and demonstrate the merits of the proposed protocol over its non-cooperative counterpart.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, conferenc