Scaling Laws of Cognitive Networks

We consider a cognitive network consisting of n random pairs of cognitive transmitters and receivers communicating simultaneously in the presence of multiple primary users. Of interest is how the maximum throughput achieved by the cognitive users scales with n. Furthermore, how far these users must be from a primary user to guarantee a given primary outage. Two scenarios are considered for the network scaling law: (i) when each cognitive transmitter uses constant power to communicate with a cognitive receiver at a bounded distance away, and (ii) when each cognitive transmitter scales its power according to the distance to a considered primary user, allowing the cognitive transmitter-receiver distances to grow. Using single-hop transmission, suitable for cognitive devices of opportunistic nature, we show that, in both scenarios, with path loss larger than 2, the cognitive network throughput scales linearly with the number of cognitive users. We then explore the radius of a primary exclusive region void of cognitive transmitters. We obtain bounds on this radius for a given primary outage constraint. These bounds can help in the design of a primary network with exclusive regions, outside of which cognitive users may transmit freely. Our results show that opportunistic secondary spectrum access using single-hop transmission is promising.Comment: significantly revised and extended, 30 pages, 13 figures, submitted to IEEE Journal of Special Topics in Signal Processin

Outage Analysis of Uplink Two-tier Networks

Employing multi-tier networks is among the most promising approaches to address the rapid growth of the data demand in cellular networks. In this paper, we study a two-tier uplink cellular network consisting of femtocells and a macrocell. Femto base stations, and femto and macro users are assumed to be spatially deployed based on independent Poisson point processes. We consider an open access assignment policy, where each macro user based on the ratio between its distances from its nearest femto access point (FAP) and from the macro base station (MBS) is assigned to either of them. By tuning the threshold, this policy allows controlling the coverage areas of FAPs. For a fixed threshold, femtocells coverage areas depend on their distances from the MBS; Those closest to the fringes will have the largest coverage areas. Under this open-access policy, ignoring the additive noise, we derive analytical upper and lower bounds on the outage probabilities of femto users and macro users that are subject to fading and path loss. We also study the effect of the distance from the MBS on the outage probability experienced by the users of a femtocell. In all cases, our simulation results comply with our analytical bounds

Performance Analysis of Arbitrarily-Shaped Underlay Cognitive Networks: Effects of Secondary User Activity Protocols

This paper analyzes the performance of the primary and secondary users (SUs) in an arbitrarily-shaped underlay cognitive network. In order to meet the interference threshold requirement for a primary receiver (PU-Rx) at an arbitrary location, we consider different SU activity protocols which limit the number of active SUs. We propose a framework, based on the moment generating function (MGF) of the interference due to a random SU, to analytically compute the outage probability in the primary network, as well as the average number of active SUs in the secondary network. We also propose a cooperation-based SU activity protocol in the underlay cognitive network which includes the existing threshold-based protocol as a special case. We study the average number of active SUs for the different SU activity protocols, subject to a given outage probability constraint at the PU and we employ it as an analytical approach to compare the effect of different SU activity protocols on the performance of the primary and secondary networks.Comment: submitted to possible IEEE Transactions publicatio

Partially-Distributed Resource Allocation in Small-Cell Networks

We propose a four-stage hierarchical resource allocation scheme for the downlink of a large-scale small-cell network in the context of orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA). Since interference limits the capabilities of such networks, resource allocation and interference management are crucial. However, obtaining the globally optimum resource allocation is exponentially complex and mathematically intractable. Here, we develop a partially decentralized algorithm to obtain an effective solution. The three major advantages of our work are: 1) as opposed to a fixed resource allocation, we consider load demand at each access point (AP) when allocating spectrum; 2) to prevent overloaded APs, our scheme is dynamic in the sense that as the users move from one AP to the other, so do the allocated resources, if necessary, and such considerations generally result in huge computational complexity, which brings us to the third advantage: 3) we tackle complexity by introducing a hierarchical scheme comprising four phases: user association, load estimation, interference management via graph coloring, and scheduling. We provide mathematical analysis for the first three steps modeling the user and AP locations as Poisson point processes. Finally, we provide results of numerical simulations to illustrate the efficacy of our scheme.Comment: Accepted on May 15, 2014 for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication