Optimal Beamforming in Cognitive Two-way Relay
Networks
Ardalan Alizadeh, Seyed Mohammad-Sajad Sadough and Navid Tafaghodi Khajavi
Cognitive Telecommunication Research Group,
Department of Electrical Engineering,
Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Shahid Beheshti University G.C., Evin 1983963113, Tehran, IRAN.
Email: ar.alizadeh@mail.sbu.ac.ir, s sadough@sbu.ac.ir, n.tafaghodi@mail.sbu.ac.ir
Abstract—We consider a cognitive two-way relay network
which consists of two transceivers (primary users) and mul-
tiple cognitive terminals. The two transceivers transmit their
data toward the cognitive terminals which sense the spectrum
constantly. If the primary users are in operation, the cognitive
terminals act as relay nodes by multiplying the received signal
by a beamforming coefficients and then broadcasting the so-
obtained signal to the transceivers. When the primary users are
not in operation, the cognitive terminals communicate with a
base station (BS) to increase the overall throughputs. Our aim is
to optimally calculate the beamforming weight coefficients so as
to minimize the total transmit power of the two transceivers and
the cognitive radios subject to three constraints on the received
signal-to-noise-ratios at the two transceivers and at the cognitive
BS. Simulation results show that the sum-rate of the cognitive
two-way relay network is increased while the total transmit power
is minimized.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Cognitive radio (CR) [1] is a promising solution to the
problem of scarce spectrum resources in wireless commu-
nications. The basic idea of CR is to allow a secondary
(unlicensed) user to utilize a frequency band already allocated
to primary users (PU). The CR has to sense constantly the
spectrum to detect the spectral holes before transmitting their
own signal. Obviously, they should give back the spectrum
once the presence of the PU is detected in order to minimize
harmful interference to the licensed users.
Cooperative wireless networks have recently been the focus of
many research activities [2], [3], [4]. In these schemes, differ-
ent users act as relay nodes and collaborate with each other to
provide a reliable communication link between a transmitter
and a receiver. Typically, the transmission is composed of
two steps. In a first step, the transmitter sends its symbols
to the relays. Each relay processes its received signal based
on its relaying scheme. In a second step, the so-produced
signal is transmitted to one or multiple receiver. Recently,
decentralized beamforming have been proposed for relaying
schemes with the aim of designing optimal beamforming
coefficients with respect to a particular criteria. For instance
in [5], considering a two-way relaying, the authors find the
beamforming vector by minimizing the total power of the
network or by maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
under appropriate system constraints. In a two-way relaying
(also called bi-directional relaying), the relays cooperate with
Fig. 1. Architecture of the considered cognitive two-way relay network.
each other to establish a connection between two transceivers.
In this paper, we consider a two-way relaying scheme where
the relay nodes are cognitive terminals. The data processed and
broadcasted from the CRs to the transceivers, is also received
by the cognitive base station which uses the received signal to
sense constantly the spectrum used by the transceivers. This
scenario, overcomes the hidden terminal problem which hap-
pens when the CR is shadowed or in severe multipath fading
[6], [7]. Once the cognitive BS senses that primary transceivers
are not in operation, cognitive terminals can opportunistically
establish a connection with their own base station (BS) over
the same frequency band allocated to primary transceivers. In
fact, here, we provide the cooperative relay network with a
cognitive feature for increasing the total network throughputs.
Our goal is to optimally derive the beamforming coefficients
so as to minimize the total power dissipated in the network
subject to constraints on the transceivers and the cognitive
base station SNRs. In this way, we satisfy a target quality
of service (QoS) for the transceivers and we increase the
detection probability of cognitive spectrum sensing.
II. TRANSMISSION MODEL
As shown in Fig. 1, our network is composed of two
primary transceivers, n
r
decentralized CR terminals or relay
nodes between the two transceivers and one cognitive BS (also
referred to as fusion center).
We assume that there is no direct link between the two
transceivers and thus, they have to communicate by means
of the CR terminals. In this scenario, the CR network uses
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