Cooperative Communication for Cognitive Radio Networks
Talha Rasheed, Octavia A. Dobre, Mohamed H. Ahmed · 2010
Cognitive Radio is a burgeoning technology which is being realistically touted as being able to address one of the most daunting challenges of wireless communications - that of the acute apparent spectrum shortage. Moreover, with its ability to combat the detrimental effects of wireless channel impairments, cooperative communication is a definite contender for future's high data rate mobile communication systems. Lately there has been extensive interest in the integration of these two powerful technologies with the goal of pooling the goods associated with them and making one mask the weaknesses of other. In particular, major driving factors are agile and efficient primary user detection by cognitive users, spatial diversity gains as promised by cooperative communication, and the accentuated heterogeneous nature of spectrum availability in cognitive networks. This paper analyzes the major research directions considered thus far in this new field, and proposes some interesting insights and future research directions.