Joint Switched Multi-Spectrum and Transmit Antenna Diversity for Spectrum Sharing Systems

In spectrum sharing systems, a secondary user (SU) is allowed to share the spectrum with a primary (licensed) network under the condition that the interference observed at the receivers of the primary users (PU-Rxs) is below a predetermined level. In this paper, we consider a secondary network comprised of a secondary transmitter (SU-Tx) equipped with multiple antennas and a single-antenna secondary receiver (SU-Rx) sharing the same spectrum with multiple primary users (PUs), each with a distinct spectrum. We develop transmit antenna diversity schemes at the SU-Tx that exploit the multi-spectrum diversity provided by the existence of multiple PUs so as to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the SU-Rx. In particular, assuming bounded transmit power at the SU-Tx, we develop switched selection schemes that select the primary spectrum and the SU-Tx transmit antenna that maintain the SNR at the SU-Rx above a specific threshold. Assuming Rayleigh fading channels and binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) transmission, we derive the average bit-error-rate (BER) and average feedback load expressions for the proposed schemes. For the sake of comparison, we also derive a BER expression for the optimal selection scheme that selects the best antenna/spectrum pair that maximizes the SNR at the SU-Rx, in exchange of high feedback load and switching complexity. Finally, we show that our analytical results are in perfect agreement with the simulation results.