Cognitive and cooperative communications in wireless heterogeneous networks (HetNet): Current status and technical perspectives

Cognitive network and cooperative communications are two promising techniques for efficient utilization of scarce radio resources and guaranteeing quality of services (QoS) in wireless heterogeneous networks (HetNet). This paper presents an architecture for the integration of cognitive networks and cooperative communications in wireless HetNet. Based on the proposed architecture several techniques related to the integration of cognition and cooperation are evaluated in typical cases and scenarios, for example, cognitive relay network, cognition in two-tier HetNet, geolocation-based cognition, cognitive and cooperative gateway, etc. Simulations and analysis are performed which has shown that the combination of cognition and cooperation can significantly improve the system performance.