Application of Cooperative Diversity to Cognitive Radio Leasing: Model and Analytical Characterization of Resource Gains

This paper studies mutual information in a novel scenario combining cooperative diversity and cognitive radio based on spectrum leasing. In the scenario there is a primary transmitter subject to random channel fading, with full spectrum rights available, and a secondary transmitter without any spectrum rights, which offers its cooperation to the primary transmitter in exchange for a share of the resulting resource gains. Two decision-making schemes, based on different levels of channel knowledge, are considered in the primary transmitter. These are knowledge of the statistics of random fading (averages) and full knowledge of instantaneous channel state. The contributions of this paper are the radio leasing scenario itself, which, unlike previous approaches in cognitive radio, is not based on game theory, and the statistical characterization of the resource gains achieved in this scenario using cooperative diversity for spectrum leasing under diverse channel conditions and the aforementioned decision-making schemes. Analytical expressions are obtained for the probability of cooperation, the mutual information probability density function and its average, and the proportion of resource gains achieved for the statistical and instantaneous channel knowledge schemes. We identify the conditions for resource gains: for statistical channel knowledge to suffice, the primary link must be of low quality, whereas for instantaneous channel knowledge, although resource gains are achieved in any situation, they increase as the primary channel gets worse.