Simultaneous transmit and sense for cognitive radios using full-duplex: A first study

In two-tier cognitive radio networks, spectrum sensing is important to minimize the interference to the primary users. With half-duplex radios, spectrum sensing has to be performed periodically between transmissions, leading to spectral inefficiencies. In this paper, we study the achievable rate gain and transmission range increase for in-band full-duplex transmissions using directional multi-reconfigurable antennas. The aim is to enable simultaneous transmission and sensing in cognitive radio networks. Our results show that directionality of multi-reconfigurable antennas can increase both the range and rate of full-duplex transmissions over omni-directional antenna based full-duplex transmissions.