Performance analysis and power allocation strategy in single-antenna cognitive overlay systems

Abstract

A power allocation strategy is proposed for single-antenna overlay cognitive radio networks, in which the secondary user helps transmit the signal of the primary user while concurrently conveying its own signal by means of a superposition coding technique. The study commences by deriving analytical expressions for the bit error rates (BERs) of the primary and secondary users. A power allocation strategy is then proposed for minimizing the total power consumption of the two users while simultaneously satisfying their respective BER constraints. The analytical BER formulas are not convex, and hence the optimization process presents a significant challenge. Accordingly, two more tractable BER approximations for the primary and secondary users are proposed to transfer the non-convex problem into a convex one. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed power allocation strategy under various channel environments.