Proactive Cross-Channel Gain Estimation for Spectrum Sharing in Cognitive Radio

In an underlay cognitive radio network, the cross-channel gain from a cognitive transmitter (CT) to a primary receiver (PR) is crucial for spectrum sharing. By exploiting the relaying capability of the CT, we propose a proactive estimation scheme for the cross-channel gain. Specifically, the CT proactively acts as a full-duplex amplify-and-forward (AF) relay for primary transceivers to trigger the power adaption of a primary transmitter (PT). By carefully designing the relay signal, the CT is able to obtain an estimation of the cross-channel gain by observing the power adaption. To demonstrate the accuracy of the estimation, we analytically characterize both an upper bound and a lower bound of the estimation performance. Furthermore, we study the impact of CT’s relaying on the primary transmission and observe that the impact is related to the CT’s location. By introducing a factor $\phi~(0\leq \phi \leq 1)$ to denote the probability that the CT’s relaying improves the primary transmission instead of causes interference, we design the CT location as a function of $\phi $ . Numerical results show that the estimation error of the proactive estimation scheme can be as small as 1.7% with success estimation probability around 91%. By comparing with the state of the art, we show the advantages of the proposed estimator.