Performance Analysis of Spatial Modulation in Overlay Cognitive Radio Communications

We study the application of spatial modulation (SM) in overlay cognitive radio (CR) networks, in which the primary and secondary networks work concurrently over the same spectrum band. We assume that the direct link between the primary transmitter and receiver is not available, i.e. broken, and that the CR transmitter assists the primary network as a relay to amplify-and-forward the transmitted symbols of the primary. SM is used in the secondary to split the transmission space into two amplitude-phase modulation (APM) and spatial domains. In the proposed scheme, the secondary transmitter retransmits the primary symbols in APM domain, while its own information is transmitted by the index of transmitting antenna, similar to space shift keying, without causing any interference to the primary receiver. We analyze the performance of the optimal detectors at both the primary and secondary receivers for the case of phase shift keying modulation in terms of the average symbol error rate (ASER). We also study the asymptotic behavior of the ASER at both the primary and secondary at high signal-to-noise ratios. Simulation results show that the SM can be effectively used in overlay CR systems.