Multiantenna signal processing for cognitive communications

Cognitive communications has attracted a large interest during the last decade due to spectrum scarcity. In combination with multiantenna techniques, cognitive communications have the ability to increase spectral efficiency by enabling the coexistence of a primary and secondary systems. In this paper, we focus in two specific cognitive approaches: a) Multiantenna Interference Alignment (IA) and b) Multiantenna Spectrum Sensing (SS). In the first case, we investigate how IA over multiple spatial dimensions can be exploited in order to lower harmful interference towards the primary system into acceptable levels. In the second case, we compare the sensing performance of different eigenvalue-based blind SS techniques. This paper concludes by presenting some interesting open problems in this area.