Outage analysis of spectrum sharing multi-antenna multi-relay networks

Prior results on performance analysis for cognitive relay networks mainly involve perfect channel state information (CSI), which is not readily available. Thus, the effects of outdated CSI on the performance of a multi-antenna multi-relay cognitive radio system are investigated in this work. To exploit the benefits of multiple antennas, collaborative zero-forcing beamforming at the secondary source is proposed to enhance the system performance under the outdated CSI. At the destination, the maximum ratio combining (MRC) diversity scheme is adopted. The Nth best relay selection strategy is applied before the secondary data transmission process. Closed-form expressions for the exact and asymptotic outage probabilities are derived for the secondary user over the Rayleigh fading in the first hop and Nakagami-m fading in the second hop with and without feedback delay. These analytical results can reveal the system diversity order and coding gain. Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to verify the correctness of our analysis. These new analytical results can reveal insights into the characteristics of the proposed system over the outdated fading channels, and can provide useful design criteria for relay-assisted spectrum sharing networks.