Cognitive Multi-Hop Multi-Branch Relaying: Spectrum Leasing and Optimal Power Allocation

In this paper, for an overlay cognitive radio network in which the primary user’s transmission is assisted by a cognitive multi-hop multi-branch network, we propose and analyze a spectrum leasing scheme that achieves full diversity in both the primary and secondary networks. Among the available branches, the best one is selected to establish a multi-hop relay link between the primary users. In return, the secondary users of the selected branch are rewarded with a fraction of spectrum to transmit their own signals over a nonorthogonal multiple-access channel. We jointly optimize the branch selection and the spectrum allocation such that the sum-rate of the secondary users is maximized under the constraint that a minimum quality-of-service (QoS) requirement in terms of the achievable rate is satisfied in the primary network. We also optimize the power allocation to the secondary users such that the asymptotic outage probability of the primary network is minimized. The analytical results show that this spectrum leasing scheme guarantees the full diversity of order
$M$
in both the primary and secondary networks, where
$M$
is the number of cognitive branches. The simulation results also show that optimizing the allocation of power significantly decreases the risk of spectrum leasing failure.