Multiuser Spectral Precoding for OFDM-Based Cognitive Radio Systems

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is an ideal transmission technique for cognitive radio (CR) systems because of its flexible nature to support dynamic spectrum access. However, the out-of-band (OOB) radiation of OFDM signals from different CR users must be strictly controlled to protect licensed users operating in the adjacent frequency bands. In this paper, we propose a spectral precoding approach for multiple OFDM-based CR users to reduce OOB leakage and enhance spectrum compactness. By constructing individual precoders to render selected spectrum nulls, our approach suppresses the overall OOB radiation without sacrificing bit-error rate performance of CR users. The proposed approach also ensures user independence thus with low encoding and decoding complexities. Furthermore, our approach can improve bandwidth efficiency by carefully selecting notched frequencies. As a comprehensive application of the proposed approach, two simplified multiuser spectral precoding schemes are provided to reduce the computational complexity. Simulation results demonstrate that our spectral precoding schemes effectively limit OOB radiation and enable efficient spectrum sharing.