Performance Analysis of Interweave Cognitive Radio Systems with Imperfect Channel Knowledge over Nakagami Fading Channels

Knowledge of interacting channels is essential for characterizing the performance of a cognitive radio system in terms of interference power received by a primary receiver and throughput at a secondary receiver. Baseline models considered for the performance characterization assume perfect knowledge of the interacting channels. Recently, an analytical framework has been proposed that incorporates channel estimation and subsequently characterizes the performance of cognitive Interweave Systems (ISs). However, the analysis was pertained to the deterministic behaviour of the interacting channels. In this paper, we extend the characterization of the aforementioned framework to investigate the influence of channel fading on the performance of the IS. Our analysis indicate that an inappropriate choice of estimation time can severely degrade the performance of the IS in terms of achievable secondary throughput.