Overiew: Application of Cognitive Radio Technology in Fifth-Generation Wireless Communications

The increase of many modern wireless devices in small cells has greatly raised the data traffic overhead. The new 5G technologies are being leveraged to support the massive mobile data traffic. However, the growth in the number of users and their demands can exponentially increase and result in spectrum resource congestion. The spectrum scarcity problem may be solved by dynamically dividing the Millimeter Wave (or Mm-Wave) spectrum for maximizing the utilization of spectrum resources using Cognitive Radio (or CR) technology. In this regard, 5G is not standalone technology innovation but combined with CR technology, it can achieve breakthrough improvements in performance, i.e., compared to previous technologies, namely spectrum utilization efficiency, faster data throughput, and enhanced quality of communication services. This article offers a brief background on 5G technology, how CR works, and how they are combined. In addition, the most widely used mm-wave propagation models have also been presented.