Outage performance of MIMO cognitive relay networks with antenna selection

In this paper, a novel antenna selection strategy is proposed and analyzed for dual hop MIMO cognitive amplify-and-forward (AF) relay networks over independent non-identically distributed (i.n.i.d.) Nakagami-m fading channels. Spectrum sharing is employed with secondary users constrained by a limit on the interference to the primary receivers. All secondary users are equipped with multiple antennas and have a maximum power constraint. The best antenna pairs are selected for secondary user communications. The outage probability is derived and used to evaluate the impact of antenna selection on the outage performance. The analytic results are validated by Monte Carlo simulation.