Distributed Interference Cancellation for Cognitive Radios Using Periodic Signals of the Primary System

This paper considers secondary usage of spectrum resources that are allocated to frequency division duplexing (FDD)-based cellular systems. We propose an interference cancellation technique using the concept of distributed antenna array. We show that the interference from the primary cellular system can be cancelled at a secondary node equipped with single antenna by introducing a helper that decodes the interference and transfers it to the secondary node. Interference is forwarded during the time periods in which training signals are transmitted within the primary cellular system. Since the duration of those intervals is short relative to periods for data transmission in the primary system, we introduce a scheme by which the helper compresses the interference before forwarding it. The performance advantage of our scheme is verified by computer simulation, where both analytical and measured channel models are used. The measurement data used in evaluations have been obtained through outdoor experiments while assuming a short-range secondary system. The results indicate that the proposed method for distributed interference cancellation leads to performance benefit, in particular under heterogeneous path loss conditions between the helper and the primary/secondary nodes.