Suppression of intra-network interference in decentralized Cognitive Radio networks under timing errors

In decentralized Cognitive Radio (CR) networks timing errors between secondary users cause increased interference during sensing periods. This kind of intra-network interference inflicts significant performance degradation due to the growth of false alarm probabilities if energy-based incumbent detection is used, as shown in our previous study. Therefore, in this paper we propose a novel interference suppression algorithm, called Interference Suppression for Cognitive Radios (ISCR), to mitigate the impact of other CR users´ transmissions on sensing. We show that by using ISCR the throughput of distributed CR networks under timing errors can be improved by minimizing the probability of false alarm while preserving sufficient protection for primary users. In addition to providing as much as 20% throughput gain, ISCR is easy to implement and can be executed in real time.