Performance Analysis of Cognitive Radio Relay Networks Using Decode and Forward Selection Relaying over Rayleigh Fading Channels

This article analyzes the performance of a Decode- and-Forward (DF)-based selection relaying scheme in a Cognitive Radio Relay Network (CRRN). In particular, exact closed form expressions are derived for the outage and error probabilities over dissimilar and independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading channels. The derived expressions expose the dependence of the two performance metrics on the spectrum utilization efficiency of the the Primary User (PU) as well as the accuracy of the spectrum sensing method used. The accuracy of the derived results is verified through computer simulations.