Robust Adaptive Beamforming in Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, we propose an adaptive non-intrusive cognitive radio network based on smart antenna technologies. The cognitive transmitter (CT), which is equipped with antenna array, first estimates and tracks the composite steering vectors of each primary (licensed) user. In what follows, CT forms transmit beamforming to place nulls to primary receivers (PR) based on the estimated spatial signatures. Moreover, we extensively analyze performance degradation caused by spatial signatures mismatch (estimation error) and verify that the proposed robust nulls-steering beamformer can comprehensively alleviate the mismatch effect. Simulation results demonstrate convergence of the proposed gradient-based recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm. Furthermore, we have shown that outage probability can be kept extremely low under appropriate array size, which ensures the practicability of the proposed scheme.