Secondary spectrum access based on cooperative OFDM relaying

In this paper, we propose an opportunistic spectrum sharing protocol that exploits the situation when the primary system experiences weak channel conditions. Specifically, when the outage rate of the primary systeme falls below the target rate, the secondary system tries to help the primary system achieve its target rate by acting as a decode-and-forward relay for the primary system, and allocating a fraction of its subcarriers to forward the primary signal. As a reward, the secondary system gains spectrum access by using the remaining subcarriers to transmit its own signal. We study the joint optimization of the set of subcarriers used for cooperation and the secondary subcarrier power allocation such that the transmission rate of the secondary system is maximized, while guaranteeing the primary system to achieve its target rate. Simulation results demonstrate that both primary and secondary systems can benefit from the proposed secondary spectrum access scheme.