Outage Analysis of OFDM-Based Cognitive AF Relay Network in the Presence of Narrowband Interference

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is one of the most widely used technologies in current wireless communication systems and standards. Cognitive radio (CR) provides a robust solution to the problem of spectrum congestion as it offers opportunistic usage of frequency bands that are not occupied by primary users. Due to the underlying sensing, spectrum shaping, scaling, and interoperable capabilities of OFDM, it has been adapted as a best transmission technology for CR wireless systems. However, the performance of an OFDM-based CR wireless system is affected by the existence of narrowband interference (NBI) from other users. Further, due to carrier frequency offset in NBI sources, NBI energy may spread over all subcarriers of an OFDM signal. In this paper, a fixed Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relay that operates at a frequency band that is different from that of direct mode is introduced to suppress the effect of NBI. Analytical expressions are derived for outage probability in direct, AF-relay, and incremental relaying modes. The outage performance of the proposed AF relay-based CR network is proven to be better than that of direct mode.