Toward Transparent Coexistence for Multihop Secondary Cognitive Radio Networks

The dominate spectrum sharing paradigm of today is interference avoidance, where a secondary network can use the spectrum only when such a use is not interfering with the primary network. However, with the advances of physical-layer technologies, the mindset of this paradigm is being challenged. This paper explores a new paradigm called “transparent coexistence” for spectrum sharing between primary and secondary nodes in a multihop network environment. Under this paradigm, the secondary network is allowed to use the same spectrum simultaneously with the primary network as long as their activities are “transparent” (or “invisible”) to the primary network. Such transparency is accomplished through a systematic interference cancelation (IC) by the secondary nodes without any impact on the primary network. Although such a paradigm has been studied in the information theory (IT) and communications (COMM) communities, it is not well understood in the wireless networking community, particularly for multihop networks. This paper offers an in-depth study of this paradigm in a multihop network environment and addresses issues such as scheduling (both in frequency channels and time slots) and IC (to/from primary network and within the secondary network). Through a rigorous modeling and formulation, problem formulation, solution development, and simulation results, we show that transparent coexistence paradigm offers significant improvement in terms of spectrum access and throughput performance as compared to the current prevailing interference avoidance paradigm.