RF beamforming for MIMO cognitive user

Using Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) architecture in cognitive radio (CR) secondary users improves the system performance in terms of interference cancellation and data rate enhancement but at the expense of adding complexity and cost. A solution to reduce this complexity is employing radio frequency (RF) beamforming networks at the transmitter/receiver front-ends. In this paper, we consider a MIMO secondary user equipped with such RF beamforming network. Moreover, we find the transmit/receive optimum RF beamforming network for a MIMO spatial multiplexing system. We evaluate the performance of the optimally designed RF beamforming technique over a Rician channel via computer simulations. The simulation results are assessed for different RF beamforming structures and the number of primary transmitters which cause interference on the secondary receiver.