Cognitive radios : fundamental limits and applications to cellular and wireless local networks

An ever increasing number of wirelessly-enabled applications places a very high demand on stringent spectral resources. Cognitive radios have the potential of enhancing spectral efficiency by improving the usage of channels that are already licensed for a specific purpose. Research on cognitive radios involves answering questions such as: how can a cognitive radio transmit at a high data rate while maintaining the same quality of service for the licensed user? There are multiple forms of cognition studied in literature, and each of these models must be studied in detail to understand its impact on the overall system performance. Specifically, the information-theoretic capacity of such systems is of great interest. Also, the design of cognitive radio is necessary to achieve those capacities in real applications. In this dissertation, we formulate different problems that relate to the performance of such systems and methods to increase their efficiency. This dissertation discusses, firstly, the means of "sensing" in cognitive systems, secondly, the optimal resource allocation algorithms for interweave cognitive radio, and finally, the fundamental limits of partially and overly cognitive overlay systems.