312
4, AUGUST 2012
Achievable Data Rate in Spectrum-Sharing Channels with
Variable-Rate Variable-Power Primary Users
Yuli Yang, Member, IEEE, and Sonia Aissa, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this work, we propose a transmission strategy
for secondary users (SUs) within a cognitive radio network
where primary users (PUs) exploit variable-rate variable-power
modulation. By monitoring the PU’s transmissions, the SU
adjusts its transmit power based on the gap between the PU’s
received effective signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) and the
lower SNR boundary for the modulation mode that is being
used in the primary link. Thus, at the SU’s presence, the PU’s
quality of service (QoS) is guaranteed without increasing its
processing complexity thanks to no interference cancellation
required in the PU’s operation. To demonstrate the advantage of
our proposed transmission strategy, we analyze the secondary
user’s achievable data rate by taking into account different
transmission capabilities for the secondary transmitter. The
corresponding numerical results not only prove the validity of
our derivations but also provide a convenient tool for the network
design with the proposed transmission strategy.
Index Terms—Cognitive radio (CR), spectrum sharing, adap-
tive modulation, data rate.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE concept of cognitive radio has attracted a lot of
interest in both academia [1] and industry [2] as it offers
a promising solution to the problem of spectrum scarcity for
wireless applications. On the other hand, adaptive modulation
has become a regular setting in current wireless networks to
realize robust and spectrally efficient communications [3].
As is known, in order for secondary users to increase their
transmission opportunities within a cognitive radio network,
any available knowledge on the primary users’ transmissions
has to be fully exploited [4]. Motivated by this philosophy,
we consider a spectrum-sharing channel where variable-rate
variable-power modulation is adopted in the primary link.
With the adaptive modulation, each modulation mode cor-
responds to an interval of the received signal-to-noise power
ratio (SNR), given a target bit error rate (BER). According to
the interval where the received SNR at the primary user (PU)
falls, the corresponding modulation mode is activated. As
such, the gap between the lower boundary of the SNR interval
and the PU’s actually received SNR forms an interference-
tolerable zone and, consequently, this setting may avail the
secondary user (SU) more opportunities to access the licensed
spectrum while maintaining the PU’s quality-of-service (QoS).
Based on said gap, this paper proposes a transmission strategy
for the SU to accommodate its transmit power and achieve
good performance under the requirements of the PU’s QoS.
With this strategy, no interference cancellation is involved in
Manuscript received March 18, 2012. The associate editor coordinating the
review of this paper and approving it for publication was S. Sun.
Y. Yang is with the Division of Physical Sciences and Engineering, King
Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, KSA (e-
mail: yuli.yang@kaust.edu.sa).
S. Aı̈ssa is with the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS),
University of Quebec, Montreal, QC, Canada (e-mail: aissa@emt.inrs.ca).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/WCL.2012.042512.120198
2162-2337/12$31.00 
c 2012 IEEE
IEEE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 1, NO.
ST SR
gs
gps gsp
gp
PT PR
Fig. 1. Spectrum-sharing system model.
the primary link so that the PU’s processing complexity is not
increased while maintaining its QoS.
The cognitive radio channel capacity has been formulated
in [5], [6], and [7] by imposing instantaneous or average
interference constraints at the PU. Moreover, the capacity is
analyzed in [8] with imperfect channel information. In this
paper, to illustrate the advantage of the proposed transmission
strategy, we derive the achievable data rate in the secondary
link by taking into account different capabilities of the sec-
ondary transmitter (ST), namely with or without the peak
transmit power constraint imposed on the ST. Furthermore,
numerical results will substantiate the validity of our deriva-
tions.
In the following, we detail the design of the proposed
transmission strategy and demonstrate its performance by
presenting the SU’s achievable data rate obtained in closed
form as well as in the corresponding numerical results.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
Consider a spectrum-sharing system, where a primary
transmitter-receiver pair uses adaptive rate and power allo-
cation to perform communications in between. Meanwhile,
a secondary transmitter (ST) is trying to access the licensed
spectrum and transmit information to its own receiver by
taking into account the impact of its transmissions on the QoS
in the primary link.
As shown in Fig. 1, let gp , gps , gs and gsp denote the instan-
taneous channel power gains from the primary transmitter (PT)
to the primary receiver (PR), from the PT to the ST, from the
ST to the secondary receiver (SR), and from the ST to the
PR, respectively. All the channel states are assumed to be flat-
fading, following the independent and identically distributed
(i.i.d.) complex Gaussian distribution with zero-mean and unit-
variance. Accordingly, all these channel power gains follow
the i.i.d. unit-mean exponential distribution with probability
density function (PDF)
fgX (gX ) = e−gX , (1)
where the subscript X refers to the channel power gains of
the links shown in Fig. 1, i.e., p , ps , s and sp .
YANG and AISSA: ACHIEVABLE DATA RATE IN SPECTRUM-SHARING CHANNELS WITH VARIABLE-RATE VARIABLE-POWER PRIMARY USERS
Here, the variable-rate variable-power M QAM in [9] is
adopted by the PU. With a pilot protocol, for a constant pilot
power S̄, the PR’s instantaneous received SNR in the absence
of a SU can be expressed as
γp = gp S̄/Np , (2)
where Np is the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) power
received at the PR. Assuming S̄ = 1, the PDF of γp is given
by
fγp (γp ) = Np e−Np γp . (3)
For each symbol to be transmitted in the primary link, an
M QAM constellation from N candidates is selected according
to γp . The N candidates are arranged in an ascending order
of the data rate and the j th constellation is activated if γp ∈
[Mj γ ∗ , Mj+1 γ ∗ ), j = 0, 1, · · · , N , where Mj is the number
of points in the j th M QAM constellation with M0 = 0 and
MN +1 = ∞. The parameter γ ∗ > 0 can be optimized using
numerical search to maximize the spectral efficiency.
To avoid deep channel fading in the primary link, choosing
the M0 constellation corresponds to no data transmission once
γp < M1 γ ∗ . When γp ∈ [Mj γ ∗ , Mj+1 γ ∗ ), j = 1, · · · , N , and
the j th constellation is activated, the data rate is log2 Mj bits
and the PT’s transmit power Sj is adapted relative to γp , as
specified by
Sj = (Mj − 1)/(Kγp ), (4)
where K = −1.5/ ln(5BER) is a parameter pertaining to the
target BER of the adaptive modulation scheme.
Thus, with the variable-rate variable-power modulation,
for each M QAM constellation, the PR’s received SNR is a
constant, given by
γj = (Mj − 1)/K, j = 1, · · · , N. (5)
Since the pilot protocol is used in the primary link, the ST is
supposed to have the knowledge of the pilot via the broadcast
channel in the system that it is trying to access. Hence, the
channel state gps may be estimated at the ST by overhearing
the pilot transmitted by the PT through this channel [10]
and, consequently, the ST can obtain the PT’s instantaneous
transmit power Sj as well as deduce the constellation that is
being used in the primary link.
In the presence of the ST’s transmission, the PR’s effective
received SNR with each modulation mode is found at
γj
γe,j = , j = 1, · · · , N, (6)
1 + gsp Tj /Np
where Tj is the ST’s transmit power as the j th constellation
is active in the primary link. Hence, in order to guarantee the
QoS of primary communications, it is obligatory upon the ST
to control its transmit power Tj to satisfy
γe,j  Mj γ ∗ (7)
when the PU is employing the j th
constellation.
III. S ECONDARY U SER ’ S ACHIEVABLE DATA R ATE
In this section, we derive the achievable data rate in the
secondary link by considering two scenarios with respect to
the ST’s transmission capabilities. The first is a general one
to demonstrate the full benefit of the proposed transmission
313
strategy, where no peak transmit power constraint is imposed
on the ST, and the other is with the peak power constraint
considered at the ST, which is upper bounded by the first
case.
It should be noted that the noise plus interference at the SR
is assumed to be AWGN, as the ST may get the waveforms of
the PT’s transmissions by overhearing the pilot via the channel
gps , thereby exploiting precoding techniques to alleviate the
impact of the PT’s transmissions on the SR [10].
A. ST without Peak Transmit Power Constraint
As above-mentioned, the modulation mode M0 is activated
(i.e., no data transmission) in the primary link once a deep
channel fading emerges with γp ∈ [0, M1 γ ∗ ), where the ST
may transmit with a power as high as possible within its power
budget. In the scenario without transmit power constraint at
the ST, the SU’s achievable data rate, with M0 constellation
activated by PU, can be expressed in [nats/sec/Hz] as
 M1 γ ∗  ∞
C0 = fγp (γp ) dγp ln (1 + gs PM /Ns ) fgs (gs ) dgs
0
 M1 γ ∗
0
 ∞
= Np e−Np γp dγp ln (1 + gs PM /Ns ) e−gs dgs
0  0
∗
= e−Np M1 γ − 1 eNs /PM Ei (−Ns /PM ) ,
(8)
where PM represents the ST’s transmit power with an arbi-
trarily high value once there is no data transmission in the
primary link, and Ns denotes the SR’s received AWGN power.
The PDFs of γp and gs , fγp (γp ) and fgs (g xs ), are given in (3)
and (1), respectively. Besides, Ei(x) = −∞ (et /t) dt is the
exponential integral function.
When it comes to the modulation modes other than M0
activated by the PU, the ST is required to control its transmit
power based on (7) so as to guarantee the QoS of the primary
communications is unaffected. Without loss of generality, if
the j th constellation is being used in the primary link, j =
1, · · · , N , the ST’s transmit power should be specified as a
function of the channel power gain from the ST to the PR,
gsp , according to
 
Np (Mj − 1)/K Np
Tj = ∗
−1 = μj , (9)
gsp Mj γ gsp
(Mj − 1)/K
where the parameter μj  − 1 is defined for a
Mj γ ∗
simple expression.
Subsequently, based on the ST’s transmit power given
by (9), in the case of no peak transmit power constraint
imposed on the ST, the SU’s achievable data rate in the unit
of [nats/sec/Hz] can be calculated using (10) (see at the top
of next page), where C0 is given by (8) and the parameter
λj  μj Np /Ns is introduced for simplicity, with μj defined
in (9).
B. ST with Peak Transmit Power Constraint
To better protect the PU’s communications, the peak trans-
mit power of a ST is constrained when the ST accesses to a
spectrum-sharing channel. Assuming that the peak transmit
314 IEEE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 1, NO. 4, AUGUST 2012

N 
 Mj+1 γ ∗  ∞  ∞

gs Tj
Cs = C0 + fγp (γp ) dγp ln 1 + fgs (gs ) fgsp (gsp ) dgs dgsp
j=1 Mj γ
∗ 0 0 Ns
N  Mj+1 γ ∗  ∞ ∞

−Np γp gs Tj
= C0 + Np e dγp ln 1 + e−gs e−gsp dgs dgsp
j=1 M j γ ∗ 0 0 N s
(10)
N   ∞  g

−Np Mj γ ∗ −Np Mj+1 γ ∗ gsp /λj sp

= C0 + e −e −e Ei − e−gsp dgsp
j=1 0 λ j

N 
 
∗ ∗ λj
= C0 + e−Np Mj γ − e−Np Mj+1 γ ln λj
j=1
λj − 1

power constraint imposed on the ST is PC , when the j th 4.5

constellation is selected by the PU (j = 0), the ST’s transmit no Pc, N = −10dBw

SU’s Achievable Data Rate [nats/sec/Hz]

4 p
power will be adapted from (9) to Pc = 10dBw, N = −10dBw
 3.5
p
no Pc, N = −20dBw
C Np μj /gsp , gsp > Np μj /PC p
Tj = 3 Pc = 10dBw, N = −20dBw
PC , 0  gsp  Np μj /PC (11) p

2.5
j = 1, · · · , N,
2 Np = −10dBw
where the superscript C is used to represent the case that a
1.5
peak transmit power limit is imposed on the ST. N = −20dBw
p
As a result, if the ST’s peak transmit power is limited by PC , 1
the SU’s achievable data rate with the proposed transmission 0.5
strategy is calculated in [nats/sec/Hz] as shown in (12) on the
0
top of next page, where C0C is the SU’s achievable data rate, −20 −15 −10 −5 0
SR’s Received AWGN N [dBw]
with the ST’s peak transmit power constrained, once there is s

no data transmission in the primary link.
In detail, C0C can be found as follows:
 M1 γ ∗  ∞
C −Np γp
C0 = Np e dγp ln (1 + gs PC /Ns ) e−gs dgs
0  0
∗
= e−Np M1 γ − 1 eNs /PC Ei (−Ns /PC ) .
(13)
IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
Based on the analysis and derivations presented in the
above, the performance of the proposed transmission strategy
is illustrated numerically in this section. Variable-rate variable-
power M QAM [9] is exploited in the primary link with
N = 4 constellations as the candidates to be selected. The
number of constellation points for each modulation mode
Mj = 0, 2, 4, 16, 64 as the mode order j varies from 0 to
N = 4. The target BER is set to 10−3 . For the pilot power
S̄ = 1, the parameter γ ∗ is optimized as 1.22 and 1.685
when the PR’s received AWGN power Np = −10dBw and
−20dBw, respectively. In addition, for the case that no peak
transmit power constraint is imposed on the ST, the latter sets
its transmit power to PM = 15dBw when constellation M0 is
activated in the primary link.
To begin with, the SU’s achievable data rate is plotted as
a function of the SR’s received AWGN power Ns in Fig. 2.
Two examples are considered for the PR’s received AWGN
power: Np = −10dBw and −20dBw. The peak transmit
power constraint imposed on the ST is set to PC = 10dBw
and, moreover, the case with no peak transmit power constraint
Fig. 2. Achievable data rate in the secondary link versus the received AWGN
power at the SR, Ns , for the PR’s received AWGN Np = −10dBw and
−20dBw.
imposed on the ST is investigated as well. From this figure,
we observe that the SU’s achievable data rate is reduced with
the increase in Ns and, however, improved with the increase in
Np . The former phenomenon is intuition-compliant. The main
reason behind the latter is that the impact of the interference
from the ST to the PR’s effective received SNR becomes
more and more ignorable as the PR’s received AWGN power
increases. Therefore, the ST is allowed to transmit with a
relatively higher power in the case of higher Np , which can be
perceived from the ST’s transmit power adaptation as shown
in (9) and (11).
Furthermore, to demonstrate the effect of the ST’s peak
transmit power constraint, PC , on the performance of the
secondary link, we depict the SU’s achievable data rate versus
PC in Fig. 3 for Np = −10dBw and −20dBw, where the SR’s
received AWGN power Ns = −10dBw and the case with no
peak transmit power constraint on the ST is also provided
for the sake of comparison. As is shown in this figure, the
case with no peak transmit power constraint at the ST is an
upper bound on that with the peak transmit power constraint
at the ST. As PC is enhanced, the achievable data rate in
the secondary link with the peak transmit power constraint
increases and approaches that without the peak transmit power
constraint, which substantiates the validity of our derivations.
YANG and AISSA: ACHIEVABLE DATA RATE IN SPECTRUM-SHARING CHANNELS WITH VARIABLE-RATE VARIABLE-POWER PRIMARY USERS 315

N 
 

 Mj+1 γ ∗ ∞ ∞
gs
CsC = C0C + Np e −Np γp
dγp ln 1 + λj e−gs e−gsp dgs dgsp
j=1 Mj γ ∗
Np
PC jμ 0 g sp
 ∞  ∞

g s
+ N e−gsp dgsp ln 1 + PC e−gs dgs
p
PC μ j 0 N s

N 
 ∗ ∗
  ∞   g

sp
= C0C + e−Np Mj γ − e−Np Mj+1 γ −e gsp /λj
Ei − e−gsp dgsp
j=1
Np
PC μj
λ j
(12)
 ∞

−gsp
Ns Ns
+ N e dgsp · e Ei −
PC
p
PC μj
PC
N 
   


∗ ∗ λj Np −(λ −1) PNs Ns
= C0C + e−Np Mj γ − e−Np Mj+1 γ Ei − μj − e j C Ei −
j=1
λj − 1 PC PC
N


− pμ Ns Ns
+ e PC j − 1 e PC Ei −
PC

1.5
of cognitive broadcast and multi-access channels presented
in [11] and [12], future work includes the extension of our
SU’s Achievable Data Rate [nats/sec/Hz]

N = −10dBw
p proposed scheme into the scenario with multiple secondary
users.
1

no Pc, N = −10dBw ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

0.5
Np = −20dBw
0 Proc. IEEE, vol. 97, no. 5, pp. 894–914, May 2009.
0 5
Peak Transmit Power Constraint on the ST [dBw]
Fig. 3. Achievable data rate in the secondary link versus the peak transmit
power constraint imposed on the ST, Pc , for the SR’s received AWGN Ns =
−5dBw. Also shown is the case with no peak transmit power constraint at
the ST.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
In general, secondary users (SUs) should stop their com-
munications in a cognitive radio network once primary
users (PUs) emerge to occupy the licensed spectrum. For the
purpose of increasing the SUs’ transmission opportunities,
in this work we proposed a transmission strategy for SUs
within a spectrum-sharing context where PUs adopt variable-
rate variable-power M QAM modulation. Even when a PU is
communicating, the SU can adjust its transmit power based
on the gap between the PU’s received SNR and the lower
SNR boundary for the modulation mode of the moment in the
primary link, so as to promise the PU’s QoS. Considering dif-
ferent transmission abilities of the secondary transmitter (ST),
we derived achievable data rates in the secondary link and
obtained corresponding closed-form expressions. From numer-
ical results provided here, the validity of our derivations is
substantiated and we may get a conclusion that, with the pro-
posed transmission strategy, the SU’s performance improves
with the decrease in the SR’s received AWGN power, while
with the increase in the PR’s received AWGN power or the
peak transmit power constraint value at the ST. Finally, in light
p
Np = −10dBw The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers
no Pc, N = −20dBw
p
for bringing [4] and [12] to their attention.
N = −20dBw
p
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