Power Performance Enhancement of Underlay Spectrum Sharing in Cognitive Radio Networks Using ESPAR Antenna

Abstract

Electronically-steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna is a promising antenna array configuration. It offers lower power consumption, lower cost, lower hardware complexity, and smaller size as compared to classical antenna arrays configurations. Meanwhile it is able to support important communication techniques such as beamforming and diversity. In this paper, we propose a transmitter ESPAR antenna system where symbols are transmitted over switchable beampatterns of the antenna in order to enhance the power performance of underlay spectrum sharing in cognitive radio networks compared to previously proposed transmitter systems. We study the performance of two different pattern shapes of ESPAR antenna to choose the appropriate one for underlay spectrum sharing. We show through simulation that the ESPAR antenna can offer a better power performance than a classical circular antenna array (CAA) of the same size and comparable number of elements. In addition, the ESPAR antenna can preserve its good performance with small spacing between elements, whereas the classical CAA's performance severely degrades.

Keywords

• antenna arrays
• antenna radiation patterns
• cognitive radio
• MATLAB
• multipath channels