Cognitive two-way relay beamforming: Design with resilience to channel state uncertainties

In this paper, we propose a robust distributed relay beamformer design for cognitive radio network operating under uncertainties in the available channel state information. The cognitive network consists of a pair of transceivers and a set of non-regenerative two-way relays that assist the communication between the transceiver pair. The secondary nodes share the spectrum with a licensed primary user node while ensuring that the interference to the primary receiver is maintained below a certain threshold. The proposed robust design maximizes the worst-case signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio at the secondary transceivers while satisfying constraints on the interference to the primary user and on the total relay transmit power. Though the robust design problem is not a convex problem in its original form, we show that it can be reformulated as a convex optimization problem, which can be solved efficiently. Numerical results are provided and illustrate the merits of the proposed design for various operating conditions and parameters. © 2016 IEEE.