End-to-end virtual MIMO transmission in ad hoc cognitive radio networks

Ad hoc cognitive radio networks (CRNs) have the potential for meeting the challenge of increasing radio spectrum efficiency. However, traditional control of ad hoc networking demands end-to-end information channel feedback, whose feasibility is hard in ad hoc CRNs due to the opportunistic nature of spectrum access. In this paper, we propose a virtual multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) approach to facilitate error-resilient end-to-end transmission with no need for feedback information. An erasure-channel model is used to describe the randomness of outage caused by opportunistic links. At source node, a discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-based path-time code (PTC) is used to exploit path diversity. The a priori erasure probability is analyzed, and a pipeline scheduling scheme with unequal waiting periods is designed to reduce such probability. At destination node, knowledge of the a priori erasure probability is exploited to overcome the decoding challenge raised by the presence of random erasures. A joint sphere decoder (JSD) with a minimum mean-squared error sorted QR decomposition (MMSE-SQRD) effectively implements maximum a posteriori (MAP) probability decoding. This decoder simultaneously performs erasure identification and data decoding. Numerical results show that the proposed virtual MIMO framework can pave the way to efficient and reliable end-to-end transmission in ad hoc CRNs.