1

CR network, secondary users (SUs) are permitted to

Novel Markov Channel Predictors for Interference

Alignment in Cognitive Radio Network
Zhenguo Shi1, Zhilu Wu1, Zhendong Yin1 Zhutian Yang1 Qingqing Cheng2
AbstractIn cognitive radio (CR) network, how to mitigate
interference between different users is a key task.
Interference alignment (IA) is a promising technique to
tackle the multi-user interference in communication system.
Compared with other interference management methods
(such as zero-forcing), IA can not only effectively eliminate
the interference, but also greatly increase the system
capacity. However, the perfect channel state information
(CSI) is required for both transmitters and receivers to apply
the IA algorithm, which is hard to achieve in practical
applications. In this paper, the effect of imperfect CSI on IA
in CR system is analyzed in terms of signal to interference
plus noise ratio (SINR) and achievable sum rate. A linear
finite state Markov chain (LFSMC) predictor, which
incorporates the finite state Markov chain into the AR
predictor, is proposed to reduce the impact of imperfect CSI
on system performance of CR network. Moreover, for the
sake of simplifying the initialization of LFSMC predictor, a
simplified LFSMC (S-LFSMC) predictor is provided.
Simulation results indicate that both of the LFSMC and SLFSMC predictor can greatly improve the performance of IA
system with the inaccurate CSI. Specifically, the LSFMC
predictor can achieve satisfied performance compared with
other predictors mentioned in this paper. And the LSFMC
predictor which is simpler and its performance is still much
better than traditional predictors. Therefore, we can choose a
suitable predictor (LAFMC or S-LSFMC) based on the
different requirements.
Keywords Interference alignment; Cognitive radio;
Channel prediction; Finite state Markov chain; Linear
predictor

I. INTRODUCTION
Cognitive radio (CR) is one of the most effective
technologies to solve the problem of spectrum scarcity. In a
* Correspondence: Zhilu Wu: E-mail: wuzhilu@hit.edu.cn1School of Electronics
and Information Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, 92 Xidazhi Street,
Harbin, China
2
Department of computing and communications, Faculty of Engineering and
information technology, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Zhenguo
Shi:
shizhenguotvt@gmail.com;
Zhendong
Yin:
yinzhendong@hit.edu.cn;Zhutian Yang: yangzhutian@hit.edu.cn; Qingqing
Cheng: qingqing.cheng@student.uts.eu.au

opportunistically access the unused licensed spectrum [1].

However, when SUs utilize the licensed spectrum, they must
obey the basic principle that they should not cause any
harmful interference to the primary users (PUs) [2].
Moreover the cognitive radio network should not only have
high performance spectrum sensing ability [3], but also
should have the ability to reduce the interference when the
SUs share the licensed spectrum [4]. Recently, a great
number of works have been done focusing on the spectrum
sensing, and have got satisfied results [57]. However, how
to eliminate the interference in the CR network has not been
solved properly. Take three commonly CR networks as
example (interweave, overlay and underlay), none of them
can completely eliminate the interference [8]. So finding an
effective method to reduce the interference turns into a key
work for the cognitive radio networks in practical
applications [9].
The interference alignment (IA) technology, which is
firstly proposed by Jafar [10], is an emerging interference
control approach which can completely eliminate the
interference in theory [11]. The core thought of IA is aligning
the interference into small dimensional subspaces at all
receivers, while the intended signal is transmitted on the
subspaces which are free of interference [12]. Thus, the
desired signal can be obtained from the received signal
without any interference by applying the appropriate
interference suppression matrix [13]. Some main
technologies of IA such as the achievable degrees of freedom
(DoF) [14] and the capacity of K-user [15] have been
thoroughly studied. Moreover, an increasing number of
researchers focus on the problem of generating precoding
matrix and interference suppression matrix [16,17] to
improve the performance of IA. With the benefits of IA
techniques, IA has been widely applied in CR and
Heterogeneous Networks to mitigate multi-user interference
[18-19]. In [20], the authors apply IA to deal with intercarrier interference and inter-system interference in the
situation that a set of small-cells coexist with a macro-cell. A
new interference alignment scheme based on antenna
selection is proposed in [21] in cognitive radio networks. By
choosing the optimal antenna, the received SINR can be
improved in IA-based CR networks.

2
Whilst IA techniques can provide many attractive benefits,
it suffers from a number of problems, which limits its
practical applications [22]. The almost biggest one is that in
order to get the precoding matrix and interference
suppression matrix, the real time and perfect global channel
state information (CSI) are required for majority IA systems
[23]. Thus, a great number of information should be
transmitted between the users. If the exchanged information
is limited, the performance of the IA would greatly degrade
[21]. Moreover, the estimation errors and feedback delay
lead to that the perfect CSI is hard to be obtained. As the
result, the imperfect CSI will result in a dramatic
performance degradation [24]. Fortunately, this issue has
attracted growing attention, some methods have been
proposed to reduce the influence of imperfect CSI on IA
system performance [2527]. In [26], a predictor has be
applied to forecast the CSI, and the impact of delayed CSI
has been decreased. In [27], the authors propose a novel
channel predictor based on Markov chain. Compared with
the predictor in [26], the system performance has been
greatly improved. However, the performance of this predictor
degrades greatly when the timing delay is large.
In this article, we present two predictors to upgrade the
performance of IA system with the imperfect CSI. The first
one is linear finite state Markov chain (LFSMC) predictor,
which combines the linear predictor (AR predictor) with
Markov chain. The LFSMC predictor applies Markov chain
to map the associated linear coefficient (which is obtain by
AR predictor) into different channel states. And then it
employs the outdated CSI to forecast the accurate CSI based
on . The second one is called simplified LFSMC (SLFSMC) predictor, which is proposed to simplify the
complex initialization of LFSMC predictor. With the help of
LFSMC and S-LFSMC predictor, the precoding matrix and
the interference matrix can be designed according to the
predicted CSI in the IA system. Simulation results reveal the
effectiveness of LFSMC and S-LFSMC predictor in dealing
with the problems of imperfect CSI in IA system. The
contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows.
1) The influence of the imperfect CSI in IA system
cognitive radio has been studied. Under Rayleigh channel,
the achievable average SINR and sum rate of IA system have
been analyzed and the theoretical expressions have been
provided.
2) A LFSMC predictor, which combines the FSMC with a
linear predictor, is proposed to tackle the problem of the
imperfect CSI on system performance. Compared with other
all predictors in the paper, the LFSMC predictor achieves

satisfied performance.
3) S-LFSMC predictor is proposed, which is derived from
the LFSMC predictor. Compared to LFSMC predictor, SLFSMC predictor can greatly reduce initialization time at the
cost of a certain degradation of the performance. However,
the S-LFSMC predictor is obviously better than traditional
predictors.
4) We perform extensive simulations to demonstrate the
theoretical results and prove the promising predictors.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II,
a traditional IA system for CR network is given. Moreover,
the impact of imperfect CSI on the IA system has been
studied in terms of SINR and sum rate. For the sake of
eliminating the influence of the imperfect CSI, two channel
predictors (LSFMC predictor and S-LSFMC predictor) are
proposed in Section III. The simulation results and
conclusions are presented in Section IV and Section V,
respectively.
Notation: (.)H denotes the conjugate transpose. E(.), D(.)
and |.| are the expectation, variance and determination of the
matrix, respectively. Id denotes the d d identity matrix.

II. SYSTEM MODEL AND PROBLEM

DESCRIPTION
In this section, the basic concept of IA in CR networks is
briefly described at first. After that, we will discuss the
performance of IA system with the imperfect CSI.
2.1 Description of IA system
We consider a traditional underlay CR network, which
contains K-user MIMO interference channels including K
transmitter-receiver pairs, and the number of the SU and PU
are K-1 and 1, respectively. Fig. 1 shows the details of the
system structure. For analytical convenience, we assume all
the transmitters and receivers are equipped with M antennas
and N antennas, respectively. Then the received signal at the
kth receiver can be denoted as
Yk H kk X k
where Yk and Wk are N

l 1, l k

Hkl X l Wk ,

(1)

1 received signal vector and

2
additive white Gaussian noise vector (zero mean and n
N M
variance) at the kth receiver, respectively; H kk C
stands

for the channel from transmitter k to receiver k, and

H kl C N M is the channel coefficients matrix between the lth

3
M 1
transmitter and the kth receiver; Similarly, X k C and

X l C M 1 stand for the transmitted signals from the kth

transmitter and the lth transmitter, respectively.

and w k U kH w k , w k C d k 1 is the noise vector at the kth

receiver. Consequently, through IA processing, the desired
signal at the kth receiver can be denoted as
^

y k H kk x k w k .

(5)

2.2 Impact of the imperfect CSI

The achievable sum rate and the SINR are two main
aspects which directly reflect the quality of the
communication system. In this paper, we also choose them to
analyze the performance of the IA system. For a traditional
IA system, the average SINR at receiver k of the mth data
stream can be expressed as
| U mk H H kk Vkm x km |2

SINR mk E[

di

i 1,i k

d 1

|U

mH
k

^ m

].

Hki V x | | w k |
d
i

d 2
i

(6)

We assume that the transmitted power and the DoF of each

user are P and D (d1 = d2 ==D), respectively. If the
K

Fig. 1. Interference alignment system model: one PU and K1 SUs.

interference are eliminated,

For a traditional IA system, in order to eliminate the

interference, the transmitted signal x is separately processed
by precoding matrix V and suppression matrix U at the
transmitter and receiver. Thus, the received signal at the kth
transmitter in IA system can be written as
y k U kH H kk Vk x k
where

U k C N d k

and

l 1,l k

U kH H kl Vl x l U kH w k ,

Vk C M d k

are

suppression matrix and precoding matrix of the kth receiver

(UkHUk=I, VkHVk=I); dk stands for the DoF at the kth user; xk
is the dk

1 transmitted signal vector from the kth

transmitter; wk is a N 1 Gaussian noise vector with zero

mean and unit variance at the kth transmitter.
In order to mitigate the interference of the CR network,
suppression matrix and precoding matrix should obey the
following conditions [10].

U kH H kl Vl 0, l k ,

(3)

rank (U kH H kk Vk ) d k .

(4)

By applying the proper precoding matrix and suppression

matrix, the interference can be totally eliminated. Let
^

H kk U kH H kk Vk is the full rank channel coefficients matrix,

|U

i 1,i k d 1

mH
k

H ki Vid x id |2 is equal

to 0. Furthermore, usually the power P is equally divided in

to every DoF, thus E[|xkm|2]=P/D. Since Uk is normalized,
UkHUk=I. Besides Uk and wk are independent, thus
^ m

E[| w k |2 ] 1 . As the result, the (6) can be rewritten as

(2)

normalized

di

SINR mk

P
E[| U mk H H kk Vkm |2 ].
D

(7)

In the IA system, when we want to get the expected Uk and

Vk, we need to calculate all possible values of Uk and Vk
based on (3) at first. And then, applying the (4) to choose the
satisfied values. Thus, during the design processes, the
influence of Hkk is not considered (only employing the (3)).
In order to simplify the theoretical analysis, Uk and Hkk, Vk
and Hkk are regarded as independent, respectively. Thus
E[| U mk H H kk Vkm |2 ]
M

E[ |U kj , m |2 | Vki , m |2 | H kkji |2 ]
i 1 j 1

|U kj , m |2 | Vki , m |2 E[| H kkji |2 ]

(8)

i 1 j 1

1,
where Ukj,m is the jth row and the mth column of Uk ; Vki,m is
ji
the ith row and the mth column of Vk,; H kk is the jth row and

4
the ith column of Hkk. Thus, the SINR is equal to
P
SINR mk ,
D

where U and V can be calculated by H . Based on the

(9)

conclusions discussed previously, Uk and Vk are independent

mH

k 1

log (1 SINR
2

m 1

m
k

).

(10)

The conclusions discussed above are based on the

assumption that both the transmitters and receivers get the
accurate CSI. However, it is hard to get the accurate CSI for
the channel fading and transmitted delay. As the result, in a
practical system, the imperfect CSI is usually used, and it is
harmful to the IA system performance.
In this paper, we consider a Rayleigh channel that
H(n ) ~ CN (0, I) is channel coefficients matrix at time
instant n. Considering the channel fading and channel delay,
the relationship between current CSI H(n) and existing symbol duration delayed CSI H(n-) is
H( n ) H ( n ) 1 2 Q

(11)

H( n ) 1 Q,
2

where is the normalized channel fading autocorrelation

coefficient and 0 1 . In the Rayleigh channel, is equal
to

J 0 (2 f d ),

(12)

where fq is the Doppler frequency, and J0 denotes the first

50

Perfect CSI
=1, F =0.05, theory
d

45

=1, F =0.05, simulation

d

40

=3, F =0.05, theory

d

35

=3, F =0.05, simulation

d
=1, F =0.25, theory
d

30

=1, F =0.25, simulation

d

25

=3, F =0.25, theory

d

20

=3, F =0.25, simulation

d

15
10
5
0

10

D( H(n )) D( H( n )) D( Q) I.

(13)

In the following discussion, the time instant n will be

omitted for simplifying the expression. In the IA system,
when the CSI is imperfect, the average SINR at the receiver
k of the mth data stream can be expressed as

SINR E[
m
k

E[

mH

| U k H kk V k x km |2
K

|U

mH
k

d
i

d 1

E[| U

mH
k

H kk V k x km |2 ]

^ m

(14)

A ] E[| w | ]

i 1,i k
mH

d 1

A1 | U k ( H ki 1 2 Q) V i xid |2 ,

25
SNR(dB)

30

35

40

45

50

^ m

E[| w k |2 ] 1 . Thus the (14) can be rewritten as

SINR k

P
D

1
K
P
(1 2 ) E[
D i 1,i k

|U

mH
k

QV | ] 1 (16)
d 2
i

d 1

In the (16) Q and H are independent and identically

distributed, and Q is uncorrelated with the IA process.
m

Consequently, U k

and V i

are independent of Q, so

E[| U k QV i |2 ] 1 . Then, the SINR k in Rayleigh channel

mH

is equal to
m

P
1
D (1 2 ) P ( K 1) D 1
D
P
1

.
D (1 J 02 (2 f d )) P( K 1) 1

SINR k

H ki V x | | w k |

i 1,i k

^ m

d 2
i

20

U k H ki V i 0 . Moreover, U k and wk are independent, so

channel coefficients matrix at time instant n, and Q, H( n )

are independent with each other, which obey

15

Fig. 2 SINR analysis of IA system with different timing delay and

normalized Doppler frequency, K = 3, M = N = 2.

kind of zero order Bessel function. H( n) is the delayed

(3),

SINR(dB)

Rsum

P
. According to the
D

m 2
of Hkk. Thus, E[| U k H kk V k x k | ]

and the sum rate of IA network can be expressed as

(15)

(17)

According the (9) and (17), it is easy to find that the

timing delay and Doppler frequency fq can affect the
average SINR of the received signal. Thus, the sum rate of
the IA system will be correspondingly impacted.
Fig. 2 shows the impact of the imperfect CSI on IA system

5
performance. The average SINR with different SNR are
discussed. The timing delay ( ) is set as 1-symbol and 3symbol; Doppler frequency is equal to 10Hz and 50Hz, the
symbol duration Ts is 5ms, so the normalized Doppler
frequency Fd=fqTs is equal to 0.05, 0.25. The number of
antennas is M=N=2, and the number of users is set to K=3. It
can be seen that the theory and the simulation results of
imperfect CSI is almost the same, so in the following
sections we just provide the simulation results of imperfect
CSI.

Fig. 2 An example of the relationship between fading amplitude

partitions and FSMC states.

III.INTERFERENCE ALIGNMENT SCHEME

BASED ON MARKOV CHANNEL
PREDICTION
According to the conclusions drawn in the previous
section, the quality of service (QoS) is deteriorated with the
imperfect CSI in the IA system. Thus, in order to guarantee
the QoS of the IA network, it is important to find a proper
way to eliminate the effect of unsatisfied CSI. Interference
alignment scheme based on channel predication is a good
candidate to solve the problem. The core idea of this method
is that using predictor to forecast the CSI at first. And then,
employing the predicted CSI to generate precoding matrix
and interference suppression matrix. So the accuracy of the
predictor could greatly influence the performance of IA
system. In this section, we propose a LFSMC predictor to
forecast the CSI, and another predictor (S-LFSMC predictor)
based on the LFSMC for different applications is also
provided.

3.1 LFSMC predictor

The linear predictor (particular autoregressive predictor),
is the most widely applied for channel prediction. (18) is a
classical expression of AR predictor:
~

H (n 1) l (n ) H (n l 1),
l 1

(18)

where H is the channel coefficient; L is the order of the AR

predictor; And l(n) is the lth order associated linear
coefficient at time n. Generally, the minimum mean square
error (MMSE) of the estimation is employed to measure the
performance of the predictor. Thus associated linear
coefficient l(n) can be computed by using the Yule-Walker
equation.
The AR predictor can get satisfied results when the order
L is large enough. However, higher order of AR predictor
will cost more time to predict the CSI. In order to solve this
problem, we propose a LFSMC predictor, which incorporates
the FSMC into the AR predictor. By exploit the statistical
information of the channel, the LFSMC predictor utilizes the
FSMC to record and track the associated linear coefficient
of the AR predictor. For practical prediction, it only needs to
get the stored for the given H in the memories, omitting the
complex solution processes of .
There are some steps to establish the LFSMC predictor:
Firstly, the channel gain should be converted to a channel
state. Let C(n) is the channel state at time n, and C(n)

0, S

-1], where S is the number of channel states. Fig. 3

indicates the relationship between the amplitude and the

FSMC states. In Fig. 3, vs stands for the threshold of fading
amplitude partition. So the magnitude of the channel fading
can be divided in the regions [0, v1), [v1, v2), , [vS,

).

If the H(n) falls into the region [vs, vs+1], the FSMC is defined
to be in state C(n)=s.
Secondly, the associated linear coefficient l should be
formed. In the first step, the training data H(n) have been
mapped into different regions with state labels (C(n)=s) via
quantifying. So in this step, these labeled H(n) will be
applied to calculate the l based on the Yule-Walker equation.
In order to track and record the l, let

l (n, s)=l (n, C (n 1) s | C (n), , C (n L 1)),

(19)

where l(n,s) stands for the lth associated linear coefficient

when the state of the channel gains transmit from C(n-L+1),
C(n-L+2),,C(n) to C(n+1)=s. Since a temporary associated
linear coefficient can be obtained after solving the YuleWalker equation based on different sets of training data, the

6
final l(n,s) is the mean of these temporary values. Generally,
the more of the training data is, the more accurate l(n,s) will
be gained.
Finally, we will establish the state transition probability
matrix P(n), which is a S S matrix, and the ith row and
the jth column of P(n) is defined as

pi j (n )=Pr(C ( n ) j | C ( n 1) i ),

coefficient |h| moves from state i to state j. Often, the Markov

state process is stationary, thus the state transition probability
is independent of time n.
In the Rayleigh fading channels, the solution processes of
state transition probabilities pi j can be simplified. We
assume that from time n-1 to n, the FSMC states of fading
channel coefficient |H| can only transmit to their
previous/next states or come back to themselves. It means
that the amplitude of |H| either moves to its immediate
neighboring regions [vi-1,vi)/ [vi+1,vi+2), or it remains in the
same region [vi,vi+1). So the approximate state transition
probabilities can be computed as
pi i 1 (n )

pi i 1 (n )

vi
v2
f d exp( i2 )Ts

,
i
vi 1
v2
f d exp( i 21 )Ts

,
i

(21)

pi i 1 pi ( i 1) pi ( i 1) ,
pi j ( n ) 0, | i j | 1.
where Ts is the symbol period; i is the steady state
probability of the ith FSMC state. Since the analysis is under
the Rayleigh channel, the probability i is equal to

vi 1

vi

|h |
| h |2
exp( 2 )d | h |.
2

(22)

Specifically, the state transition probabilities p00 and

S 1

s 0

l 1

The main steps of the LFSMC predictor are summarized

as follows:
1. Establish the associated linear coefficient l(n,s) by
using the training data, and store them in the memory.
2. Compute the state transition probability matrix P(n)
according to (21) and (23).
3. Forecast the H(n+1) by using (24).
4. Repeat Step 3 to predict the H(n+) based on (25).
3.2 Special case: simplified LFSMC predictor
For the application of LFSMC predictor, the initial process
is one of the most important steps, which has the ability to
affect the performance of the predictor. Moreover, during the
initial process, the establishment of associated linear
coefficient l(n,s) takes a key role. In order to achieve a
better forecast performance, we usually use the linear
predictor with high order L. However, as the cost of a high
order of linear predictor, we have to solve a too much
complex Yule-Walker equation. Thus the initial process
becomes complex and lengthy.
In order to reduce the time and resource consuming of the
initialization, we reform the LFSMC predictor and provide a
simplified LFSMC (S-LFSMC) predictor, which can be
expressed as
S 1

H S LFSMC ( n 1) p( s)(1 ( n, s) H ( n) 2 ( n, s ) H ( n 1)),

s 0

(26)
and
~

S 1

H S LFSMC (n ) p( s )(1 (n, s ) H (n 1 )

s 0

pS 1 S 1 are defined as
p00 1 p01 ,
p( L 1)( L 1) 1 p( L 1)( L 2) .

2 ( n, s) H ( n 2 )).

(23)

With the knowledge of l(n,s) and P(n), we apply softmean algorithm to predict the CSI:
~

H LFSMC ( n ) p( s ) l ( n, s ) H ( n l ). (25)

(20)

where pi j means the probability that channel fading

where p(s)=p(C(n+1)=s|C(n), C(n-1) ,, C(n-L+1)) is the

conditional probability of H(n+1) holding state C(n+1). In
this paper, we consider that the channel delay is , so we have
to forecast the H at time n+. The proposed LFSMC predictor
can be written as

S 1

s 0

l 1

H LFSMC ( n 1) p( s) l ( n, s) H ( n l 1),

(24)

(27)

As is shown in (26) and (27), for the S-LFSMC predictor,

the order of linear predictor is reduced to 2. Thus, it just
needs to compute the second order Yule-Walker equation to
get the associated linear coefficient during the
initialization. Obviously, the complexity is greatly reduced.
However, the accuracy of the linear predictor will drop
relatively in return. Fortunately, the performance of SLFSMC predictor will not reduce greatly. This is because S-

7
normalized Doppler frequency Fd=.0.2
0
-5

-15
-20
-25
-30
-35
-40
0.05

0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
Normalized Doppler frequency

0.4

0.45

0.5

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

In this section, the performance of the LFSMC predictor
and the S-LFSMC predictor will be given under the time
varying Rayleigh fading channel. The results are obtained in
a traditional MIMO interference cognitive network via
Monte Carlo simulations. During the simulation processes,
50
45
40

SINR(dB)

Perfect CSI
=1, F =0.25
d

Predictor in [27]
LFSMC
S-LFSMC
AR
Kalman Filters Predictor [26]

25
20
15

-10

10

-20
Prediction Error (dB)

0.15

predicted CSI according to the statements in Section II. In

the next section, we will analyze the performance of the
proposed predictors and their influence on IA system in
terms of the average SINR.

30

-30

-40

-5
0

-50
LFSMC
-60

S-LFSMC
AR

-70

0.1

Fig. 5 Prediction error of predictors with normalized Doppler frequency,

timing delay=5-symbol.

35

LFSMC
S-LFSMC
AR

-10
Prediction error (dB)

LFSMC predictor applies Markov chain to map the linear

coefficient (which is calculated by a linear predictor) into
different states, and computes the means of these . As the
result, the impact of inaccurate linear predictor will be
averaged into different states. Thus the performance of SLFSMC predictor will degraded less compared with directly
employing linear predictor. The specific results will be
shown in the Section `Simulation Results'.
According to the discussion shown above, after the initial
processes, we can easily predict the H by using (25) or (27).
It is unnecessary to implement initialization every time
before the prediction. Once the initialization is completed, it
is valid for a period of time. However, in order to guarantee
the high prediction performance, it is better to reform or
update the results of initialization after a period of time. This
work can be achieved by resetting the initialization or using
the forgetting factor to update the existing results. But these
are not the main work of this paper, so we will not discuss
them in the following content.
For the computational complexity, it is obvious that the
LFSMC predictor and the S-LFSMC predictor cost lower
complex multiplications compared with traditional AR
predictor when we act the prediction. This is because when
applying a traditional AR predictor, it needs to solve the
Yule-Walker equation based on received data in real time,
which costs a lot of complex multiplications. While the
LFSMC predictor and the S-LFSMC predictor have done the
work before prediction. Moreover, the S-LFSMC predictor is
simpler than the LFSMC predictor when L is larger than 2.
By applying the proper channel predictor, the relatively
accurate H could be gotten. After that, we can calculate the
precoding matrix and the suppression matrix with the

5
6
Timing Delay

10

Fig. 4 Prediction error of predictors with different timing delay,

10

20

SNR(dB)

30

40

50

the number of users is set to K=3 that there are two SUs and
one PU. At each transmitter and receiver, the number of
antennas are fixed at M=N=2. Moreover, the symbol period
is set as 0.5ms, carrier frequency fc=2.3GHz, channel
sampling rate fs=200Hz.

8
Fig. 6 Performance comparison of different predictors with 2-symbol
delay and 0.25 normalized Doppler frequency

To evaluate the proposed predictors, the normalized

channel prediction error is used
K

error=10log10 (

| | H
k 1 l 1
K K

kl

H kl ||2F

| | Hkl ||2F

).

(28)

k 1 l 1

Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 show the prediction error with different

timing delay and Doppler frequency, respectively. In Fig. 4,
the normalized Doppler frequency is 0.2, and the timing
delay is range from 1-symbol to 10-symbol. And the timing
delay is 5-symbol, and the normalized Doppler frequency is
range from 0.05 to 0.5 in Fig. 5.
According to these two figures, it is clear that the LFSMC
predictor can achieve better prediction error compared with

the other two predictors. And prediction performance of the

three predictors will be worse with the increasing of timing
delay and the Doppler frequency. Moreover, the gaps of
prediction error between the three predictors are reduced
obviously with larger timing delay. But the similar
conclusion cannot be got when Doppler frequency is larger.
In order to analyze the performance of different predictors,
Fig. 6 provides the average SINR of LFSMC predictor, SLFSMC predictor, traditional AR predictor, Kalman filters
predictor in [26] and the predictor in [27], when timing delay
is 2-symbol and normalized Doppler frequency is 0.25. It is
apparent that the LFSMC predictor achieves the best
performance among these five predictors. There is only about
5 dB reduction at SNR=40dB, compared with the case of
getting the perfect CSI. Furthermore, although there is a gap
between the SINR of S-LFSMC predictor and LFSMC
predictor, S-LFSMC predictor performs a great improvement
compared with AR predictor and the predictor in [27]. For

Table 1 Performance comparison at SNR=30dB

SINR(dB)
Predictor
Perfect CSI
Imperfect CSI
LFSMC Predictor
S-LFSMC Predictor
AR Predictor
Kalman Filters Predictor [26]
Predictor in [27]

50
45
40
35

SINR(dB)

30
25

Normalized Doppler frequency=0.25

Delay=1
Delay=4
Delay=6
30
30
30
15.92
8.346
3.02
29.33
22.39
13.94
28.61
18.83
10.74
24.89
9.257
6.262
29.01
21.53
13.01
28.61
10.11
7.923

(S) of Markov channel state.

Perfect CSI
=1, F =0.35
d

LFSMC S=7
LFSMC S=5
LFSMC S=3
S-LFSMC S=7
S-LFSMC S=5
S-LFSMC S=3

20
15
10
5
0
-5
0

10

Normalized frequency=0.375
Delay=1
Delay=4
Delay=6
30
30
30
12.52
4.45
2.365
29.01
19.01
9.56
28.34
14.8
6.132
23.7
6.846
3.25
28.77
18.43
8.68
26.89
7.969
4.82

20

SNR(dB)

30

40

50

Fig. 7 SINR performance of different predictors with different numbers

instance, the SINR of S-LFSMC predictor is 24.91dB at

SNR=30dB, while the SINR of AR predictor and the
predictor in [27] are 15.3dB and 16.89dB, respectively.
For the sake of further analyzing the performance of these
five predictors, the average SINR of IA network with
different timing delay and normalized Doppler frequency at
SNR=30dB are studied. The results are indicated in Table 1.
In the table, `Delay=1' means that the timing delay is 1symbol. It is easy to find that these five predictors can
achieve satisfied results when the timing delay and Doppler
frequency are small. Although the traditional AR predictor is
the worst one among the five predictors, it still get about

9
10dB SINR improvement compared with the imperfect CSI
when timing delay is 1-symbol and normalized Doppler
frequency Fd=0.25. Moreover, the table also indicates that the
performance of these five predictors will decrease when the
CSI becomes worse. However, we can see that both of the
proposed predictors can greatly reduce the impact of the
imperfect CSI. And there is only a small performance
degradation between LFSMC and S-LFSMC predictor. Thus
we can apply a proper predictor according to the requirement
50
45
40
35

Perfect CSI
=1, F =0.25
d
LFSMC, K=3
LFSMC, K=5
LFSMC, K=7

SINR(dB)

30
25
20
15
10
5
0
-5
0

10

20

SNR(dB)

30

40

50

Fig. 8 SINR performance of LFSMC predictor with different number of

K, timing delay is 2-symbol and normalized Doppler frequency is 0.25.

of the system.
Fig. 7 is the performance comparison between different
number of Markov channel state for the LFSMC and the SLFSMC predictor. We set S=3,5,7; the order of the LFSMC
predictor is 5; the timing delay and normalized Doppler
frequency are 3-symbol and 0.35, respectively. As is shown
in Fig. 7, with the increasing of S, the performance of the
LFSMC and the S-LFSMC predictor are promoted. Thus, by
applying the LFSMC and S-LFSMC predictor with large S,
the QoS of IA system will be improved. Moreover, it also can
be seen that the improvements with different S are not huge
enough, while with the large S, the initialization of LFSMC
predictor and S-LFSMC predictor will cost more time and
require more training data. Consequently, it is wise to take a
balance between the system performance and initial
processes when we employ the LFSMC predictor and SLFSMC predictor.
The impact of the number of the users (K) on LFSMC
predictor is analyzed in Fig. 8. The number of the users are
K=3,5,7; timing delay is 2-symbol and normalized Doppler
frequency is 0.25. It is apparent that with the increasing of K,
the performance of SINR becomes worse. The reason is that
the more users are, the more influence of inaccurate

predicted H on computing the precoding matrix and

interference suppression matrix become. So the average
SINR will decline.

V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the impact of the imperfect CSI in a K-user
IA cognitive network performance has been discussed. The
degradations of average SINR and achievable sum rate of IA
system have been studied in detail. For the sake of
eliminating the influence of the delayed CSI, two channel
predictors have been proposed in this paper. One predictor is
the LSFMC predictor, which incorporates the FSMC into the
AR predictor. Another one is the S-LSFMC predictor which
is provided based on the LSFMC predictor, and it simplifies
the initialization. Simulation results have proofed that the
outcomes of IA system can be enhanced by using the
LSFMC predictor and the S-LSFMC predictor. The LSFMC
predictor can get much better performance compared with
other predictors with sufficient training data. Moreover,
although the performance of S-LSFMC predictor is a little
lower compared with the LSFMC predictor, the simplified
initial process is the great advantage of the S-LSFMC
predictor. Thus, according to specific requirements, we can
choose the LSFMC predictor or the S-LSFMC predictor in
practical applications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research in this article is supported by `the National
Natural Science Foundation of China' (Grant No.:61102084
and Grant No.:61471142).

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Zhenguo Shi proposed the algorithms, wrote the paper;
Zhilu Wu gave instructions of the research, and revised the
paper; Zhendong Ying, Zhutian Yang and Qingqing Cheng
improved the algorithms and revised the manuscript.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Zhenguo Shi was born in Harbin, China, 1986. He received

the B.Sc. (in 2009) and M.S. (in 2011) degrees from Daqing
Petroleum Institute and Harbin Institute of Technology
(HIT), China, respectively. He was a visiting student in
university of Leeds during 2012-2013, and now he is
studying in Harbin Institute of Technology for the Ph.D
degree. His research interests include cognitive radio,
interference alignment and deep learning and UWB wireless
communication.

Zhilu Wu was born in Harbin,

China, 1961. He received the B.Sc.
(in 1983) and M.S.(in 1989) and
Ph.D (in 2008) degree from Harbin
Institute of Technology, China. He
is a professor and Ph.D supervisor
in the School of Electronics and
Information Engineering at Harbin
Institute of Technology. His
research interests include wireless communication, signal
processing, and cognitive radio.

11
Zhendong Yin received the
B.Sc. (in 2001), M.S. (in 2004) and
Ph.D.(in 2008) degree from Harbin
Institute of Technology(HIT),
China. He is a lecturer and master
instructor in the School of
Electronics
and
Information
Engineering at Harbin Institute of
Technology (HIT). His research
interests include UWB wireless communication, signal
processing, sensor network and cognitive radio.

Zhutian Yang is currently

working as a Lecturer in Harbin
Institute of Technology. In 2015,
he worked as a visiting research
associate in King's College
London, UK. He received the
M.E. degree in 2008 and D.Sc.
degree in 2012 from Harbin

Institute of Technology (HIT), China. His general research

interests are in smart grid, signal processing algorithms and
machine learning. Dr. Yang is a member of IEEE has
published 10 papers in refereed journals and international
conferences.

Qingqing Cheng got B.S degree from Harbin University of

Science and Technology, China, in 2013, and M.S. degree in
Harbin Institute of Technology in 2013. She has completed
her MRes in Macquarie University, Australia, 2016 and now
is studying in University of Technology Sydney for the Ph.D
degree. Her research interests include cognitive radio,
massive MIMO.