FUNDAMENTALS LIMITS OF COGNITIVE RADIOS

A digital communication system is designed to transport a message from an

information source through a transmission medium (i.e., channel) to an information
sink. The goal is to accomplish this task such that the information is efficiently
transmitted with a certain degree of reliability. In digital communication systems, the
metric of reliability for a given transmission is commonly referred to as the bit error
rate (BER) or probability of bit error, which is measured at the receiver output. Note
that several data transmission applications require a minimum data rate, where the
amount of information transferred from information source to information sink must
be achieved within specific time duration. Consequently efficiency is an important
characteristic of any digital communication system.
Fundamental Limits:
When designing a digital communication system, it is important to understand
the achievable limits when transmitting data under specific operating conditions such
as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or the available bandwidth. Consequently, many
digital communication system designers use the concept of channel capacity to
mathematically determine these achievable limits. The channel capacity was first
derived by Claude Shannon and Ralph Hartley and is given by

where B is the transmission bandwidth, and γ is the SNR. The channel capacity C,
measured in bits per second (b/s), is defined as the maximum data rate a system can
achieve without error, even when the channel is noisy. Hence, Equation is very useful
for the following reasons
1. It provides us with a bound on the achievable data rates given bandwidth B
and signal-to-noise ratio (received SNR). This can be employed in the ratio
where R is the signaling rate and C is the channel capacity. Note that, as η → 1, the
system becomes more efficient.
2. It provides us with a basis for trade-off analysis between B and γ .
3. It can be used for comparing the noise performance of one modulation scheme
versus another. Equation (3.1) provides us with only the achievable data rate limit but
does not tell us how to construct a transceiver to achieve this limit.
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