Multi-User Diversity in a Spectrum Sharing System

We investigate the effects of multi-user diversity in a spectrum sharing system where secondary users restrictively utilize a spectrum licensed to primary users only if interference perceived at primary users is regulated below a predetermined level. This interference regulation affects the characteristics of multiuser diversity gains previously known in non-spectrum sharing systems. Our numerical and analytical results show that the multiuser diversity gain in a spectrum sharing system increases differently according to conditions given by the transmit power of secondary users, P, and a predetermined interference temperature, Q - if P is sufficiently larger than Q, the multiuser diversity gain in terms of capacity scales like log(2) (W (N-s)) similarly to a previously known scaling law in the non-spectrum sharing systems, where W(.) and N-s denote a Lambert W function and the number of secondary transmitters, respectively. However, the scaling law of multiuser diversity gain becomes log(2)(N-s) as P becomes sufficiently larger such that P >> QN(s).