Cognitive Radio Machine Type Communication with Spectrum Aggregation in Cellular Networks

The next generation cellular networks are expected to provide massive connectivity with support for high data-rate applications. Machine type communication (MTC) is one of the emerging technologies envisaged to facilitate large-scale provisioning of diverse services with varying quality of service (QoS) requirements. Spectrum aggregation (SA) is one of the promising techniques to increase capacity for high data rate applications and services. In this paper, cognitive radio (CR) MTC (CR-MTC) framework with spectrum aggregation (SA) in cellular networks is considered. The CR-MTC comprises MTC gateway (MTCG) through which data from MTC devices (MTCDs) is relayed to the base-station (BS). In order to support high data-rates, the MTCG employs SA for concurrent transmissions through multiple channels. Performance of SA over fading wireless channels is therefore presented, based on the developed analytical models for ergodic capacity and outage probability. The presented simulation and analytical results reveal that performance of SA in wireless channels is subject to fading, wherefore it can be deduced that SA is mainly beneficial in high signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio regime.