In this work, we analyze the performance of cognitive amplify-and-forward (AF) relay networks under the spectrum sharing approach. In particular, by assuming that the AF relay operates in the semi-blind mode (fixed-gain), we derive the exact closed-form expressions of the outage probability for the cognitive relaying (no direct link) and cognitive cooperative (with direct link) systems. Simulation results are presented to verify the theoretical analysis.

We derive a closed-form expression for the outage probability (OP), which is an important performance metric used to measure the probability that the target error rate performance of wireless systems exceeds a specified value, of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying systems with best antenna selection under independent, but not necessarily identical distributed Nakagami-m fading. To gain further insights on the performance, the asymptotic approximation for OP, which reveals the diversity gain, is presented. We show that the diversity gain is solely determined by the fading severity parameters and increases with number of antennas at all nodes.