• ETRI Journal
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.291-301
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• 2016

In this paper, we study an optimized block-diagonal zero-forcing (BD-ZF) precoder in a two-tiered cognitive network consisting of a macro cell (MC) and a small cell (SC). By exploiting multiuser multiple-input and multiple-output Vandermonde-subspace frequency-division multiplexing (VFDM) transmission, a cognitive SC can coexist with an MC. We first devise a cross-tier precoder based on the idea of VFDM to cancel the interference from the SC to the MC. Then, we propose an optimized BD-ZF intra-tier precoder (ITP) to suppress multiuser interference and maximize the throughput in the SC. In the case where the dimension of a provided null space is larger than that required by the BD-ZF ITP, the optimized BD-ZF ITP can collect all limited channel gain by optimizing rotating and selecting matrices. Otherwise, the optimized BD-ZF ITP is validated to be equivalent to the conventional BD-ZF ITP in terms of throughput. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the throughput improvement of the proposed optimized BD-ZF ITP and to discover the impact of imperfect channel state information.