A Comparison of Interference Cartography Generation Techniques in Cognitive Radio Networks

Interference cartographs can be utilized to determine no-transmit zones and to set the interference-free transmit power for secondary users in cognitive radio networks. This paper provides a performance comparison of common interpolation techniques for generating interference cartographs. The performances of natural-neighbor, thin-plate spline and kriging interpolations are evaluated in terms of primary emitter localization accuracy and RF field strength estimation efficiency. The simulation results suggest that the natural-neighbor interpolation technique achieves the same level of accuracy and provides more desirable features suitable for cognitive radio networks.