  Recently, we proposed a spectrum-sharing paradigm for single-carrier
cognitive radio (CR) networks, where a secondary user (SU) is able to maintain
or even improve the performance of a primary user (PU) transmission, while also
obtaining a low-data rate channel for its own communication. According to such
a scheme, a simple multiplication is used to superimpose one SU symbol on a
block of multiple PU symbols.The scope of this paper is to extend such a
paradigm to a multicarrier CR network, where the PU employs an orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation scheme. To improve its
achievable data rate, besides transmitting over the subcarriers unused by the
PU, the SU is also allowed to transmit multiple block-precoded symbols in
parallel over the OFDM subcarriers used by the primary system. Specifically,
the SU convolves its block-precoded symbols with the received PU data in the
time-domain, which gives rise to the term convolutive superposition. An
information-theoretic analysis of the proposed scheme is developed, which
considers different amounts of network state information at the secondary
transmitter, as well as different precoding strategies for the SU. Extensive
simulations illustrate the merits of our analysis and designs, in comparison
with conventional CR schemes, by considering as performance indicators the
ergodic capacity of the considered systems.
