Non-cooperative power control and spectrum allocation in cognitive radio networks: a game theoretic perspective

The invention of cognitive radio (CR) concept aims to overcome the spectral scarcity issues of emerging radio systems by exploiting under-utilization of licensed spectrum. Determining how to allocate unused frequency bands among CR is one of the most important problems in CR networks. Because different CRs may have different quality-of-service requirements, they may have different objectives. In voice communication, high-speed transmission is the most important factor; hence, voice radios always try to maximize their transmission rate. However, in data communication, the most important factor is the bit error rate. The data radios always try to maximize their signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). In this paper, two non-cooperative games named interference minimization game and capacity maximization game, which reflect the target of data radios and voice radios, respectively, are proposed. From the simulations, after these games are applied, the average SINRs of all players at each channel are improved. The average SINR of players in each channel after applying the capacity maximization game is smaller than that after applying the interference minimization game. However, in comparison with that after applying the interference minimization game, the average capacity of players after applying capacity maximization approach is larger. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.