Interference-aware channel allocation algorithm with game theoretic approach for cognitive radio networks

In cognitive radio networks, the Secondary Users (SUs) are allowed to utilize unused portions of the licensed spectrum to enhance the performance and efficiency of the channel resource in networks. However, with the increasing number of wireless devices and users competence for the limited channel resource, the channel allocation problem has become an important issue in the cognitive radio networks. Moreover, the interference in communication has become an important factor that affects the efficiency of transmission in cognitive radio networks. In this paper, we proposed an algorithm with game theoretic approach to solve the problem of channel allocations in cognitive radio networks, based on interference aware information between communication pairs. By game theory, the channel allocations of SUs are proposed by their perceived utilities associated with possible actions of neighboring users. The effectiveness of the communication links is determined by the bandwidth of the available channels to the SUs and the heterogeneous interference range between the communication links. Our proposed algorithm can achieve Nash Equilibrium convergence in the game theory.

I. Introduction

With the fast growing of wireless devices, spectrum scarcity becomes an important problem for wireless network applications. However, based on the study in [1], there are imbalanced utilization in real application scenarios, such as a large portion of wireless spectrum is underutilized, while other a few portions of spectrum are heavily used. Cognitive Radio (CR) is an efficient technology to solve the scarcity problem by detecting the spectrum hole and allocating the unused channel to Secondary Users (SUs). CR is defined as an intelligent communication system, which periodically scans the radio spectrum, detects the level of occupancy of the spectrum, so that SUs can use the idle channels to communicate. In CR networks, the SUs scan the radio channels to begin with, and later estimate the co-channel interference between neighbors, which is the interference among nodes that share a common channel. Based on these measurements, the SUs choose available channels for the benefit of the network communication. As long as they do not impose harmful interference on licensed users or Primary Users (PUs), the unlicensed users are able to utilize the unused parts of the licensed channel efficiently.