Published in IET Communications

Received on 4th April 2010

Revised on 1st August 2010
doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2010.0262
ISSN 1751-8628
Power allocation in multiple-input multiple-
output orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing-based cognitive radio networks
H.S. Shahraki K. Mohamed-Pour
Department of Electrical Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
E-mail: h_shahrokh_sh@yahoo.com
Abstract: Multi-carrier systems are one of the best candidates for applying in cognitive radio (CR) networks
because of the spectrum shaping and high adaptive capabilities. Since secondary users (SUs) in this structure
use a limited number of sub-carriers because of deactivation of the primary users (PUs) band, the total
capacity of CR networks is limited. On the other hand, multiple transmit antennas can be applied to
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based CR in order to compensate this capacity leakage.
This study aims to investigate multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-OFDM as one of the best hybrid multi-
carrier systems, as a physical layer of CR networks. Considering different conditions to obtain maximum total
capacity of CR networks, an optimal power allocation algorithm is scrutinised. Theoretically, it is shown that
this proposed algorithm can maximise the total capacity and at the same time, keep the caused interference
in PUs bands in a tolerable range. To simplify the algorithm complexity, we also propose a sub-optimal
scheme. The simulation results of the new algorithms are compared with previous methods, which present
the enhancement and efciency of the proposed algorithms. Furthermore, the simulation results show that
our proposed schemes can load more power into the CR users band in order to achieve higher transmission
capacity for a given interference threshold.
1 Introduction
The demand for using the frequency bands is increasing, and
it seems that the xed frequency band assignment method is
not so suitable to support the demands. The limitation in
frequency sources and their improper usage, make the
change of the frequency assignment policy inevitable. One
of the methods that can be used to solve this problem is to
let unused part of the spectrum for secondary users (SUs).
Recently, a cognitive radio (CR) structure has been
introduced and considered intensely for this purpose [1, 2].
The basis of the CR technology involves smartly sensing
the swaths of the spectrum and determining the
transmission characteristics (e.g. symbol rate, power and
bandwidth) of SUs, based on the behaviour of the users to
whom the spectrum has been licensed. This is why that
CR should have the ability to sense and be aware of its
operational environment.
After recognising the unused parts of the spectrum, the
most important duty of CR networks is to determine how
SUs use these spectrum holes. Different strategies have
been proposed for this problem, which is known as
spectrum sharing. These structures, generally and according
to access to spectrum, are divided into underlay spectrum
sharing and overlay spectrum sharing [2].
Underlay systems use wideband, low-power signals and
transmit the signal below the noise oor of the spectrum,
whereas overlay systems utilise the unused portions of the
spectrum by secondary transmission. A comparison
between overlay and underlay spectrum sharing methods
shows that using an underlay spectrum sharing method
causes increase in overall noise temperature and thereby,
the probability of correct detection of primary users (PUs)
decreases [3]. Furthermore, when the interference between
users is high, the overlay spectrum sharing method has
362 IET Commun., 2011, Vol. 5, Iss. 3, pp. 362370
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2011 doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2010.0262
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better performance than the underlay spectrum sharing
method [4]. This is the main reason that we focus our
work on the overlay spectrum sharing methods.
Since active PUs have priority than secondary ones, SUs
transmission must not produce disturbance on PUs
transmission. This has led to two main purposes in an
overlay structure. The rst one is minimising of the caused
interference in PUs transmission and secondly, to exploit
the spectrum holes maximally [5].
Spectrum pooling is one of the best proposed methods to
utilise the spectrum efciently in overlay systems. In this
method, keeping the primary networks unchanged, the SUs
are allowed to use spectrum holes. Generally, each user in a
CR network transmits its measured information to the CR
base station during the detection cycle and this station
plans a general spectrum allocation scheme for
opportunistic usage [6].
Among many possible technologies for SUs transmission
in the spectrum pooling systems, orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) has already been widely
recognised as a highly promising candidate. This is mainly
because of its great exibility in dynamically allocating the
unused spectrum among SUs as well as its ability to
monitor the spectral activities of licensed users at no extra
cost [79]. However, since SUs in this structure use
limited numbers of sub-carriers because of carriers
deactivation on LUs band, the total capacity of CR
networks is limited.
The multiple transmit antennas can be applied to OFDM-
based CR, as this technique may increase the CR network
capacity [10, 11]. The combination of multiple-input
multiple-output (MIMO) and OFDM which is called
MIMO-OFDM has attracted great attention recently. In a
hybrid scheme, MIMO is used to increase the capacity and
diversity gain, whereas OFDM is used to transform
frequency selective channel of MIMO to at fading sub-
channels [12, 13].
In this paper, we investigate the use of MIMOOFDM
structure in CR networks in order to increase the capacity
of CR networks regardless of its diversity aspect. Moreover,
we propose an adaptive power algorithm for this system in
order to achieve maximum capacity of CR systems.
Different approaches for power allocation in MIMO
OFDM structures have been introduced, each of which
have a specic purpose. For instance, the MIMOOFDM
system proposed in [14] fulls the maximum capacity
of a system with total power constrain and a MIMO
OFDM system based on minimum required power in order
to service users with a specic xed rate is designed in
[15, 16]. However, it is shown that present power
allocation algorithms in MIMOOFDM systems do not
have enough efciency in CR networks because of mutual
interference between PU and SU.
The most prior researches on radio resource allocation for
CR networks have been centred on OFDM-based structures,
and single antenna employed at secondary transceivers
[1720]. However, to date, no research has been done on
power allocation for MIMOOFDM-based CR systems
[21].
In this research, the power allocation for MIMO
OFDM-based CR systems is considered. For this regard,
based on the convex optimisation theory, an optimal power
loading prole algorithm is derived in order to allocate
power to each sub-carrier and each antenna that maximise
the capacity of CR networks. This algorithm considers not
only channel state condition but also total interference
limitation. Also, to simplify the algorithm complexity, we
introduce a sub-optimal scheme.
Specically, we show that our proposed schemes can load
more power into the CR user band in order to achieve higher
transmission capacity for a given interference threshold as
specied by the PUs network.
The simulation results show that the optimal proposed
algorithm is more efcient than traditional power allocation
algorithms in CR networks. Also, it will be shown that the
proposed sub-optimal algorithm achieves performance very
close to the optimal algorithm.
The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 describes the
considered system and investigates present conditions and
limitations to reach its maximum capacity. The optimal
power allocation prole is investigated and the main
scheme is obtained theoretically in Section 3. In Section 4,
we propose a sub-optimal power allocation algorithm, and
power allocation algorithms in conventional MIMO
OFDM systems are considered in Section 5. Section 6
compares the performance of the new algorithm with
previous methods in the considered system and nally, the
conclusions are drawn in Section 7.
2 System description
Let us consider a one-cell wireless system, in which the PU
and SU transceivers coexist in the same geographical
location. The scenario is investigated for downlink path
and for a CR user. PUs base station transmits signals to N
PUs, each of which occupies a determined frequency band
in the available spectrum. A CR network has an individual
base station that identies the spectrum holes after
collecting information about spectrum; then inactivates
PUs sub-carriers and transmits its users information by
the remained sub-carriers (Fig. 1).
As mentioned, a CR network uses the MIMOOFDM
structure for its transmission because of its capability in
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applying in a spectrum pooling structure and also of its ability
to solve the CR networks capacity limitation problem.
It is assumed that the perfect channel state information
(CSI) is available at the SUs receiver side after channel
estimation, and a signalling channel is used to feedback the
CSI to the corresponding transmitter. The perfect channel
state between the SU and a specied PU is also available by
sensing the channel or searching in a pre-established
database.
Suppose that the CR base station and the CR user have N
T
and N
R
antennas, respectively. The SU MIMO channel for
ith sub-carrier is denoted by an N M matrix H
i
where its
element h
i,n,m
denotes the channel gain for the channel
between the mth transmit and the nth receive antenna. The
channel gain between the SU transmitter and the lth PU
receiver for the ith sub-carrier is denoted by a 1 M
matrix, where g
i,l,m
denote the channel gain for the channel
between the SUs mth transmit antenna and the lth PU
receiver antenna.
Since we assumed that the transmitter has the perfect CSI,
each sub-carrier channel can be decomposed into parallel
independent sub-channels by singular value decomposition
(SVD) [22]. This means that
H
i
= U
i
L
i
V

i
(1)
where U
i
[ C
N
R
N
R
and V
i
[ C
N
T
N
T
are unitary matrices
and L
i
[ C
N
R
N
T
is a rectangular matrix whose diagonal
elements are non-negative real numbers.
The diagonal elements l
1
l
2
l
n
min
are the
ordered singular values of the matrix H
i
, where
n
min
= min(N
R
, N
T
).
Fig. 2 shows how the MIMOOFDM channel
decomposes into independent sub-channels with SVD and
pre-processing and post-processing matrices. These sub-
channels are characterised by the channel gains, which are
the singular values of the MIMO channel matrix on each
sub-carrier.
By multiplexing independent data onto these independent
channels, the capacity of ith sub-carrier can be obtained by
C
i
=

n
min
i=1
log
2
1 +
p
ij
l
2
ij
N
0
_ _
bit/s/Hz (2)
where N
0
is the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN)
variance and p
ij
denotes the transmit power at the jth
antennas of the ith sub-carrier. In an adaptive structure, to
achieve maximum capacity, power of the transmitted
symbol on each of the parallel sub-channels is allocated
optimally.
2.1 Interference limitation on PUs bands
As the consequence of having two coexisting networks, the
signals from secondary base station, which are intended for
its own serviced users, might interfere the reception at the
PUs receivers.
Assume that the transmit signal on the jth antenna of the
ith sub-carrier is a rectangular non-return-to-zero signal. The
power spectral density of this signal can be modelled as [23]
F
SS
( f ) = P
ij
sin p f T
S
pf T
S
_ _
2
(3)
where P
ij
is the total transmit power on the jth antenna of the
ith sub-carrier and T
S
is the symbol duration. The resulting
interference power spilling into the PU band is given by
I
ij
(d
i
, P
ij
) = |g
l
ij
|
2
P
ij
T
S
_
d
il
+B
1
/2
d
il
B
1
/2
sin pf T
S
pf T
S
_ _
2
df (4)
where g
l
ij
denotes the channel gain from the CR base station
to the lth PU sub-carrier for the jth antenna of the ith sub-
carrier. d
il
represents the frequency distance between the
ith sub-carrier of the CR user band and the lth PUs sub-
carrier and B
l
represents each sub-carriers bandwidth.
Figure 1 Coexistence of primary and secondary networks in
CR
Figure 2 Converting the MIMO channel into parallel
channels by SVD
364 IET Commun., 2011, Vol. 5, Iss. 3, pp. 362370
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2011 doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2010.0262
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In addition, the coexistence of PUs and SUs may cause
interference induced by the signals from primary base
station, which are destined to PUs, onto SUs frequency
bands. Nevertheless, we do not consider PUs transmitters
in our analysis as we are concerned about the power
loading at CR transmitters and interference from CR
transmitters to PUs receivers only.
It is obvious from (4) that caused interference on PUs
bands depends on power of CR sub-carriers, in addition to,
distances between CR sub-carriers and primary bands.
A considerable amount of work has been concentrated on
power allocation for downlink MIMOOFDM-based
systems, previously. However, in CR networks, because of
mutual interferences between CR and primary networks,
these proposed power allocation methods are not suitable.
Thus, it is necessary that new and effective power allocation
algorithms be studied in order to maximise the capacity of
CR networks in which not only channel state condition but
also total interference limitation is considered.
3 Optimal power allocation
As we discussed in the previous section, our purpose is to
introduce a new power allocation algorithm that maximises
the total capacity of CR systems provided caused
interferences into the PUs bands do not exceed from a
certain level. This problem can be dened as an
optimisation problem as follows
max C =

N
i=1

n
min
j=1
log
2
1 +
p
ij
l
2
ij
N
0
_ _
(5)
subject to

L
l =1

N
i=1

n
min
j=1
I
l
ij
(d
i,l
, p
i, j
) I th
p
i,j
0
i = 1, 2, . . . , N and j = 1, 2, . . . , n
min
In (5), C denotes the total capacity of a CR user and
Ith indicates the maximum tolerable interference by
sub-carriers of PUs introduced by SUs transmission. The
number of these sub-carriers is L and the interference
is obtained by (4). Other variables have the same denition
as (4).
This problem can be reformulated into a standard
optimisation problem and solved using standard convex
optimisation techniques [24]. Let us introduce the
non-negative Lagrange multipliers c and m
ij
. Using
KarushKuhnTucker (KKT) conditions, (5) can be
written as
1
((N
0
/l
2
ij
) +p

ij
)
+m
ij
c

L
l =1
I
l
ij
p

ij
= 0 (6a)
i = 1, 2, . . . , N and j = 1, 2, . . . , n
min

L
l =1

N
j=1

n
min
j=1
I
l
ij
(d
i,1
, p
i,;j
) I th (6b)
c . 0 (6c)
m
ij
0 (6d)
p

ij
0 (6e)
m
ij
p

ij
= 0 (6f )
i = 1, 2, . . . , N and j = 1, 2, . . . , n
min
By eliminating m
ij
, the above equation can be written as

ij
((N
0
/l
2
ij
) +p

ij
)
+cp

ij

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
= 0 (7a)
i = 1, 2, . . . , N and j = 1, 2, . . . , n
min
1
((N
0
/l
2
ij
) +p

ij
)

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
c (7b)
i = 1, 2, . . . , N and j = 1, 2, . . . , n
min

L
l =1

N
j=1

n
min
j=1
I
l
ij
(d
i,1
, p
i,;j
) I th (7c)
p

ij
0 (7d)
i = 1, 2, . . . , N and j = 1, 2, . . . , n
min
where K
(l )
ij
= I
l
ij
/p

ij
.
The following cases are considered to solve the problem:
Case 1: If
c ,
1
((N
0
/l
2
ij
))

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
then (7b) implies that p

ij
. 0.
Since

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
. 0, (7a) leads to
c =
1
((N
0
/l
2
ij
) +p

ij
)

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
and
p

ij
=
1
l

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij

N
0
l
2
ij
(8)
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doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2010.0262 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2011
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Case 2: If
c
1
((N
0
/l
2
ij
))

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
and if p

ij
. 0
then
c .
1
((N
0
/l
2
ij
+p

ij
))

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
(9a)
Also we rewrite another form of (7a) as
p

ij

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
c
1
((N
0
/l
2
ij
) +p

ij
)

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
_ _
= 0 (9b)
Thus, (9a) and (9b) imply that
p

ij
= 0
Therefore the considered cases indeed the optimal power
prole as
p

ij
= max 0,
1
c

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
_ _

N
0
l
2
ij
_ _ _ _
(10a)

L
l =1

N
i=1

n
min
j=1
K
(l )
ij
max 0,
1
c

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij

N
0
l
2
ij
_ _
= I th
(10b)
It is important to mention that, in (10b) we replace
the inequality condition with equality. This is why that the
both sides of (10b) are positive and the maximum of
the left-hand side achieved when the right-hand side is
maximum. Also, mention that the power allocation
algorithm in (10a) is simply a water-lling method with
power cap of each allocation. The water level of the jth
antenna of the ith sub-carrier is (1/c

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
) in which
the threshold is weighted by the interference term

L
l =1
K
(l )
ij
of this branch.
Hence, by using the above scheme, the optimal power
allocation policy is obtained that maximises the
transmission capacity of CR users while keeping the
interference introduced to the PUs below the specic
threshold.
4 Suboptimal power allocation
The complexity of the optimal power prole that was
obtained in the previous section may be quite high,
especially when the number of the antennas is high, since
several iterations may be required in nding the value of c
from (10b). Therefore it is highly interested to propose the
sub-optimal power loading prole.
To do this and simplify the problem, we rst divide the (5)
into two sections and by solving these separately; a total sub-
optimal solution is obtained. The rst problem determines
the sub-carriers power and by using the result of the rst
part, the power of each antenna is determined at the
second problem. To do this, we should follow two stages.
Stage 1: sub-carriers power allocation: In this stage, according
to interference constrain, the power allocated to each sub-
carrier is determined by solving the following optimisation
problem
max C =

N
i=1
log
2
(1 +( p
i
l
2
i
/N
0
)) (11)
subject to

L
l =1

N
i=1
I
l
i
(d
i,l
, p
i
) I th
and p
i
0 i = 1, 2, . . . , N
In (4), I
l
i
(d
i,l
, p
i
) = |g
l
i
|
2
P
i
T
S
_
d
il
+B/2
d
il
B/2
( sinpfT
S
/pfT
S
)
2
df ,
where P
i
is the total transmit power, which can be assigned to
the ith sub-carrier according to total interference constrain
and d
il
represents the frequency distance between the ith
sub-carrier of CR user band and the lth PUs. l
i
is dened
as Frobenius norm H
i

F
of the channel matrix of the ith
sub-carrier and |g
l
i
| is dened as g
i,l

F
/( min{N
R
, N
T
). In
fact, the total power of a sub-carrier is assumed as the sum
of all MIMO paths on that sub-carrier, which is a
reasonable assumption.
By these assumptions, the optimisation problem of (11)
reduces to the particular case of the optimisation problem
of (5) and so can be solved in the similar manner. Solving
this problem leads to the following algorithm determining
the maximum power that can be allocated to each sub-carrier
P

i
= max 0,
1
c

L
l =1
K
l
i

N
0
l
2
i
_ _
(12)
where
K
l
i
= T
S
_
d
il
+Bl /2
d
il
Bl /2
sin pf T
S
pf T
S
_ _
2
df (13)
and c is the Lagrange multiplier which can be obtained from

L
l =1

N
i=1
K
l
i
max 0,
1
c

L
l =1
K
l
i

N
0
l
2
i
_ _
= I th (14)
Stage 2: antennas power allocation: In this stage, by maximum
power that has been allocated in stage 1 for each sub-carrier,
the power of each MIMO antennas is allocated in the way
that the capacity of each sub-carrier maximised and as a
result, the total capacity maximised. To do this, the
following optimisation problem should be solved for each
366 IET Commun., 2011, Vol. 5, Iss. 3, pp. 362370
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2011 doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2010.0262
www.ietdl.org
sub-carrier
max C =

n
min
l =1
log
2
1 +
p
ij
l
2
ij
N
0
_ _
(15)
subject to

j
p
ij
= P

i
In [22], it has been shown that the above problem has the
following water-lling solution
p

ij
= max 0, m
N
0
l
2
ij
_ _
(16)
where m is Lagranges indicator and is valued to meet

j
p
ij
= P

i
constraint.
Consequently, by performing these two stages, power of
each antenna of each sub-carrier is determined, which has
two major traits: rstly, the total system capacity is
maximised, and secondly, the interference is kept in a
tolerable range.
In order to draw a comparison between the complexity of
the optimal power allocation algorithm that was introduced
in the last section and that of the sub-optimal algorithm
suggested by the present section, it should be noted that
both of these algorithms use the water-lling structure but
in different shapes. The water-lling algorithm has in
general a complexity of O(N log N), where N is the
number of branches for which the algorithm is iterated so
that the optimal power of any branch can be nally
determined. In the optimal power allocation introduced by
(10a) and (10b), if the number of secondary sub-carriers is
N and the mean number of n
min
is considered as M, the
water-lling algorithm must be iterated for NM branches
by any time of program implementation. Therefore this
algorithm has a complexity of O(NM log(NM)). By the
rst step of the sub-optimal algorithm, a complexity of
O(N log N) exists because in this step only the power of
sub-carriers is determined. By the second step, water-lling
algorithm is implemented on each sub-carrier in order that
the power of any antenna can be determined. So, this step
has a complexity of NO(M log M). Through considering
the typical values for the number of CR sub-carriers and
the number of antennas of a system, it is clear that the sub-
optimal algorithm has more complexity than the optimal
algorithm, especially when the number of transmitter
antennas has a large value.
5 Traditional power loading
schemes in a MIMO-OFDM structure
In this section, two most popular power allocation algorithms
in conventional MIMO-OFDM systems are considered. In
both of these algorithms, the goal is maximising the total
capacity of the system according to total power constrain in
transmitters. In order to make a fair performance
comparison among these algorithms with the new proposed
algorithms, all schemes should maintain a given
interference threshold. Then it would be interesting to
observe which scheme offers a higher transmission rate for
the CR user. Therefore at rst we determine the maximum
power which can be transmitted for a given interference
threshold. The maximum power is derived as follows
P
i
=
I th

N
i=1

L
l =1
K
(l )
i
P
total
=

N
i=1
P
i
(17)
By determining the total power of the transmitter, power
allocation is done by the following methods:
5.1 Water-lling algorithm
This method maximises the total capacity of a CR user under
the total power constrain. The method is again based on
using SVD. Using SVD on each OFDM sub-carrier, the
MIMO-OFDM channel is decomposed into parallel,
independent sub-channels. Therefore in order to obtain the
optimal power prole, the following optimisation problem
should be solved
max C =

N
i=1

n
min
j=1
log
2
1 +
p
ij
l
2
ij
N
0
_ _
subject to
(18)

N
i=1

n
min
j=1
p
i, j
P
total
p
i,j
0
i = 1, 2, . . . , N and j = 1, 2, . . . , n
min
It has been shown that the above problem has the following
water-lling solution [22]
p

i, j
= max 0, m
N
0
l
2
ij
_ _
(19)
where m is Lagranges indicator and can be computed as

N
i=1

n
min
j=1
max 0, m
N
0
l
2
ij
_ _
= P
total
(20)
5.2 Uniform water-lling algorithm
This method is a sub-optimal solution for the problem (18).
In this method, the total transmits power, which is obtained
in (17), is allocated equally among all the sub-carriers. In the
IET Commun., 2011, Vol. 5, Iss. 3, pp. 362370 367
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next stage, power of each MIMO antenna is allocated in the
way that the capacities of each sub-carrier maximise. In order
to achieve this task, the water-lling algorithm that was
introduced in stage 2 in the previous section is used and
therefore power of each antenna is determined.
6 Simulation results
In this section, the proposed power allocation methods are
evaluated in CR networks by computer simulations,
comparing with previous methods.
The simulations are performed for a MIMO-OFDM-
based CR network under the scenario given in Fig. 1.
Total spectrum band is divided into sub-channels equal to
1 MHz frequency bands and each of these sub-channels is
allocated to an OFDM sub-carrier. It is assumed that the
frequency bands, occupied by the PUs, are known in the
CR base station and active sub-carriers have been
determined similar to Fig. 3. Both the CR base station and
the CR user can have different number of antennas.
Consider that there are 32 sub-carriers; that 16 of them are
used by PUs and the rest of them are used by the CR network
in three equal bands as shown in Fig. 3.We use values for T
S
and B
l
of 1 ms and 1 MHz, respectively. AWGN of variance
10
23
is assumed and channel gains h and g are assumed to be
Rayleigh fading with an average power gain of 1 dB. Each
simulation was run 1000 times and shown that values are
the average of these results.
Fig. 4 displays the total capacity of a CR system against
caused interference on PUs for the optimal, sub-optimal
and water-lling methods. In the MIMOOFDM
structure, four transmitter antennas in the base station and
four antennas in the user receiver (4 4) are considered.
As we see in this gure, the optimal power allocation
scheme outperforms other algorithms. In other words, in
this algorithm with a specic capacity, the interference
introduced to PUs bands is lower. The proposed sub-
optimal methods performance is close to the optimal
algorithm and is clearly better than that achieved by the
classical water-lling power loading. It is due to the fact
that the sub-optimal algorithm is directly derived from the
optimality conditions but the classical method did not
consider interference constraint.
Fig. 5, compares the sum capacities of these algorithms
when there are two transmitter antennas in the base station
and two antennas in the user receiver (2 2). Comparing
the results of Figs. 4 and 5 shows that the total capacity of
the system increases by increasing the number of antennas
in all cases. Furthermore, as we expect, the performance of
our sub-optimal algorithm approaches to the optimal
algorithms performance by decreasing the number of
antennas.
It should be noted that for the simulations of the optimal
power allocation algorithm, the number of iterations, which
are necessary for any symbol are dependent on the channel
conditions, the number of sub-carriers, the number of
transceivers antennas and the threshold level of the
tolerable interference onto PUs bands. For example, in the
scenario of Fig. 4, for the threshold level of 0.001,
the number of iterations required for any symbol is in
average about 30 times and for the threshold level of 0.01
it is about 15 times.
Figure 3 Distribution of available spectrum to PUs and SUs
Figure 4 Maximum capacity of a CR user against interference introduced to the PUs band for a 4 4 CR system
368 IET Commun., 2011, Vol. 5, Iss. 3, pp. 362370
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2011 doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2010.0262
www.ietdl.org
Fig. 6 shows the transmit power of the CR user against the
interference introduced to the PU band for different
algorithms for a 4 4 CR system. This gure
demonstrates that the optimal scheme allows transmission
of higher power than the other schemes for a given
interference threshold. This is because channel gains
between the transmit antennas and PUs are varying and the
allocation schemes proposed in this paper assign more
power to those antennas which produces less instantaneous
interference to PUs band.
7 Conclusion
In this paper, we investigated power loading scheme for CR
networks, employing the MIMOOFDM structure. It has
been shown analytically that the conventional power
loading algorithm cannot be used in CR networks. Then,
we proposed an optimal power allocation policy and new
algorithm that maximise the transmission capacity of CR
users; meanwhile the interference introduced to the PUs
remained below the specic threshold. Furthermore, we
proposed a sub-optimal power loading prole, which has
less complexity for practical implementation. The
simulation results are evaluated for the performance of the
new power loading algorithms and then are compared with
previous ones. It has been shown that the new algorithms
are more efcient and suitable to apply in CR networks.
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Figure 5 Maximum capacity of a CR user against interference introduced to the PUs band for a 2 2 CR system
Figure 6 CR transmit power against interference introduced to the PUs band for a 4 4 CR system
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