Power Control for Cognitive Radio Base on Game Theory

Wang Xia,
Zhu Qi
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, P.R.China
flylulu3@126.com zhuqi@njupt.edu.cn

Abstract
A new technology to achieve the spectrum efficiency
usage is cognitive radio. This paper we study the power
control of the transmitter in basic cognitive cycle. And game
theory is applied for modeling. Non-cooperative power
control game which is created by D. Goodman is used;
however, we introduce a new sigmoid efficiency function
only related with users SIR. Its advantage is obvious that
regardless of the modulation of users RAT, which is very
suitable for cognitive radio system. Specifically, we also
modify the traditional pricing function with an addition of
path gain. It is proved that the new utility function will bring
an obvious improvement comparing to NPG and NPGP
used in traditional CDMA systems.

capturing the temporal and spatial variations. The

reconfigurability enables the radio to be dynamically
programmed by the radio knowledge representation
language (RKRL) to select the best spectrum and
appropriate operating parameters. Therefore, the cognitive
radio can enhance the flexibility through the cognitive cycle,
which has three main steps: radio-scene analysis, channel
state estimation and predictive modeling, transmit power
control and spectrum management [2]. The cognitive cycle is
pictured in Figure 1.

Keywords: cognitive radio, game theory, power control,

sigmoid efficiency function, pricing function1

1. Introduction
In information times, the increase of wireless equipments
makes the spectrum to be the most essential and important
resources. Now the wireless networks are regulated by a
fixed spectrum assignment policy. However, according to
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a large
portion of the assigned spectrum is used sporadically and
geographicallyso the serious problem is the inefficiency
usage. This restriction of the tradition spectrum policy
necessitates a new technology to exploit the spectrum
available opportunities which is calledcognitive radio [1].

2. Cognitive radio
A cognitive radio is a radio that can change its
transmitter parameters base on interaction with the
environment in which it operates [1-2]. It is characterized by
cognitive capability and reconfigurability. The cognitive
capability refers to the capture and sense of the information
from the radio environment by monitoring the power and
1
This work is belonged to Jiangsu Provincial Science Technology
Project under grant number BG2006039. Its also supported by
Jiangsu University Natural Science Research Fund(05KJB510090),
and China Natural Science Research Fund(60472105).

Figure 1. Basic cognitive cycle

Transmit-power control is necessary for the cognitive

radio system to broaden the scope of its applications and
enhance the performance. It would have to operate under
two limitations on network resources: the interference
temperature limit imposed by regulatory agencies, and the
availability of a limited number of spectrum holes
depending on usage. In a multiuser cognitive radio
environment, all the users operate in a decentralized manner;
they are characterized by cooperation and competition. In
such a case, information theory and game theory could be
applied to exercise control over the transmit power. The
second method is discussed in this paper.

3. Game Theory
Game theory is a branch of mathematical analysis
developed to study decision making in conflict situations [7].
Such a situation exists when two or more decision makers
who have different objectives act on the same system or
share the same resources. It provides a mathematical process

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for selecting an optimum strategy. That is an optimum

decision or a sequence of decisions in the face of an
opponent who has a strategy of his own. In game theory,
each decision maker (called player) has available to him
two or more well-specified choices or sequences of choices
(called actions). And functions are used to define the
profit (called utility function), which is the very one all
the players care about. The purpose of game analysis is to
reach an optimum decision (called Nash Equilibrium)
with an appropriate combination from all the available
plays. Game theory has two main classes including
Cooperative Game and Non-cooperative Game. In this
paper, we use Non-cooperative Game to modeling the
transmit-power control in cognitive radio.
A normal form game also called strategic game can be
formulized by the following:
G = {N , A, ui {a}} .
(1)

N = {1, 2,3,..., i}
is
the
set
of
players,
A = A1 A2 A3 ... Ai is the set of actions, and
Ai = {ai1 , ai 2 , ai 3 ,..., ain } is called strategic space of
every player. For the player i , ui : A R denotes the
utility function. If inequation ui ( ai , ai ) ui (bi , ai ) is
tenable with all bi Ai , the strategic combination a is
Nash Equilibrium of the player i . Supermodular Games is a
class of games with strategic complementarities. It can be
formulized by the inequation:
2

ui ( a )
0, j i N .
ai a j

(2)

4. Power Control with Game Theory

An optimum power control algorithm for wireless voice
systems maximizes the number of conversations that can
simultaneously achieve a certain quality of service (QoS)
objective. Typically, the QoS objective for a voice terminal
is to achieve an acceptable SIR. While in data systems, the
SIR is an important quantity since there is a direct
relationship between the SIR and the probability of
transmission errors. So the SIR could be used in utility
function as an important parameter to express the quality of
the wireless systems.

4.1 NPG in traditional CDMA system

David Goodman used non-cooperative power control
game (NPG) to modeling the CDMA system [3]. Consider a
single-cell system where each user transmits L information
bits in frames (packets) of M > L bits at a rate R b/s,
using p w of power. The utility function for user i can be
expressed as [3]:

E(benefit )

LRf ( i )
.
Mpi

(3)

hi pi
, where G is the gain
j i h j p j + 2

(4)

ui ( pi ) =

E(energy cos t )

is the SIR defined as:

i = G

f ( i ) is called efficiency function. In the case of CDMA

systems that applying non-coherent FSK modulation
schemes,
the
efficiency
function
is
defined
as f ( i ) = (1 2 Pe ) , where Pe is the bit error rate
(BER)
which
could
be
formulized
as Pe = 0.5exp( i 2) . So that the efficiency function
M

yields

the

desirable

properties

f (0) = 0

for

p = 0 and f () = 1 . So the utility function could be

written as [3]:
ui ( pi ) =

LR(1 2 exp( i 2)) M

Mpi

(5)

In NPG (non-cooperative power control game), each user

wants to enlarge his own utility function, which is expressed
as:
( NPG ) max ui ( pi , P i ) , for all i N .
(6)
pi Pi

Where Pi is the strategy space of user i , and the strategy

space of all the users excluding the i th user is denoted
by Pi . The transmit power that optimizes individual utility
depends on transmit powers of all the other terminals in the
system. It is proved [3-4] that NPG has a unique Nash
Equilibrium, which is the optimal operating point.

4.2 NPGP in traditional CDMA system

In the NPG, each terminal aims to maximize its own
utility by adjusting its own power, but it ignores the harm it
imposes on other terminals by the interference it generates.
The self-optimizing behavior of an individual terminal
creates serious degeneration of the quality for every other
terminal in the system. Among the many ways to deal with
the problem, pricing has been used as an effective tool. It
could generate the revenue for the system and encourage all
the players to use system resources more efficiently. An
efficient price will reflect accurately the costs of usage of a
resource and must take into account the nature of the
demand for the offered service. Usage-based pricing is an
approach commonly encountered in the literatures [3-6]. So
the price a terminal pays will be proportional to its transmit
power. That is called non-cooperative power control game
with pricing (NPGP). Utilities for NPGP are [4]:

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= ui ( pi ) sigmoid ci ( pi , P i )

uic ( pi ) = ui ( pi ) ci ( pi , Pi )

(7)
The multi-objective optimization problem that NPGP
solves can be expressed as:

( NPGP) max uic ( pi , Pi ) = ui ( pi ) ci ( pi , Pi ) .

pi Pi

(8)

While in some papers [3-4] the pricing is defined

as ci ( pi , Pi ) = cpi . It is proved [4] that NPGP will bring
higher utilities, and all the users will stably operate on
comparative lower power.

4.3 Power control for cognitive radio

In cognitive radio system, the spectrum assignment policy
is dynamic allocation. Therefore, all the users can operate on
different radio access technology (RAT). We can suppose
that in a single-cell system where each cognitive radio user
transmits L information bits in frames (packets) of
M > L bits at a rate R b/s using p w of power. The
utility function for users can be expressed as (3), and (4) is
also used to define SIR. However, the efficiency function
f ( i ) must be redefined for cognitive system. Take the

Next step is to prove that Nash Equilibrium is existed

in NPGPsigmoid . First, we obtain

uic
LR
f ( i )
(13)
=
( i
f ( i )) hi
2
pi Mpi
i
The second part hi has no relationship with p j , so we can
continue get that

2 uic
2 f ( i ) i
LR i f ( i )
(

=
+
i
pi p j Mpi 2 p j i
i 2 p j

(9)

This sigmoid efficiency function is very close to the

f ( i ) used in traditional CDMA system [3-6][8-11]. It is
only related with users SIR, whose advantage is obvious
that regardless of the modulation of RAT. So we can write
the basic utility function as:

ui ( pi ) sigmoid =

LR
.
Mpi (1 + exp(10 i ))

(10)

Now we begin to consider the pricing in (7). The NPGP in

traditional CDMA system define the pricing function
ci ( pi , Pi ) = cpi , which is easy to calculate. But to
introduce the linear pricing scheme with the same
multiplicative factor c for all the users is not quite
reasonable, because the path gain could also be considered.
Therefore, in this paper we define the pricing function as
this form: ci ( pi , Pi ) = hi pi , where is a constant.
The utility function is changed into:

uic ( pi ) sigmoid =

LR
hi pi . (11)
Mpi (1 + exp(10 i ))

f ( i ) i
2 f ( i ) i
LR
)=

i
i p j
Mpi 2
i 2 p j

(14)

The differential coefficient of i is:

hi p i h j
i
= G
<0
p j
( h j p j + 2 ) 2

(15)

j i

The differential coefficient of f ( i ) are:

f ( i )
exp(10 i )
=
1 + exp(10 i )
i

restriction f (0) = 0 for p = 0 and f () = 1 into

consideration, we use a sigmoid function [6] to instead in
this paper. It is defined as:

1
f ( i ) =
.
1 + exp(10 i )

(12)

And:

(16)

2 f ( i )
2 exp(10 i )
=
0
2
(1 + exp(10 i ))2
i

It is obvious that:

(17)

2 u ic
0 . So we can get the
p i p j

conclusion the NPGP with sigmoid efficiency function in

cognitive radio system is Supermodular Games. Nash
Equilibrium is existed and unique [10].
In this paper, we employ a convergent distributed power
updating algorithm as follow:
1) Set the initial power vector P ( k ) at k = 0 , also
define precision > 0 ;
2) Let k = k + 1 , update the power use the equation:

i = G

hi pi (k )
j i h j p j (k 1) + 2

(18)

and obtain the new power value with

ui
=0
pi (k )
3) For all the user i ,

(19)

pi (k ) pi (k 1) > , return to

step 2 ; otherwise, P ( k ) is the ultimate power values.

The NPGP with sigmoid efficiency function in cognitive

radio system will be defined as:

( NPGPsigmoid ) max uic ( pi , Pi ) sigmoid .

pi Pi

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5. Simulation and discussion of result

The parameters are as follow in a single-cell system:

L = 32 information bits per packet; M = 40 total bits

2
14
per packer; G = 100 processing gain; = 5 10 w
4
receiver noise power; h = 0.097 d
path gain (suppose
same to each user); c = 4000 multiplicative factor for
14
NPGP; = 5 10
multiplicative factor for NPGP
sigmoid; the number of users is N = 6 in both systems,
located at: d = [460, 580, 690,810,920,1080]m from
the base station. We obtain the results as following figures:

their efficiency function, which is not happened in the

method called NPGPsigmoid in this paper.

6. Conclusion
In this paper, we study the power control of transmitter in
cognitive radio system and employ game theory for
modeling. Also non-cooperative power control game created
by D. Goodman is applied for decentralized users; however,
we introduce a new sigmoid efficiency function only related
with users SIR. It is very suitable for cognitive radio system
because of its regardless of the modulation of users RAT.
Specifically, we also modify the traditional pricing function
with an addition of path gain. It is proved through the
figures that the new utility function will bring an obvious
improvement comparing to NPG and NPGP used in
traditional CDMA systems.

7. References

Figure 2. Comparison of transmitter powers

Figure 3. Comparison of utilities

Figure 2 is a picture about the comparison of transmitter

powers, which shows the transmitter-power of each user in
different methods. And Figure 3 compares the value of three
utility functions. From figures hereinbefore, we can easily
get the conclusion that NPGP with sigmoid efficiency
function and new pricing function has obvious improvement.
Not only because its transmitter powers are lower that the
other two, but the utilities are also larger. The traditional
NPG and NPGP only could be used in CDMA system due to

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