IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO.
9, SEPTEMBER 2009
Cognitive Radio Spectrum Allocation using Evolutionary Algorithms
Zhijin Zhao, Zhen Peng, Shilian Zheng, and Junna Shang
Abstract—Cognitive radio has been regarded as a promis-
ing technology to improve spectrum utilization significantly. In
this letter, spectrum allocation model is presented firstly, and
then spectrum allocation methods based on genetic algorithm
(GA), quantum genetic algorithm (QGA), and particle swarm
optimization (PSO), are proposed. To decrease the search space
we propose a mapping process between the channel assignment
matrix and the chromosome of GA, QGA, and the position of
the particle of PSO, respectively, based on the characteristics of
the channel availability matrix and the interference constraints.
Results show that our proposed methods greatly outperform the
commonly used color sensitive graph coloring algorithm.
Index Terms—Cognitive radio, spectrum allocation, genetic
algorithms, quantum genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimiza-
tion.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE spectrum of the wireless networks is generally regu-
lated by governments via a fixed spectrum assignment
policy. However, in recent years, the demand for wireless
spectrum use has been growing dramatically with the rapid
development of the telecommunication industry, which has
caused scarcity in the available spectrum bands. Furthermore,
the underutilization of the licensed spectrum bands makes
the situation even worse [1]. In order to fully utilize the
scarce spectrum resources, dynamic spectrum access becomes
a promising approach to improve the efficiency of spectrum
usage. This new networking paradigm is also referred to as
NeXt Generation networks as well as cognitive radio networks
[2].
Cognitive radios have the ability to sense, to learn, and
to adapt to the outside world [3]. Based on their interac-
tion with the environment, cognitive radios enable the users
to communicate over the most appropriate spectrum bands
through four main functionalities: spectrum sensing, spectrum
management, spectrum mobility, and spectrum sharing [2].
This paper focuses on how to share the available spectrum
bands which are detected unoccupied by primary users among
the coexisting cognitive radios (secondary users).
There exist a lot of research efforts on the problem of
spectrum sharing in cognitive radios. Based on centralized
or distributed architecture, cooperative or non-cooperative
spectrum allocation behavior, overlay or underlay spectrum
access technique [2], lots of methods have been proposed
Manuscript received July 17, 2008; revised December 1, 2008; accepted
December 21, 2008. The associate editor coordinating the review of this letter
and approving it for publication was T. Hou.
Z. Zhao, Z. Peng, and J. Shang are with Hangzhou Dianzi Uni-
versity, Hangzhou, China (e-mail: zhaozj03@hdu.edu.cn, {ipengzhen,
shangjn}@163.com).
S. Zheng is with JiangNan Electronic Communication Research Institute,
Jiaxing, China (e-mail: lianshizheng@126.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2009.080939
1536-1276/09$25.00 ⃝
c 2009 IEEE
4421
for dynamic spectrum access, including game theory [4],
pricing and auction mechanisms [5]-[6], local bargaining [7],
and graph coloring [8]-[9]. Assuming that the environmental
conditions are static during the time it takes to perform
spectrum assignment, an allocation model is proposed in
[9], and color sensitive graph coloring (CSGC) is used to
solve the allocation problem. As the allocation model can
be inherently seen as an optimization problem, we propose
to use evolutionary algorithms for cognitive radio spectrum
allocation in this paper.
Evolutionary algorithms are stochastic search methods that
mimic natural evolution and/or the social behavior of species.
The first evolutionary-based technique introduced in the lit-
erature was genetic algorithms (GAs) [10]. Quantum genetic
algorithm (QGA) [11] combines quantum computation and
genetic algorithm, while particle swarm optimization (PSO)
[12] is inspired by the social behavior of a flock of birds trying
to find their destination during migration. Although other
evolutionary algorithms have been proposed in the literature,
we focus on these three typical algorithms in our study.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section
II, cognitive radio spectrum allocation algorithms based on
evolutionary algorithms are presented in detail. Simulation
results and discussions are provided in Section III, and finally,
Section IV concludes this paper.
II. S PECTRUM A LLOCATION BASED ON E VOLUTIONARY
A LGORITHMS
A. Spectrum allocation model
The general spectrum allocation model presented in [9]
consists of channel availability matrix, channel reward matrix,
interference constraint matrix and conflict free channel assign-
ment matrix. Assume a network of 𝑁 secondary users indexed
from 1 to 𝑁 competing for 𝑀 spectrum channels indexed from
1 to 𝑀 which are non-overlapping orthogonal.
The channel availability matrix 𝐿 = {𝑙𝑛,𝑚 ∣𝑙𝑛,𝑚 ∈
{0, 1}}𝑁 ×𝑀 is an 𝑁 by 𝑀 binary matrix representing the
channel availability, where 𝑙𝑛,𝑚 = 1 if and only if channel 𝑚
is available to user 𝑛, and 𝑙𝑛,𝑚 = 0 otherwise. The channel
reward matrix 𝐵 = {𝑏𝑛,𝑚 }𝑁 ×𝑀 is an 𝑁 by 𝑀 matrix
representing the channel reward, where 𝑏𝑛,𝑚 represents the
reward that can be obtained by user 𝑛 using channel 𝑚. As two
or more secondary users may use the same channel at the same
time, they may interfere with one another. The interference
constraint matrix 𝐶 = {𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 ∣𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 ∈ {0, 1}}𝑁 ×𝑁 ×𝑀 is an
𝑁 by 𝑁 by 𝑀 matrix representing the interference constraint
among secondary users, where 𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 = 1 if users 𝑛 and
𝑘 would interfere with each other if they use channel 𝑚
simultaneously and 𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 = 0 otherwise. In particular,
𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 = 1 − 𝑙𝑛,𝑚 if 𝑛 = 𝑘.
4422
1 0 1 0 0 1
0 0 0 1 1 0
L= 0 1 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 1 0 0
1 0 0 0 0 0
Fig. 1. The structure of an example chromosome.
In real applications, the spectrum environment varies slowly
while users quickly perform network-wide spectrum alloca-
tion. We assume that the location, available spectrum, etc. are
static during the spectrum allocation, thus 𝐿, 𝐵, and 𝐶 are
constant in an allocation period.
The conflict free channel assignment matrix 𝐴 =
{𝑎𝑛,𝑚 ∣𝑎𝑛,𝑚 ∈ {0, 1}}𝑁 ×𝑀 represents the channel assign-
ment, where 𝑎𝑛,𝑚 = 1 if channel 𝑚 is allocated to secondary
user 𝑛, and 𝑎𝑛,𝑚 = 0 otherwise. 𝐴 must satisfy the interfer-
ence constraints defined by 𝐶:
𝑎𝑛,𝑚 ⋅ 𝑎𝑛,𝑘 = 0, 𝑖𝑓 𝑐𝑛,𝑚 = 1, ∀1 ≤ 𝑛, 𝑘 ≤ 𝑁, 1 ≤ 𝑚 ≤ 𝑀.
(1)
Given a conflict free channel assignment, the reward user 𝑛
∑𝑀
gets is defined as 𝑟𝑛 = 𝑎𝑛,𝑚 ⋅ 𝑏𝑛,𝑚 . We use 𝑅 = {𝑟𝑛 =
𝑚=1
∑
𝑀 column of 𝐴 are equal to 1; if so, randomly set one of them
𝑎𝑛,𝑚 ⋅ 𝑏𝑛,𝑚 }𝑁 ×1 to represent the reward vector that each
𝑚=1
user gets for a given channel assignment. Let Λ𝐿,𝐶 be the set
of conflict free channel assignment for a given 𝐿 and 𝐶. The
spectrum allocation is to maximize network utilization 𝑈 (𝑅).
Given the model above, the spectrum allocation problem can
be defined as the following optimization problem [9]:
𝐴∗ = argmax 𝑈 (𝑅),
𝐴∈Λ𝐿,𝐶
where 𝐴∗ is the optimal conflict free channel assignment
matrix. In this paper, we consider three objective functions
∑
𝑁 set the length of the chromosome as
as in [9]: (1) Max-Sum-Reward (MSR): 𝑈 (𝑅) = 𝑟𝑛 , (2)
𝑛=1
Max-Min-Reward (MMR): 𝑈 (𝑅) = min 𝑟𝑛 , and (3) Max-
1≤𝑛≤𝑁
∏
𝑁 1
Proportional-Fair (MPF): 𝑈 (𝑅) = ( (𝑟𝑛 + 10−6 )) 𝑁 .
𝑛=1
B. Spectrum allocation based on genetic algorithm
GAs are rooted in the mechanisms of evolution and natural
genetics. A solution to a given problem is represented in the
form of a string called ‘chromosome’, consisting of ‘genes’
which hold a set of values for the optimization variables [13].
In the proposed GA-based spectrum allocation, a chromosome
specifies a possible conflict free channel assignment. As
𝑎𝑛,𝑚 = 0 when 𝑙𝑛,𝑚 = 0, if we use one bit to encode
every element in 𝐴, there will be a lot of redundancy in the
chromosome. So we propose to encode only those elements
which may take the value 1, i.e., 𝑎𝑛,𝑚 where (𝑛, 𝑚) satisfies
𝑙𝑛,𝑚 = 1. As a consequence, the length of the binary string is
equal to the number of elements equal to 1 in 𝐿, and the search
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2009
1 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 1 0
A= 0 0 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 0 0 0 0
space is greatly decreased. Fig. 1 illustrates the structure of
an example chromosome, where 𝑁 = 5, and 𝑀 = 6. Note
that encoding all the elements needs 30 bits, while encoding
only the elements with underline only needs 9 bits. In order
to evaluate the fitness of the chromosome, we need to map the
chromosome to the channel assignment matrix, as the arrows
show in Fig. 1.
The value of every bit in the chromosome is randomly
generated at the initial population and determined by crossover
and mutation in the evolution process, thus it may not satisfy
the interference constraints defined by 𝐶. We propose the
following process to ensure that the chromosome satisfies the
interference constraints: (1) for all 𝑚 (1 ≤ 𝑚 ≤ 𝑀 ), search
all (𝑛, 𝑘) that satisfies 𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 = 1, and (2) check whether both
of the two bits corresponding to the element in the 𝑛th line
and 𝑚th column of 𝐴 and the element in the 𝑘th line and 𝑚th
to 0.
The direction of GA search is determined by the fitness
of the individuals in the population. The objective function
provides the mechanism for evaluating each chromosome. We
directly use the objective function as the fitness function: 𝑓 =
𝑈 (𝑅).
The proposed GA-based spectrum allocation algorithm
(2) (GA-SAA) proceeds as follows:
Step 1: given 𝐿 = {𝑙𝑛,𝑚 ∣𝑙𝑛,𝑚 ∈ {0, 1}}𝑁 ×𝑀 , 𝐵 =
{𝑏𝑛,𝑚 }𝑁 ×𝑀 , and 𝐶 = {𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 ∣𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 ∈ {0, 1}}𝑁 ×𝑁 ×𝑀 ,
∑𝑁 ∑ 𝑀
𝑙𝑛,𝑚 , and set
𝑛=1 𝑚=1
𝐿1 = {(𝑛, 𝑚)∣𝑙𝑛,𝑚 = 1} such that elements in 𝐿1 are
arranged increasingly in 𝑛 and 𝑚.
Step 2: randomly generate an initial population based on
binary coding mechanism.
Step 3: for all chromosomes, map the 𝑗th bit of the
chromosome to 𝑎𝑛,𝑚 , where (𝑛, 𝑚) is the 𝑗th element in 𝐿1
∑
𝑁 ∑ 𝑀
and 1 ≤ 𝑗 ≤ 𝑙𝑛,𝑚 . For all 𝑚, search all (𝑛, 𝑘) that
𝑛=1 𝑚=1
satisfies 𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 = 1, and check whether both of the two bits
corresponding to the element in the 𝑛th line and 𝑚th column
of 𝐴 and the element in the 𝑘th line and 𝑚th column of 𝐴
are equal to 1; if so, randomly set one of them to 0.
Step 4: compute the fitness of each individual of the current
population.
Step 5: carry out roulette wheel selection scheme, two-point
crossover scheme and the mutation operation.
Step 6: if it reaches the predefined maximum generation,
stop; if not, go to step 3.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2009
C. Spectrum allocation based on quantum genetic algorithm
QGA uses qubits to represent a chromosome. The 𝑖th
chromosome with 𝑙-qubit at the 𝑔th generation, 𝑞𝑖𝑔 , can be
represented as [14]:
[ 𝑔  𝑔   ]
𝑔 𝛼𝑖1  𝛼𝑖2  . . .  𝛼𝑔𝑖𝑙
𝑞𝑖 = 𝑔  𝑔  , (3)
𝛽𝑖1 𝛽𝑖2 . . .  𝛽𝑖𝑙𝑔
2
where 𝛼𝑔𝑖𝑗 𝑔
𝛽𝑖𝑗
and ∣𝛼𝑔𝑖𝑗 ∣
must satisfy 𝑔 2
+
∣𝛽𝑖𝑗 ∣ = 1, 𝑖 =
1, 2, . . . , 𝑃 , 𝑗 = 1, 2, . . . , 𝑙, where 𝑃 denotes the population
size. The population of QGA can be denoted as√ 𝑄(𝑔) =
{𝑞1𝑔 , 𝑞2𝑔 , . . . , 𝑞𝑃𝑔 }. 𝛼0𝑖𝑗 and 𝛽𝑖𝑗
0
are initialized to 1/ 2 on the
initial population.
The observed binary string of a chromosome in QGA plays
the same role as the binary encoded chromosome in GA such
that the observed state of a chromosome specifies a possible
solution of the optimization problem. We use the same process
as in GA-SAA to ensure that the observed binary string
satisfies the interference constraints. As in GA, we directly
use 𝑈 (𝑅) as the fitness function in QGA. The proposed QGA-
based spectrum allocation algorithm (QGA-SAA) proceeds as
follows:
Step 1: given 𝐿, 𝐵, and 𝐶, set 𝐿1 the same as that in step
1 of GA-SAA, set population size 𝑃 , set the number of qubits
∑
𝑁 ∑ 𝑀
in the chromosome as 𝑙 = 𝑙𝑛,𝑚 .
𝑛=1 𝑚=1
Step 2: set 𝑔 = 0, initialize 𝑄(𝑔) = {𝑞1𝑔 , 𝑞2𝑔 , . . . , 𝑞𝑃𝑔 }, and
observe every chromosome in 𝑄(𝑔) to obtain a set of states
(binary strings) 𝑃 (𝑔) = {𝑝𝑔1 , 𝑝𝑔2 , . . . , 𝑝𝑔𝑃 }.
Step 3: map the 𝑗th (𝑗 = 1, 2, . . . , 𝑙) bit of 𝑝𝑔𝑖 (𝑖 =
1, 2, . . . , 𝑃 ) to 𝑎𝑛,𝑚 , where (𝑛, 𝑚) is the 𝑗th element in 𝐿1 .
For all 𝑚, search all (𝑛, 𝑘) that satisfies 𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 = 1, and check
whether both of the two bits corresponding to the element in
the 𝑛th line and 𝑚th column of 𝐴 and the element in the 𝑘th
line and 𝑚th column of 𝐴 are equal to 1; if so, randomly set
one of them to 0.
Step 4: compute the fitness values of 𝑃 (𝑔), store the best
solution.
Step 5: if it reaches the maximum generation, terminate the
algorithm; else, go to step 6.
Step 6: set 𝑔 = 𝑔 + 1, observe chromosomes in 𝑄(𝑔 − 1)
to obtain 𝑃 (𝑔) = {𝑝𝑔1 , 𝑝𝑔2 , . . . , 𝑝𝑔𝑃 }.
Step 7: repeat the processes in step 3, compute the fitness
values of 𝑃 (𝑔), update the best solution, update 𝑄(𝑔 − 1) to
obtain 𝑄(𝑔) as in [15], and go to step 5.
D. Spectrum allocation based on particle swarm optimization
In PSO, each solution is a ‘bird’ in the flock and is
referred to as a ‘particle’. In the proposed PSO-based spectrum
allocation, a particle specifies a possible conflict free channel
assignment. Note that the position of the particle is analogous
to the chromosome using binary encoding mechanism in GA
[16], so the structure of the position of the particle in the
proposed PSO is analogous to the structure of the chromosome
proposed in GA-SAA.
We use the same process as in GA to ensure that the
position of the particle satisfies the interference constraints.
For fitness evaluation, we directly use 𝑈 (𝑅) as the fitness
function. As iteration 𝑡 increases, so does the fitness value of
4423
the best particle. Mapping the preserved best position at the
last iteration to 𝐴, the optimal spectrum allocation is obtained.
In conclusion, the proposed PSO-based spectrum allocation
algorithm (PSO-SAA) proceeds as follows:
Step 1: given 𝐿, 𝐵, 𝐶, set 𝐿1 the same as that in step 1 of
∑
𝑁 ∑ 𝑀
GA-SAA, set 𝐷 = 𝑙𝑛,𝑚 .
𝑛=1 𝑚=1
Step 2: set 𝑡 = 0, and randomly generate the position
and velocity of particle 𝑖, 𝑥𝑡𝑖 = [𝑥𝑡𝑖1 , 𝑥𝑡𝑖2 , . . . , 𝑥𝑡𝑖𝐷 ] and
𝑣𝑖𝑡 = [𝑣𝑖1 𝑡
, 𝑣𝑖2𝑡 𝑡
, . . . , 𝑣𝑖𝐷 ], where 𝑥𝑡𝑖𝑑 ∈ {0, 1} and 𝑣𝑖𝑑 𝑡
∈
[−𝑉𝑚𝑎𝑥 , +𝑉𝑚𝑎𝑥 ], 1 ≤ 𝑖 ≤ 𝑆.
Step 3: map 𝑥𝑡𝑖𝑑 (𝑖 ≤ 𝑖 ≤ 𝑆) to 𝑎𝑛,𝑚 , where (𝑛, 𝑚) is the
𝑑th element in 𝐿1 . For all 𝑚, search all (𝑛, 𝑘) that satisfies
𝑐𝑛,𝑘,𝑚 = 1, and check whether both of the two dimensions of
the position corresponding to the element in the 𝑛th line and
𝑚th column of 𝐴 and the element in the 𝑘th line and 𝑚th
column of 𝐴 are equal to 1; if so, randomly set one of them
to 0.
Step 4: compute the fitness value of each particle and set
𝑝𝑡𝑖 = [𝑥𝑡𝑖1 , 𝑥𝑡𝑖2 , . . . , 𝑥𝑡𝑖𝐷 ] and 𝑝𝑡𝑏 = [𝑥𝑡𝑏1 , 𝑥𝑡𝑏2 , . . . , 𝑥𝑡𝑏𝐷 ], where 𝑏
is the index of the particle which has the highest fitness value.
Step 5: set 𝑡 = 𝑡 + 1, and update 𝑣𝑖𝑑 𝑡
and 𝑥𝑡𝑖𝑑 as in [17].
Step 6: repeat the processes in step 3, and compute the
fitness value of each particle. For particle 𝑖, if it’s fitness
value is greater than the fitness value of 𝑝𝑡−1 , then set 𝑝𝑡𝑖 =
𝑖
𝑡 𝑡 𝑡
[𝑥𝑖1 , 𝑥𝑖2 , . . . , 𝑥𝑖𝐷 ]. If particle 𝑖’s fitness value is greater than
the fitness value of 𝑝𝑡−1 𝑡 𝑡 𝑡 𝑡
𝑏 , then set 𝑝𝑏 = [𝑥𝑖1 , 𝑥𝑖2 , . . . , 𝑥𝑖𝐷 ].
Step 7: if 𝑡 equals to the predefined value, terminate the
algorithm; otherwise, go to step 5.
III. S IMULATION R ESULTS
A. Parameter settings for evolutionary algorithms
In this paper, we choose the parameters of the evolutionary
algorithms such that the total times of fitness evaluation is
the same in the three algorithms. For GA, the population size
is set to 20, and the crossover probability and the mutation
probability are set to 0.8 and 0.01, respectively. The GA is
configured to replace 85% of its population each generation,
17 of every 20 population members. As for QGA, the popula-
tion size is 20 and the increment of rotation angle of quantum
gates is decreased linearly from 0.1𝜋 at the first generation to
0.005𝜋 at the last generation. In PSO, the number of particles
in a swarm is set to 20, the two acceleration coefficients [17]
are equal to 2, and 𝑉𝑚𝑎𝑥 = 4. All the three algorithms will
be terminated after 300 iterations (generations).
B. Results and discussions
The commonly used algorithm to solve the spectrum al-
location problem presented in Section II is color sensitive
graph coloring algorithm (CSGC). For more information of
CSGC, please refer to [9]. The labeling rules used are collab-
orative labeling rules proposed in [9]. In order to evaluate the
performance of the proposed evolutionary algorithms-based
spectrum allocation methods, we compare them with CSGC
in our simulations.
Table I shows the average rewards over 50 experiments
where 𝑁 = 5, 𝑀 = 5 and 𝑁 = 20,𝑀 = 22. 𝑁 , 𝑀 , 𝐵, 𝐿, and
𝐶 are kept the same under all experiments under a particular
4424 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2009

TABLE I
AVERAGE REWARD .

Generation Algorithm Average reward (𝑁 = 5, 𝑀 = 5) Average reward (𝑁 = 20, 𝑀 = 20)

or iteration
MSR MMR MPF MSR MMR MPF
GA-SAA 150.6038 25.0771 53.8800 1170.9525 2.3642 62.4950
10 QGA-SAA 151.0952 27.8634 65.1482 1206.1508 9.5613 37.0068
PSO-SAA 151.0952 27.8634 64.8348 1204.7035 8.3244 13.7659
GA-SAA 151.0952 25.6343 64.0926 1229.1568 7.2553 96.2020
50 QGA-SAA 151.0952 27.8634 66.1267 1237.3000 39.5744 87.5857
PSO-SAA 151.0952 27.8634 67.8842 1238.1758 28.0520 82.4346
GA-SAA 151.0952 27.3061 64.5525 1238.9552 12.3750 116.7429
300 QGA-SAA 151.0952 27.8634 66.1267 1238.9561 56.2500 118.0215
PSO-SAA 151.0952 27.8634 67.9928 1240.1890 50.9594 120.5298
CSGC 138.3981 21.1016 56.0257 1206.0437 2.7769 60.1252

60 TABLE II
C OMPARISON TO OPTIMAL VALUES .

50
N=20,M=22 Generation Algorithm Relative difference (%)
40 or iteration
MSR MMR MPF
Min Reward

N=5,M=5 GA-SAA 0.2982 3.4818 1.6599

30 10 QGA-SAA 0 0 0.1017
PSO-SAA 0 0 0
GA-SAA 0.0073 2.8639 0.9161
20 50 QGA-SAA 0 0 0.1017
PSO-SAA 0 0 0
GA−SAA
GA-SAA 0 2.3400 0.9161
10 QGA−SAA 300 QGA-SAA 0 0 0.1017
PSO−SAA PSO-SAA 0 0 0
CSGC 0.2348 6.5438 7.8348
0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Generation
(a) Max-min-reward objective MPF, the converged values after 300 generations by
140
GA-SAA are still lower than those obtained by PSO-SAA and
N=20,M=22
120 QGA-SAA. For all three objectives, PSO-SAA and QGA-SAA
perform better than GA-SAA in terms of convergence rate and
100 converged value.
We also compare the rewards derived from the algorithms
Fair Reward

80 N=5,M=5 to the optimal values. The optimal values are obtained by

exhaustive search. Given the complexity of the exhaustive
60
search scales exponentially with the number of nodes and
40 channels, we use limited number of nodes and channels in
GA−SAA
our simulation as in [9]. We deploy 200 topologies assuming
QGA−SAA
20 𝑁 = 3 and 𝑀 = 5. The performance metric, relative
PSO−SAA
difference, is used to denote the difference between the reward
0 to the optimal value. If the reward obtained through GA-
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Generation SAA, QGA-SAA, PSO-SAA, or CSGC is 𝑇 in a particular
(b) Max-proportional-fair experiment, and the optimal reward is 𝑇𝑜𝑝𝑡 , then the relative
difference is 1 − 𝑇 /𝑇𝑜𝑝𝑡 [9]. Table II summarizes the relative
Fig. 2. Average rewards: GA-SAA vs. QGA-SAA vs. PSO-SAA. difference for different algorithms averaged over 200 topolo-
gies. We see that PSO-SAA can find the optimal solution after
objective. In addition, the average rewards attained in each 10 iterations in all experiments under the three objectives.
generation by GA-SAA, QGA-SAA and PSO-SAA are plotted QGA-SAA performs much the same as PSO-SAA under
in Fig. 2. We can see that the average rewards obtained by GA- objectives MSR and MMR. However, the solutions obtained
SAA, QGA-SAA and PSO-SAA after 50 generations are better by QGA-SAA under MPF have slight difference to the optimal
than CSGC, which validates the effectiveness of the proposed solutions. GA-SAA performs the worst compared to QGA-
evolutionary algorithms-based spectrum allocation methods. SAA and PSO-SAA as it can only obtain the optimal solution
PSO-SAA performs the best under objectives MSR and MPF after 300 iterations under objective MSR. However, all three
in terms of converged value, while QGA-SAA performs the evolutionary algorithms perform far better than CSGC, which
best under objective MMR. Even though GA-SAA performs further validates the performance of our proposed evolutionary
better than QGA-SAA and PSO-SAA in the early stage under algorithms-based spectrum allocation methods.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2009
Evolutionary algorithms have been used to solve a lot of
optimization problems in real applications. However, there still
lacks general theoretical analysis of the convergence properties
of the general evolutionary algorithms, especially QGA and
PSO, in the literatures. In order to evaluate the convergence
time of the proposed algorithms, we’ve done experiments
when 𝑁 = 𝑀 = 5. The experiments were run on a 1.66GHz
double processor laptop PC with 1GB of memory. MATLAB
7.0 was used for simulation evaluation. Results show that
the average computation time of GA-SAA, QGA-SAA, PSO-
SAA after 10 iterations and CSGC is 0.093s (second), 0.123s,
0.092s, 0.018s respectively. Even though the computation time
of the evolutionary algorithms is larger than that of CSGC,
it is obvious that the evolutionary algorithms are fairly easy
for real-time implementation for such a small number of
iterations, say, 10.
IV. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, three spectrum allocation methods, GA-SAA,
QGA-SAA and PSO-SAA, are proposed, and CSGC is used
for performance comparison. Results show that our proposed
methods greatly outperform CSGC under all experiments.
Furthermore, PSO-SAA is generally found to perform better
than GA-SAA and QGA-SAA under objectives MSR and
MPF in terms of converged solution quality, while QGA-SAA
performs the best under objective MMR.
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