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Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 6 (2011) 941949

Available at http://www.joics.com

Resource Allocation for the OFDM-based Cognitive Radio


System with Heterogeneous Delay-constraint Trac
Mengyao Ge, Shaowei Wang ,

Fangjiang Huang, Zhihui Ye

School of Electronic Science & Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Abstract
In this paper we study the resource allocation problem in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM)-based Cognitive Radio (CR) networks with Delay-Constraint (DC) and Non-Delay-Constraint
(NDC) users. The optimization objective is to maximize the sum capacity of the NDC users while
guaranteeing the target rates of the DC users. The problem is formulated as a convex optimization
problem which can be solved with high complexity. To reduce the computational complexity to an
acceptable level, we propose an ecient algorithm by exploiting the structure of the problem. Simulation
results show the proposed algorithm can always work out the optimal solutions with lower complexity
compared to the standard convex optimization techniques, which makes it promising for applications.
Keywords: Cognitive Radio; Convex Optimization; Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM); Resource Allocation

Introduction

Due to the rapidly growing demand of high data rate in wireless communications, traditional
xed spectrum allocation policy is faced with unprecedented challenges of spectrum shortage
crisis. On the other hand, investigations show that most of the licensed spectrum is not fully
used [1], which permits a more exible spectrum management strategy to improve spectrum
utilization. As a promising candidate, Cognitive Radio (CR) technology [2, 3] allows Secondary
Users (SUs) dynamically sense the available spectrum and adjust the transmission parameters to
avoid introducing intolerable interference to Primary Users (PUs). To achieve such objectives,
the physical layer of a CR system should be very exible.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has its signicant advantages in achieving dynamic Resource Allocation (RA) for CR systems [4, 5]. An ecient algorithm which tackles
the proportional constraints in OFDM systems is proposed in [6]. In [7], a multiuser OFDM system embracing both delay-constraint (DC) and Non-Delay-Constraint (NDC) trac is designed

This work was partially supported by the Jiangsu Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant
No. SBK201140016), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 60932002) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 1095021029).

Corresponding author.
Email address: wangsw@nju.edu.cn (Shaowei Wang).

15487741/ Copyright 2011 Binary Information Press


June 2011

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M. Ge et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 6 (2011) 941949

to maximize the sum rate of the NDC users under the maintenance of the individual rate requirements of the DC users. A fast algorithm is developed in [8] to maximize the total capacity. For
CR systems, optimal and suboptimal RA schemes are designed to maximize the sum capacity
while keeping the interference generated to PUs below a tolerable range [9, 10]. A CR system
with non-real-time service requirements is studied in [11], where an optimal RA algorithm is introduced to ensure the maximum throughput under the case that rates for CR users are satised
with proportion to target rates. In [12], a Max-Min algorithm is proposed to allocate bits in
cognitive OFDM systems. To learn about more dynamic RA algorithms for multiuser OFDM
system, [13] gives a comprehensive survey.
In this paper we consider OFDM-based systems with dierent delay-sense demands. All SUs
in the OFDM-based CR network are classied into DC users and NDC users. The objective is to
maximize the total rate of the NDC users while maintaining the minimal rate requirements for
the DC users. An ecient algorithm is implemented to achieve the optimal RA based on timesharing, which gives the upper bound of performance. Then an integer subchannel assignment
and optimal power allocation are carried out. Section 2 is system model. In Section 3, the details
of the proposed algorithm are illustrated. Simulation results are given in Section 4. A short
conclusion is in Section 5.

System Model

Consider an OFDM-based CR downlink system with PUs coexisting with SUs and each SU
transmits data by sharing the same spectrum with primary users. With the aim of satisfying
diverse communication requirements, we assume simultaneous transmission of 1 DC users with
target rates and 1 NDC users with variable rates. The total channel bandwidth is
divided into orthogonal OFDM subchannels denoted by set = {1, 2, . . . , }. Let , denotes
the rate of SU on subchannel , which depends on the channel gain , and transmission power
, of user on subchannel :
(
)
, , 2
, = log2 1 +
, , ,
(1)
0 /
where 0 is the power spectral density of additive white Gaussian noise. is the Signal-to-Noise
Ratio (SNR) gap which is a constant for given modulation manner [14]. When instantaneous
mutual information is used to characterize the achievable transmission rate, we have = 1 (0
dB). If practical signal constellations (e.g. QAM) are used, is a constant related to a given bit
2
for all and as the
error rate requirement (e.g. = ln(5)/1.5). Denote , := ,
0 /
channel-to-noise ratio. Generally, the power allocation of SUs needs to satisfy two constraints:
One is caused by the SUs own total power limitation . The other is to ensure the SUs
interference introduced to PUs below a prescribed threshold for PU .
The optimal resource allocation scheme is a mixed integer programming problem [13] for practical wireless systems, which is hard to solve because there are possible subchannel assignments
if assigning each subchannel to only one user. To convert it into a linear programming problem
that is solvable, a time-sharing method is necessary, which relaxes the constraint so that a subchannel can is shared to multiple users. Briey, we introduce , varying between 0 and 1 as the
faction of the subchannel allocated to user , which temporarily permits that each tone can be
shared by multiple users. In addition, to preserve convexity of the optimal problem, we illustrate

M. Ge et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 6 (2011) 941949

943

a common operation by introducing variable , dened as , := , , for all and , which


can be characterized as the power consumption of user on subchannel in a time frame interval.
Hence, the optimal problem to maximize the sum-rate of all NDC users can mathematically be
formulated as a convex optimization problem OPT1,
1 : max
..

1 :
2 :
3 :

, ,
,

, log 1 +
(
)
,
, log 1 + ,
, = 1, 2, . . . , 1
,

=1 +1 =1

=1

,
=1 =1

, ,

=1 =1

(2)

4 : , 0, ,

5 :
, = 1, = 1, 2, . . . ,
=1

6 : 0 , 1, , .
We can easily prove that the optimal objective is concave while all the constraints are alternatively linear ane or convex. According to [15], the feasible set of such an optimal problem must
be convex if it exists.

The Proposed Algorithm

Algorithm for resource allocation based on time-sharing OPT1 denes a convex optimization problem which can be solved by standard convex techniques, such as barrier method,
with (( )3 ) complexity. The complexity is too high to be applied in wireless systems because
there are always thousands of subchannels in practical OFDM systems. The barrier method is
generally exploited by making all inequality constraints implicit in the optimization objective
[15]. The central point (, , , ) for a certain parameter can be obtained from OPT2,
2 : min ()
..

, = 1, = 1, 2, . . . ,

(3)

=1

we take symbol indicating the united vector of all variables cross-ordered by , and , one
by one (i.e. = (1,1 , 1,1 , . . . , , , , , . . . , , , , )). The function () can be expressed as,
() =

=1 +1 =1

=1

log(

=1

,
(log(, ) + log(, ) + log(1 , ))
=1 =1

, ) log(

=1 =1

, )

=1

log(

=1 =1

). (4)
, ,

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M. Ge et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 6 (2011) 941949

The most important part in the barrier method is the centering step to give the solution of
OPT2. Then we utilize the Newton method to describe and compute the central point at a given
parameter . In the form of KKT system for the equality constrained optimization problem, the
Newton step at denoted by and the associated dual variable are given by
(
)(
) ( )
2 ()

=
,
(5)

0
where = () and is a 2 matrix in which 2, = 1( = ( 1) + . , ),
and the other elements are all zero. The outline of integrated application of Barrier method and
Newton method can be described as:
Find strictly feasible point , := (0) > 0, tolerance > 0, > 1
1.Compute () derived by OPT2 through Newton method:

1.1.Starting point (0) , subject to


, = 1, , tolerance > 0, (0, 1/2), (0, 1)
=1

1.2.Repeat:Compute and := () ;
Quit if 2 /2
Backtracking line search on (), := 1
while ( + ) > () 2 , :=
Update: := + , () =
2.Update: := ().
3.Stopping criterion:(3 + 1 + + 1)/ < .
4.Increase: := .

The most crucial point here is to compute the Newton step eciently, thus a low complexity algorithm is urgently demanded instead of the high-cost (( )3 ) matrix inversion in
(5). First of all the Hessian of function () need to be decomposed as following,
2

() = +

1
++1

(6)

=1

where is a 2 2 matrix and s are all vectors with 2 elements.


= (1,1 , 1,2 , . . . , , , . . . , , ),
where

2,

0
1
2,

1
(1, )2

, 2,
(, , + , )2

, 2,

(, , + , )2

, 2,

(, , + , )2

2, 2,
, (, , + , )2

(7)

The variable diers from DC users to NDC users (i.e. = 1, 0 1 , = , 1 < )


and we dene = 1 + + 1. The algorithm for fast computation of Newton step is outlined

M. Ge et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 6 (2011) 941949

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as follow and the exhaustive derivation will be presented in Appendix.


Initialization , 1 , 2 , . . . ,
[
]
[ ][
]
[
] [
]
[
]

=
1 =

=
0
0
0
0
0
0
Outer loop for updating with , = 1 1: =

[ 0]

1 + [ 0]

Inner loop for updating with , = + 1 do: =


[
Assign:

]
=

[ 0]

1 + [ 0]

0]
[

1 + [ 0]

Integer subchannel allocation and power allocation In practical system, the fractional
value , is constrained to be an integer, which forbids splitting any subchannels among CR users.
In other words, the subchannel assignments are mutually exclusive and for each subchannel only
one user can be chosen as the unique owner. In the consideration of the factor , , which can be
regarded as the metric to determine the assignment of subchannels, a straightforward subchannel
allocation scheme can be characterized as: Firstly,each DC user has priority to select a proper
subchannel on which the user sharing the most among all candidates. Then we allocated the
residual subchannels to corresponding users acquiring the highest fraction.
Consequently, all fractional values , are xed to be 0 or 1 in OPT1 after breaking ties on
each subchannel. Users can achieve the power allocation across the subchannels assigned to them
by resolve OPT1 with xed constant , . The algorithm for power allocation can be similarly
derived from section 2.1.
Warm start for the feasible starting point In the initialization step of barrier method,
it requires a strictly feasible starting point which obeys all the constraints. A preparatory procedure for barrier method to prove and compute the existed feasible point is extremely necessary.
It is equivalent to solve a minimization problem by introducing a crucial indicator parameter
which called [15]. We consider the warm start problem as OPT3, which is similar to
OPT1 except that the objective function is to minimize and minus on the right of inequality
C1 and C3.
If the result satises 0, the starting point of power allocation and sharing factor computed
through warm start is feasible. Otherwise, no feasible point is existed. The algorithm for obtain
a warm start can be similarly derived from the discussion of the proposed algorithm for resource
allocation, consisting of the barrier method and Newton method.
Complexity analysis As the derivation of the method for Newton step computation analyzed in Appendix, the algorithm based on time-sharing for integer subchannel assignment consumes (1 ++1) decomposition while in each decomposition there yields an additional equation.
Due to the computational complexity in each reverse substitution measured by ( ), the total

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M. Ge et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 6 (2011) 941949

computational cost for time-sharing is ( (1 + )2 ), which is much lower than (( )3 )


for matrix inversion in Newton step because (1 + ) in practice.

Simulation Results

To evaluate the proposed algorithm, we model a downlink multiuser OFDM-based CR system


with = 1 PU, = 4 SUs including 1 = 2 DC users where all users randomly located in a
3 3km area, and receiver uniformly distributed in the circle from its transmitter within 0.5km.
The path loss is 4, the variance of shadowing eect is 10dB and the amplitude of multipath fading
is Rayleigh. We also assume that each PUs total bandwidth is randomly generated by uniform
distribution and the maximum value is 2/3. The noise power is 1013 W.
We mainly compare the proposed algorithm with two other suboptimal subchannel allocation
schemes: Maximum CNR Priority (MCP) and maximum number of bits priority (MBP). In
MCP, subchannels are always assigned to users who sharing the highest CNR, While the MBP
algorithm assigns subchannels to users who can be allocated the maximum number of bits among
all candidates, depending on the CNR and the maximum power allocation for avoiding intolerable
interference to PUs, where the interference thresholds of all PUs are set to 5 1012 W.

200

OPTS
ISAOP
MBPOP
MCPOP

100

0_
10 1

100
101
(a) Tranmission power limitation
N=32 Rreq=24bit/symbol

600

400

OPTS
ISAOP
MBPOP
MCPOP

200

0_
10 1

Average bits of NDC users

300

100
101
(c) Tranmission power limitation
N=64 Rreq=24bit/symbol

300
OPTS
ISAOP
MBPOP
MCPOP

200

100

50

100

150

200

(b) Rate requirement for DC users


N=32 pT=5W
Average bits of NDC users

Average bits of NDC users

Average bits of NDC users

Fig. 1 shows the performance comparison between three algorithms discussed above in dierent
cases, all of which are adopt optimal power allocation. (a) and (c) illustrate the average number
of bits per OFDM symbol of NDC users as a function of transmit power limit respectively at
= 32 and = 64 for a given target rate = 24bit/symbol of all DC users, while (b)

600
OPTS
ISAOP
MBPOP
MCPOP

400

200

50

100

150

(d) Rate requirement for DC users


N=64 pT=5W

Fig. 1: Average bits per OFDM symbol of NDC users

200

M. Ge et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 6 (2011) 941949

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(d) correspondingly present it as a function of the target rate of DC users at the power limit
= 5W. It is obvious that the proposed algorithm is extremely close to the optimal for all cases
with the maximum dierence about 2%. Whats more, it also reveals that the proposed algorithm
signicantly outperform both the MBP and MCP schemes.

Conclusion

In this paper we develop an ecient algorityhm to tackle the optimal resource allocation problem
in OFDM-based CR systems with heterogeneous delay constraints for various users with the
purpose of supporting dierential communication service. The optimal solutions are calculated
by the barrier method. The remarkable characteristic of the proposed algorithm is that it can
work out the optimal solutions with complexity of ( (1 + )2 ) by exploiting the structure
of the problem, which makes it promising for applications.

Appendix
According to (5) (6), the Newton step can be calculated by solving the following set of
equations,

] [ ]
[

+
.
(8)
=
=1

0
Since it is easy to prove that , > 0 and all > 0, it follows 2 () > 0. So the KKT
matrix on the left in (8) is invertible because is a non-zero matrix. As the approach introduced
in [15], we exploit the structure of the KKT matrix to compute the Newton method eciently.
Firstly, the KKT system can be preliminarily decomposed into
]
[

[
0]1

+
= 1 +
,
= 1
1 ,
(9)

1
+
[
0]
1

where we have

[
1 =

[
,

[
1 =

]
.

(10)

We can further decompose (9) (10) as 1 = 2 + 1


1 . From the left equation in (10):

[
0]2 ,
1
,

1 + [
0]2, 2
1
]
[ ] [
]
]
[

1
2 =
,
2, =
.

0
0
0
0

1 = 2

From the right one in (10),


1 =

1,

[
0]1,
,
1

, 2 ,

1 + [ 1 0]2

(11)
(12)

(13)

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M. Ge et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 6 (2011) 941949

[
1, =

[
,

[
2, =

(14)

We can observe that there are three matrix systems after twice decompositions. Repeat similar
decomposition for times, and it will produce + 1 matrix equations. Through the reverse
iteration, we can derive the method to compute the Newton step as proposed in section 3. To
compute the variable in such equation:
[
]
[ ]

=
.
(15)
0
0
It follows,

[.]1

[
1
= ,

[.]

[.]1
[.] 2 +

]
.

(16)

We denote [.] := 2( 1) + 2. Substituting these into (16),


2 + =

=1

1
=1
,
2,2

1
1
(,
[.]1 + ,
[.] ).
2,2
2,2

(17)

Then, other s can be obtained by (16) (17) with complexity ( ).

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