Effective Scheduling in Infrastructure-Based Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, we investigate a joint scheduling and power control for an infrastructure-based cognitive radio network (CRN) in coexistence with a cellular primary radio network (PRN). The PRN uses a set of licensed nonoverlapping orthogonal frequency channels for transmission. This set of channels is also accessed in an opportunistic manner by a set of cognitive radio base stations (CR-BSs) to support secondary users (SUs). The problem is formulated to maximize the spectrum utilization of SUs without causing excessive interference to active primary users (PUs) of the PRN. In addition, all the serviced SUs must meet a certain Quality of Service (QoS), such as satisfying a predefined signal to interference noise ratio (SINR). A centralized solution for joint scheduling and power control is derived to make the global accessing decision for all unserved SUs. With the assumption that the knowledge of all subscribers is available, a coordinator of the CRN can use the joint scheduling and power control algorithm to maximize the spectrum utilization of serviced SUs by solving a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) with an NP-hard complexity. To avoid the NP-hard complexity, we propose a suboptimal heuristic greedy algorithm that can be obtained at a much lower complexity based on the coloring interference graph among unserved SUs effected by serviced SUs and active PUs. Its superior performance over the existing algorithms is demonstrated through simulations.