Swarm Intelligence-based Power Allocation and Relay Selection Algorithm for wireless cooperative network

Cooperative communications can significantly improve the wireless transmission performance with the help of relay nodes. In cooperative communication networks, relay selection and power allocation are two key issues. In this paper, we propose a relay selection and power allocation scheme RS-PA-PSACO (Relay Selection-Power Allocation-Particle Swarm Ant Colony Optimization) based on PSACO (Particle Swarm Ant Colony Optimization) algorithm. This scheme can effectively reduce the computational complexity and select the optimal relay nodes. As one of the swarm intelligence algorithms, PSACO which combined both PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) and ACO (Ant Colony Optimization) algorithms is effective to solve non-linear optimization problems through a fast global search at a low cost. The proposed RS-PA-PSACO algorithm can simultaneously obtain the optimal solutions of relay selection and power allocation to minimize the SER (Symbol Error Rate) with a fixed total power constraint both in AF (Amplify and Forward) and DF (Decode and Forward) modes. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves the system performance significantly both in reliability and power efficiency at a low complexity.