Game Theory based Dynamic Spectrum Allocation for Secondary Users in the Cell Edge of Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) has very promising potential to improve spectrum utilization by allowing unlicensed Secondary Users (SUs) to access the spectrum dynamically without disturbing licensed Primary Users (PUs). Mitigating interference is a fundamental problem in CR scenarios. This is particularly problematic for deploying CR in cellular networks, when users are located at the cell edge, as the inter-cell interference mitigation and frequency reuse are critical requirements for both PUs and SUs. Further cellular networks require higher cell edge performance, then SUs will meet more challenges than PUs. To solve the performance decrease for SUs at the cell edge, a novel Dynamic Spectrum Allocation (DSA) scheme based on Game Theory is proposed in this paper. Full frequency reuse can be realized as well as inter-cell interference mitigated according to SUs' sensing, measurement and interaction in this scheme. A joint power/channel allocation algorithm is proposed to improve both cell-edge user experience and network performance through distributed pricing calculation and exchange based on game theory. Analytical proof is presented and simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves high efficiency of spectrum usage and improvement of cell edge SUs' performance.