Optimal Power Allocation for OFDM-Based Cognitive Radio with New Primary Transmission Protection Criteria

This paper considers a spectrum underlay network, where an OFDM-based cognitive radio (CR) system is allowed to share the subcarriers of an OFDMA-based primary system for simultaneous transmission. Instead of using the conventional interference power constraint (IPC) to protect the primary users (PUs) in the primary system, a new criterion referred to as rate loss constraint (RLC), in the form of an upper bound on the maximum rate loss of each PU due to the CR transmission, is proposed for primary transmission protection. Assuming the channel state information (CSI) of the PU link, the CR link, and their mutual interference links is available to the CR, the optimal power allocation strategy to maximize the achievable rate of the CR system is derived under RLC together with CR's transmit power constraint. It is shown that the CR system can achieve a significant rate gain under RLC as compared to IPC. Furthermore, the relationship between RLC and IPC is investigated, and it is shown that the rate gain is obtained by exploiting the additional CSI of the PU link. A more general case referred to as hybrid protection to PUs is then studied, by taking into account that some PU links' CSI is not available at CR.