Spectrum Allocation in Cognitive Radio: A PSO-based Approach

Cognitive radio systems have taken a fore-running position in the wireless communication technology. With most of the communication taking place through multi-carrier systems, the allocation of available spectrum to various carriers is a prominent issue. Since cognitive systems provide an environment of dynamic spectrum allocation, it becomes necessary to perform dynamic spectrum allocation swiftly with due consideration of parameters, like power consumption, fair distribution and minimal error. This paper considers a Particle Swarm Optimization-based approach, popularly used for solving large problems involving complex solution spaces to reach an optimal solution within feasible time. The mentioned spectrum allocation problem has been solved using PSO with a view to maximize the total transfer rate of the system, within specified constraints of maximum error rate, maximum power consumption and minimum transfer rate per user. The results have been compared with the existing Genetic Algorithm-based approach and have proved to be more effective.