QoS-Driven Power Allocation Under Peak and Average Interference Constraints in Cognitive Radio Networks

Efficient radio spectrum utilization can be improved using cognitive radio technology. In this work, we consider a spectrum underlay cognitive radio system operating in a fading environment. We propose an efficient power control scheme that maximizes the effective capacity of the secondary user, provisioning quality of service while on the same time the communication of the primary user is guaranteed through interference constraints. The specific power allocation scheme uses a policy in which the outage events of the primary user are exploited leading to a significant increase of the secondary user’s effective capacity. Moreover, the interference of the primary link to the secondary is taken into account so as to study a more realistic scenario. In order to safeguard primary user’s communication, two types of restrictions are considered: the traditional interference power constraint and the proposed inverse signal to interference plus noise ratio constraint. Different scenarios depending on the nature of the constraints (peak/average) are studied and their impact on the performance of the primary and secondary users is investigated. The superiority of the proposed schemes is demonstrated through their comparison with two reference power control schemes. Finally, numerical calculations, validated with simulation results, confirm the theoretical analysis and evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme for all the different scenarios.