Resource Allocation for OFDM-Based Cognitive Radio Multicast Networks

In cognitive radio networks with the coexistence of primary and secondary users, the problem of how to optimally allocate available resources (e.g., bandwidth and power) to multicast groups of secondary users that use orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is important. Taking the maximization of the weighted sum rate of such groups as the design objective, we propose a practically optimal subcarrier and power allocation scheme under constraints on the tolerable interference thresholds at individual primary user's frequency bands. Specifically, the optimization problem is solved via the dual method, where subcarriers are assigned in a per-tone basis and power is distributed in a water-filling fashion. As the number of subcarriers becomes large, the dual-domain solution becomes the global optimum of the primal problem with the duality gap vanishing to zero. The proposed design is valid for both unicast and multicast transmissions, and its computational complexity is only linear in the number of subcarriers. The effects of adjacent subcarrier nulling technique, which is to reduce mutual interference between primary and secondary frequency bands, on the proposed scheme are also examined. The superiority of the dual approach is confirmed by numerical results.