QoS-aware distributed spectrum sharing for heterogeneous wireless cognitive networks

Ubiquitous wireless networking calls for efficient dynamic spectrum allocation (DSA) among heterogeneous users with diverse transmission types and bandwidth demands. To meet user-specific quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, the power and spectrum allocated to each user should lie inside a bounded region in order to be meaningful for the intended application. Most existing DSA methods aim at enhancing the total system utility. As such, spectrum wastage may arise when the system-wise optimal allocation falls outside individual users’ desired regions for QoS provisioning. The goal of this paper is to develop QoS-aware distributed DSA schemes using game-theoretic approach. We derive DSA solutions that respect QoS and avoid naively boosting or sacrificing some users’ utilities to maximize the network spectrum utilization. Specifically, we propose two game-based DSA algorithms: one resorts to proper scaling of the transmission power according to each user’s useful utility range, and the other embeds the QoS factor into the utility function used during gaming. To evaluate DSA schemes from a practical QoS perspective, we introduce two new metrics, namely “system useful utility” and “fraction of QoS-satisfied users”. Simulations confirm that the proposed DSA techniques outperform existing QoS-blind game models in terms of the spectrum sharing efficiency in heterogeneous networks. Convergence analysis of the proposed QoS-aware DSA algorithms is also provided.