Optimal power allocation scheme under FSA constraint for OFDM based cognitive radio systems

In the literature, researchers have evaluated optimal power loading algorithms under the Zero Mean Circularly Symmetric Complex Gaussian (ZMCSCG) constraint in OFDM based CR systems. The capacity of the Secondary User (SU) is maximized while keeping the interference introduced to the Primary User (PU) band remains within tolerable range. However the drawback of such an approach is that channel capacity increases with increasing Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), which is not applicable to a practical scenario. Therefore, we propose an optimal power loading scheme under the Finite Symbol Alphabet (FSA) constraint, (i.e., QPSK, 8-PSK, 16-QAM and 64-QAM, etc.) to achieve realistic system performance especially under the high SNR region. Subsequently, Mutual Information (MI) is derived and compared against channel capacity which reveals that in the low SNR region, they are closely related. Conversely, MI saturates in the high SNR region which indicates maximum achievable data rates for practical systems. We further evaluate channel capacity and MI by varying the interference threshold and our observation is that the saturation value of the achievable SU data rate indicated by MI changes accordingly, but total achievable data rate remains constant. On the other hand, capacity increases with increasing interference threshold.