Power Management and Bandwidth Allocation in a Cognitive Wireless Mesh Network

In this paper, we consider a cognitive wireless mesh network where mesh nodes on an unlicensed spectrum make opportunistic access to a licensed spectrum. Since the spectrum of interest is licensed to a Primary User (PU) or network, power management and bandwidth allocation at the mesh nodes should be carefully picked out such that the interference tolerated at the PU does not exceed a predefined threshold value. Our interest is to maximize the spectrum utilization of the cognitive radio network by serving the most possible mesh nodes while appropriately protecting the PU from harmful interference. The problem is formulated as a nonlinear integer program (NLIP). However, due to the complexity of the problem, a lower complexity heuristic algorithm is proposed. Results provide how many and which cognitive mesh nodes have been served, their final transmitted power level, and the spectrum utilization.