Resource Allocation in Relay-Aided OFDM Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation problem in a single-user relay-aided cognitive radio (CR) underlay network. Both the CR network and the primary network operate under the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme. Different from the conventional resource allocation problem, the relay node here is capable of performing subcarrier permutation over two hops such that the signal received over a particular subcarrier is forwarded via a different subcarrier. The objective is to maximize the throughput of the CR network subject to a limited power budget at the secondary source and the relay node and to interference constraints at the primary receiver. Optimization is performed under a unified framework where power allocation at the source node, power allocation at the relay node, and subcarrier pairing at the two hops are jointly optimized. The joint resource-allocation scheme yields an asymptotically optimal solution. We further design a suboptimal algorithm that sacrifices little on performance but could significantly reduce computational complexity. Finally, numerical examples are provided to corroborate the proposed studies.