Power allocation optimisation for high throughput with mixed spectrum access based on interference evaluation strategy in cognitive relay networks

By introducing amplify‐and‐forward relaying into a cognitive radio system, typical cognitive relay networks are studied for the optimisation problems of the spectrum and power allocation. By applying the mixed spectrum access of overlay and underlay approaches, an interference evaluation strategy is proposed to use different spectrum and power allocation methods while the secondary users (SUs) are located in different service regions of the primary users (PUs). In the interference evaluation strategy, the service area of the PUs is divided according to the possible interference strength of the PUs from the SUs compared with the location‐aware strategy in which the service area is divided only by the location information. An optimal power allocation algorithm is developed to maximise the throughput of the SUs under the condition of anti‐interference performance of the PUs and the total power constraints of the SUs. A type of computing algorithm that joins the subgradient and the Newton's method is used in order to resolve the complex optimisation problem. Numerical results show that the performance using the interference evaluation strategy, such as the throughput, the power consumption, and the energy efficiency, outperforms that using the location‐aware strategy.