Opportunistic Scheduling with Reliability Guarantees in Cognitive Radio Networks

Rahul Urgaonkar, Michael J. Neely University of Southern California http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~urgaonka/

*Sponsored in part by the DARPA IT-MANET Program, NSF OCE-0520324

Cognitive Radio Networks

Radio spectrum: a precious commodity
- recent FCC auction of 700MHz band ~$20 billion

Existing static allocation of spectrum considered inefficient

- white spaces observed

Motivation: Improve spectrum usage by dynamic spectrum access Key enabler: Cognitive Radio
- here, cognitive radio ~ dynamic operating frequency

Design Issues and Challenges

Primary (licensed) and Secondary (unlicensed) users Basic requirement: To ensure secondary users take advantage of the unused spectrum without adversely affecting primary users Challenges:
potentially oblivious primary users imperfect channel state information may cause collisions network dynamics (mobility, traffic) distributed solutions desirable

Our Contributions
Develop a throughput optimal control algorithm for cognitive radio networks
general mobility and interference models

Notion of collision queues

inspired by the virtual power queue technique of [1] worst case deterministic bound on maximum number of collisions prior works give probabilistic guarantees

Consider full effects of queueing

yields bounds on average delay

Constant factor distributed approximation

- in a special case
[1] M. J. Neely, Energy Optimal Control for Time Varying Wireless Networks, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, July 2006

Network Model
M primary, N secondary users Primary users static, each has a unique channel
channels orthogonal in frequency or space

Secondary users mobile, no licensed channel

set of channels they can access time-varying H(t) : 0/1 channel accessibility matrix

Mobility model
time-slotted resulting channel accessibility matrix H(t) Markovian

Example Network

hij(t) = 1 if SU i can access channel j in slot t

H(t) evolves according to a finite state ergodic Markov Chain, transition probabilities unknown

Network Model (contd.)

Interference model
Sm(t) : actual state for channel m (busy, idle) at most one transmission per channel per slot additionally, interference sets Inm conditions for successful SU transmission

I21 = {1, 2}

Important special case Inm = {m} for all n,m

Network Model (contd.)

Channel State Information model
probability Pm(t) = E{Sm(t)|S(t-1)} known at slot t obtained by sensing the channels or knowledge of PU traffic statistics or combination etc. models imperfect channel state information 2 state Markov chain example. Assume know ,
E{S(t)|S(t-1) = ON} = 1E{S(t)|S(t-1) = OFF} =

Queueing Dynamics
Secondary user queues Un(t) Flow control decision Rn(t)
how many new packets to admit

Transmission decisions

nm(t)

subject to network model constraints

Setting up the problem

Goal: Maximize secondary user throughput utility subject to maximum time average rate of collisions m with any primary user m
Rn(t) = admitted data for SU n in slot t Cm(t) = collision variable for PU m in slot t

Let

can solve if know all parameters challenge: unknowns mobility, , dynamics

Our Approach
Lyapunov Optimization technique [2]
generalization of backpressure technique [2] also covers related work

Unifies stability and utility optimization Main idea: Convert time average constraints into queueing stability problems
notion of virtual queues

Then, use Lyapunov Stability argument to design an optimal control algorithm

[2] Resource Allocation and Cross-Layer Control in Wireless Networks, Georgiadis, Neely, Tassiulas, NOW Foundations and Trends in Networking, 2006

Collision queue
Define a collision queue Xm(t) for channel m

Observation: If this queue is stable, then the constraint on the maximum time average rate of collisions is met

This is exactly the collision constraint in our optimization problem

Algorithm Design and Proof sketch

Define our state as Q(t) = (U(t), X(t)) Define Lyapunov function

Compute Lyapunov drift Every slot, take control actions to minimize (V0)

Compare with a stationary, randomized policy Delayed drift analysis for Markovian dynamics

Cognitive Network Control Algorithm

cross-layer algorithm decoupled into 2 components. (V0) 1. Flow control: Each secondary user chooses the number of packets to admit as the solution to:

- simple threshold policy, implemented separately at each SU

2. Scheduling transmissions of secondary users: Choose a

resource allocation that maximizes:

subject to network constraints

- a generalized Maximum Weight Match problem

CNC Performance Theorem

1. Strong reliability bound: The worst case number of collisions suffered by any primary user m is no more than mT + Xmax over any finite interval T (where Xmax is a constant)
- deterministic performance guarantee

2. Bounded worst case queue backlog: The worst case queue backlog is upper bounded by a finite constant Umax for all secondary users
- Umax linear in V

3. Utility-Delay tradeoff: The average secondary user throughput achieved by CNC is within O(1/V) of the optimal value

Distributed Implementation
Focus on the case with Imn = {m} The resource allocation problem becomes the Maximum Weight Match problem on a Bipartite graph
NxM Bipartite graph, N secondary users, M channels

Constant factor (1/2) distributed approximation using Greedy Maximal Match Scheduling Reliability guarantees stay the same

Simulation example
Cell partitioned network with 9 static primary users, 8 mobile secondary users, moving according to a Random Walk One channel per primary user Here, greedy maximal match = MWM
7 2 4 1 8 5 6 3

Total average congestion vs. input rate for different V (also no flow control case)

Simulation example
7 2 4 1

Throughput vs. Input rate for different V

8 5

All collision constraints met

The achieved throughput is very close to the input rate for small values of the input rate The achieved throughput saturates at a value depending on V, being very close to the network capacity for large V