QoS-aware resource allocation for multimedia users in a multi-cell spectrum sharing radio network

In this paper, we introduce a Spectrum Sharing Radio (SSR) network as an 'OFDMA network with user priority' or a 'Cognitive Radio (CR) network without spectral awareness'. The resource allocation problem for multimedia users in a multi-cell SSR network is formulated as a non-cooperative game with each cell acting as a player whose aim is to maximise the number of low priority users who can reach their QoS subject to the premise that all high priority users in that cell can achieve their QoS. To achieve this, we propose a distributed QoS-aware and userpriority- aware subcarrier (SC) allocation algorithm to reach the Nash Equilibrium of the game. Simulation results verify the validity of the proposed algorithm: it can achieve good performance in terms of both throughput and the number of qualified users; particularly important is that it exhibits fast convergence. We implement the proposed algorithm on three system models to investigate the impact of inter-cell interference (ICI) on the performance.