Game theory based joint pricing and resource allocation for cognitive radio networks with imperfect channel information

Cognitive radio technology is proposed to improve spectrum utilization efficiency through exploiting the unused portions of spectrum in an opportunistic manner. In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), primary users (PUs) are allowed to lease out their unused spectrum to share with cognitive users (CUs). In a CRN consisting of multiple PUs and CUs, the spectrum pricing and resource allocation scheme have to be optimally designed, so that the efficient spectrum sharing among PUs and CUs can be supported and the QoS requirements of both PUs and CUs can be guaranteed. In this paper, we consider the joint spectrum pricing and resource allocation problem of a CRN with imperfect channel condition, i.e., channel state information of the PUs is not fully accessible to the CUs. To characterize the willingness of PUs to share subchannels and the intention of CU on accessing subchannels, a pricing scheme for both PUs and CUs is designed. Addressing the competition of CUs in channel accessing and power allocation, a non-cooperative Game model is formulated. Through solving the Nash equilibrium solution of the Game model, the optimal pricing and resource allocation strategy can be obtained. Numerical results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.