Joint Optimization of Clustering and Cooperative Beamforming in Green Cognitive Wireless Networks

We investigate the trade-off between performance and energy efficiency in cooperative cognitive underlay systems. By cooperating, cognitive base stations mitigate the interference and serve their users more effectively at the cost of spending more power. With a flexible cooperation scheme, we thus jointly optimize the clustering and the beamforming to minimize the overall power consumption while satisfying the secondary users' quality of service and respecting the primary users' interference limits. We formulate this problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear program and decompose it into a master problem and a beamforming subproblem. Then, we derive an iterative algorithm based on the generalized Benders decomposition method to find an optimal solution. Moreover, we propose simple techniques to speed up its convergence. When the clusters are fixed and non-overlapping, we also propose a decentralized algorithm with limited signaling schemes using the alternating direction method of multipliers. In contrast to previous works, our distributed algorithm handles the total interference power constraints coupling the cognitive base stations. Through simulations, we analyze the effectiveness and convergence of the proposed algorithms and show the benefits of the cooperation in cognitive wireless networks.