Joint Resource and Power Allocation for Clustered Cognitive M2M Communications Underlaying Cellular Networks

Abstract

The massive number of Machine-Type Communication Devices (MTCDs) coexisting with Cellular User Equipment (CUE), in addition to the diverse Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements of M2M communications and cellular communications, present significant implementation challenges due to interference, congestion, and spectrum scarcity. This makes resource allocation an important but challenging problem. In this article, clustered Cognitive Machine-to-Machine (CM2M) communications underlaying cellular networks is proposed to solve this problem. In this system, MTCDs are grouped in clusters based on their spatial locations and communicate with the Base Station (BS) via a Machine-Type Communication Gateway (MTCG). Underlay Cognitive Radio (CR) is employed so that MTCDs within a cluster can share the spectrum of neighbouring CUE. A joint resource-power allocation problem is formulated and solved using a two-phase resource and power allocation scheme. The goal is to maximize the uplink sum-rate of the neighbouring CUE and clustered MTCDs while satisfying interference, power, and minimum data rate constraints. Simulation results are presented which show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the sum-rate of the network compared to other schemes while satisfying the constraints.