Darwinian approach for dynamic spectrum allocation in next generation systems

Abstract

The authors present the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) model as a solution approach to the dynamic spectrum allocation (DSA) problem considered as a difficult combinatorial optimisation problem. The proposed multi-objective GA model enhances overall spectral efficiency of the network, while optimising its own spectrum utilisation to generate accessible spectrum opportunities for other radio technologies. A novel two-dimensional encoding technique is defined to represent solutions in the problem domain and the technique enables significantly shorter convergence times. A simulation tool has been developed to model the GA-based DSA and to compare the new scheme with the conventional fixed spectrum allocation (FSA) scheme under both uniform and non-uniform traffic distributions. The proposed scheme significantly outperformed the FSA scheme both in terms of spectral efficiency gain and spectral utilisation.