Cooperative communication with spectrum sharing has been proved to be an efficient way to reduce energy consumption. In this work, an optimal power allocation algorithm is proposed for mobile cooperative beamforming networks, where several secondary users (SUs) collaboratively act as relay nodes to assist the transmission of a primary user (PU) in reward of transmitting their own information. The optimal power allocation scheme is obtained by solving a convex optimization problem aiming at minimizing network energy consumption with guaranteed quality of service (QoS) for both PU and SUs. Simulation results show that with the consideration of overheads, circuit power, and energy costs for message sharing, a cooperative beamforming network augmented with our proposed power allocation algorithm performs better in scenarios of more SUs in terms of higher energy efficiency and less power consumption per unit throughput. Additionally, the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional best-relay selection approach in the aspects of power consumption per unit throughput, energy efficiency, and network power consumption. Furthermore, simulations also demonstrate that the derived cooperative beamforming algorithm exhibits superior performance in energy saving than conventional methods in high-speed scenarios.

Peer Reviewed