Cognitive radio resource management for future cellular networks

The heterogeneous network (HetNet) architecture, device-to-device (D2D) communications, and coexistence with existing wireless systems have been regarded as new communication paradigms introduced in LTE-A/LTE-B cellular networks. To facilitate these paradigms, considerable research has shown promise of the cognitive radio (CR) technology, particularly the cognitive radio resource management (CRRM) on the top of resource allocation to control Layer-1 and Layer-2 radio operations, thus eliminating the concerns of potential system impacts and operation unreliability to bridge the gap between cellular and CR technologies. To support diverse communication paradigms with different challenges, a variety of CRRM schemes have been recently proposed, which however significantly perplexes the system implementation. To provide a general reconfigurable framework, in this article, we reveal a software-defined design of the CRRM. Through proper configurations, this software- defined design is able to adapt to diverse communication paradigms in LTE-A/LTE-B, and provides transmission reliability in terms of quality- of-service guarantees via the optimum control of the design. Supporting diverse CRRM schemes, this design substantially simplifies the system realization to bring the development of the CRRM to the next stage of practice for the fifth generation (5G) cellular network. © 2002-2012 IEEE.