Deep Reinforcement Learning based channel allocation (DRLCA) in Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract

The Spectrum is a scarce resource in wireless networks, hence these resources need to be perfectly channelized for their better utilization. By the study of the previous decades, it is found that the spectrum is colossally underutilized and the main reason for the underutilization found out to be the policies that are fixed and not dynamic. The dynamic spectrum allocation of frequency bands may overcome this problem. Cognitive radio provides an important concept that can used to solve the problem of underutilization of spectrum. Reinforcement learning is a key technique that is widely used to learn the spectrum allocation behaviour and maximize the system’s efficiency. Therefore, in this work, we have designed and developed a Reinforcement learning-based model to allocate the channels among secondary users. Also, a Deep Reinforcement learning-based channel allocation algorithm (DRLCA) has been proposed. The proposed DRLCA is compared with existing JPCRL [1]. In our algorithm, the Python libraries were used for simulation. From the simulation results and analysis, it is found that the DRLCA outperforms the JPCRL in terms of channel utilization by 5%.