Optimal resource allocation strategy for integrated sensing and communication cellular network with multiple user demands

Abstract Future communication networks are widely considered to be able to provide both high‐speed communication service and reliable sensing service. Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is considered to be the key technology to realize this vision. Appropriate resource allocation strategy is essential for ensuring the quality of both communication and sensing services in terms of ISAC. Existing ISAC‐based resource allocation schemes mainly focus on the coexistence of sensing and communication. However, in multi‐user ISAC networks, the services required by users are diverse, including sensing‐only, communication‐only and dual‐function cases. To this end, a resource allocation strategy is proposed based on user quality of service (QoS). Specifically, the sum rate of cellular network is maximized via optimizing spectrum resource selection and transmit power, while satisfying the sensing QoS. The optimal solution to the entire problem is achieved by first demonstrating that the communication rate in this paper is a monotonically increasing function of sensing power, which allows to obtain the optimal power allocation scheme. Subsequently, a matching method is employed to obtain the optimal spectrum sharing scheme. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and also unveil a flexible trade‐off in ISAC systems over the benchmark scheme.