One of the basic capabilities of cognitive radio is to adapt the radio parameters according to the changing environment and user needs. This paper proposes a new adaptation method which uses particle swarm optimization (PSO) to optimize cognitive radio parameters given a set of objectives. The procedure of the proposed method is presented and multicarrier system is used for simulation analysis. Experimental results show that the proposed method performs far better than genetic algorithm (GA)‐based adaptation method in terms of convergence speed, converged fitness values, and stability. The proposed method can also provide the tradeoffs of the objective functions, and the resulting parameter configuration is consistent with the weights of the objective functions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.