In this article, we propose to use shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) in order to provide the quality of service (QoS) requested by the secondary user (SU) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-based cognitive radio (CR) systems. The performance of the SFLA was evaluated through three transmission modes (emergency, multimedia, and low battery). SFLA provided the best possible configuration in a multicarrier context and thus proved its effectiveness to satisfy the needed QoS for the SU in CR systems. The obtained simulation results showed that SFLA offers better performance compared with genetic algorithms.