Optimal Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Strategies in Cognitive Radio Networks

Spectrum sensing is the key functionality of cognitive radio. To combat with the effects of destructive channels, cooperative spectrum sensing technique among multiple secondary users has been proposed in cognitive radio networks. In this paper, we present an optimal cooperative spectrum sensing strategy to maximize the sensing efficiency, which not only concerns with the system overhead of spectrum sensing but also fulfills the interference restriction from the primary networks. The proposed scheme results in the optimal sensing parameters according to the channel-usage characteristic of single primary channel. Then we extend the work into the multichannel environment. Simulation results verified the performances of our strategies.