SINR-based spectrum sensing for Cognitive Radio Networks: An online spectrum monitoring method

This article proposes a novel spectrum sensing method based on the instantaneous Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) of the received signal. This method allows the terminals of a Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) to momentarily detect the presence of Co-Channel Interferers (CCI), whether Primary Users (PUs) or other Cognitive Radio (CR) users without the need to schedule a Quiet Period (QP). To achieve the virtues of cooperation, three cooperative sensing protocols are proposed. The first protocol is a centralized majority-voting protocol while the other two protocols are distributed protocols that are integrated with multihop techniques, namely Amplify and Forward (AF) and Decode and Forward (DF). The proposed method and protocols were shown to achieve good detection performance under a wide range of circumstances.