An energy-saving spectrum sensing scheme with combined clustering and censoring in cognitive wireless sensor networks

Incorporating cognitive radio technology into wire-less sensor networks enables the sensor nodes to use the idle channels to meet their communication demands, but the spectrum sensing process inevitably brings extra energy consumption. Since cognitive sensor nodes are generally low-powered with limited batteries, we consider a novel spectrum sensing scheme with combined clustering and censoring for saving energy. We minimize the energy consumed in spectrum sensing by designing the optimal sensing period and the energy detection thresholds. The simulation results show that, under the premise of ensuring the target sensing performance, the proposed scheme reduces the energy consumption effectively compared with the clustering only and the censoring only schemes.