Comparative Evaluation Approach for Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Wireless Sensor Networks (C-WSNs)

In spite of conventional wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes, which only sense environment, new developments of WSN, e.g., cognitive-WSN (C-WSN), wireless multimedia sensor network, wireless actor network, and cryptography in WSN, need to run algorithms on their nodes. But, there is no method or appropriate criteria to compare proposed algorithms or investigate whether or not an algorithm is suitable for these next-generation WSNs. Indeed, due to resource constraints in WSN nodes and lack of an evaluation method, most high-performance algorithms are renounced for the next-generation WSNs without any investigation. For example, many references have proposed low-performance, low-complexity energy detection (ED) method for C-WSNs without any analysis or evaluation, only because ED has the least complexity among all spectrum sensing methods. In this paper, we propose an appropriate set of criteria and a comparative method for evaluating algorithms in next-generation WSNs. Then, we develop the method for evaluation of spectrum sensing algorithms in C-WSNs. Finally, we investigate ED, the multitaper method (MTM), and united MTM (UMTM) spectrum sensing algorithms based on our comparative approach.