Optimization of Time-Domain Combining Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

In cognitive radio networks, the secondary users take chances to access the spectrum without causing interference to the primary users so that the spectrum access is dynamic and somewhat opportunistic. Therefore, spectrum sensing is of significant importance. In this paper, we propose a novel time-domain combining cooperative spectrum sensing framework, in which the time consumed by reporting for one secondary user is also utilized for other secondary users’ sensing. We focus on the optimal sensing settings of the proposed sensing scheme to maximize the secondary users’ throughput and minimize the average sensing error probability under the constraint that the primary users are sufficiently protected. Some simple algorithms are also derived to calculate the optimal solutions. Simulation results show that fundamental improvement of the achievable throughput and sensing performance can be obtained by optimal sensing settings. In addition, our proposed scheme outperforms the general frame structure on either achievable throughput or the performance of average sensing error probability.