An Optimal Strategy for Cooperative Spectrum
Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks
Zhi Quan
†
, Shuguang Cui
‡
,andAliH.Sayed
†
†
Electrical Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095
Emails: {quan, sayed}@ee.ucla.edu
‡
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843
Email: {cui}@ece.tamu.edu
Abstract— Spectrum sensing is a key enabling functionality in
cognitive radio (CR) networks, where the CRs act as secondary
users that opportunistically access free frequency bands. Due to
the effects of channel fading, individual CRs may not be able
to reliably detect the existence of a primary radio, who is a
licensed user for the particular band. In this paper, we present
optimal cooperation strategies for spectrum sensing to combat the
effects of destructive channels and malfunctioning devices. Our
approach conducts spectrum sensing based on the linear com-
bination of local test statistics from individual secondary users.
We propose two optimization schemes to control the combining
weights, and compare their performance. Our first approach is
to optimize the probability distribution function of the global test
statistics at the fusion center. For the second scheme, we maximize
the global detection sensitivity under constraints on the false
alarm probability. Simulation results illustrate the significant
cooperative gain achieved by the proposed strategies.
I. INTRODUCTION
Cognitive radios [1] have emerged as a potential technology
to revolutionize spectrum utilization. According to the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), cognitive radios are
defined as radio systems that continuously perform spectrum
sensing, dynamically identify unused spectrum, and then oper-
ate in those spectrum holes where the licensed (primary) radio
systems are idle. In this way, spectrum utilization efficiency is
dramatically enhanced. Spectrum sensing should also monitor
for the activation of primary users in order for the secondary
users to stop their transmission and vacate spectrum segments.
Spectrum sensing requires the detection of possibly-weak
signals of unknown types with high reliability [2]. However,
such detection performance is usually compromised by fading
channel conditions between the target-under-detection and the
CRs, since it is hard to distinguish between a white spectrum
and a weak signal attenuated by deep fading.
In order to improve the reliability of spectrum sensing, co-
operation among secondary users has been recently proposed
[2] [3]. In such scenarios, a network of cooperative cognitive
radios experiencing different fading states from the target,
would have a better chance of detecting the primary user if
they exchange sensing information among themselves. In other
words, cooperative spectrum sensing can alleviate the problem
of corrupted detection by exploiting spatial diversity, and thus
reduces the probability of interfering with primary users. Since
cooperative sensing is generally coordinated over a control
channel, efficient cooperation schemes should be designed to
reduce bandwidth requirements while maximizing the sensing
reliability.
Although distributed detection has a rich literature (see
[4] and the references therein), the study of cooperative
spectrum sensing for cognitive radios is very limited. In [5],
a simple fusion rule known as the OR logic operation was
used to combine decisions from several secondary users. In
[6], two decision-combining approaches were studied: hard
decision with the AND logic operation and soft decision using
the Neyman-Pearson criteria [4]. It was shown that the soft
decision combination of spectrum sensing results yields gains
over hard decision combining. In [7], the authors exploited the
fact that adding up signals at two secondary users can increase
the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and detection reliability if the
received signals are correlated. This cooperative method is
different from those discussed in [5] [6] in that it requires
a wide-band control channel.
In this paper, we present an optimal cooperation strategy
for spectrum sensing, where the final decision is based on a
linear combination of the local test statistics from individual
secondary users. The combining weight for each user’s signal
indicates its contribution to the global decision making. For
example, if a secondary user generates a high-SNR signal and
frequently makes its local decision consistent with the real hy-
pothesis, then it is assigned a larger weighting coefficient. For
those secondary users experiencing deep fading, their weights
are decreased in order to reduce their negative contribution to
the decision fusion. To achieve this goal, we formulate two
optimization schemes to control the combining weights. The
first approach optimizes a particular probability distribution
function (PDF) at the fusion center in order to improve the
detection performance. The second approach maximizes the
probability of detection provided that the probability of false
alarm is constrained. The optimized cooperation schemes im-
prove the sensing reliability while relaxing the harsh require-
ments on the RF front-end sensitivity and signal processing
gain at individual CR nodes. Simulation studies illustrate that
the proposed cooperation schemes achieve superior sensing
performance.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we de-
scribe the system model. Section III introduces the weighting
cooperation for spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks.
To maximize the sensing performance, we propose two op-
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