Performance optimisation of cooperative spectrum sensing in mobile cognitive radio networks

Abstract

Cooperative spectrum sensing is a key technology of cognitive radio networks (CRNs) to the reliability of spectrum sensing but is prone to be affected by a series of user characteristics, which results in a serious decline in the throughput of CRNs and the harmful interference to the primary user network. The performance analysis and optimisation of existing cooperative spectrum‐sensing schemes do not completely cover key user characteristics. In this study, the joint effects of key user characteristics are studied with the objective to determine the parameters that affect the cooperative spectrum‐sensing functionality. To this aim, the mobile CRN model and spatial–temporal spectrum‐sensing model are formulated. Furthermore, the authors propose a dynamic double threshold energy detection (DDTED) scheme to derive the miss‐detection probability and false alarm probability involving user characteristics. Moreover, the performance optimisation is carried out by a dynamic threshold factor. Finally, simulation results show that a variety of user characteristics have different effects on the performance of cooperative spectrum sensing, and the proposed DDTED scheme can achieve better performance than the existing approach.