Performance Analysis of Amplify and Forward (AF)-based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract

Cognitive radio has been recently considered a promising technology to improve spectrum utilization by enabling secondary access to licensed bands that are not used by primary users temporarily or spatially. A prerequisite to this secondary access is the lack of interference to the primary system. This requirement makes spectrum sensing a key process for cognitive radio. In this study, we consider amplify and forward (AF)-based cooperative spectrum sensing for cognitive radio networks where multiple relay nodes are utilized to amplify and forward the primary user signal for better spectrum sensing, and maximum ratio combining is used for fusion detection by a cognitive coordinator. Further, the detection probability and the bit error rate of AF-based cooperative spectrum sensing are analyzed in fading multiple cognitive relay channels. The simulation results show that the AF-based cooperative spectrum sensing scheme outperforms the conventional scheme.