Optimization for cooperative sensing in cognitive radio networks

In cognitive radio networks, the secondary users can use the frequency bands when the primary users are not present. Hence secondary users need to constantly sense the presence of the primary users. When the primary users are detected, the secondary users have to vacate that channel. This makes the probability of detection important to the primary users as it indicates their protection level from secondary users. When the secondary users detect the presence of a primary user which is in fact not there, it is referred to as false alarm. The probability of false alarm is important to the secondary users as it will determine their usage of an unoccupied channel. Depending on whose interest is of priority, either a targeted probability of detection or false alarm shall be set. After setting one of the probabilities, the other can be optimized through cooperative sensing. In this paper, we show that cooperating all secondary users in the network does not necessary achieve the optimum performance, but instead, it is achieved by cooperating a certain number of users with the highest primary user's signal to noise ratio. Computer simulations have shown that the P-d can increase from 92.03% to 99.88% and P-f can decrease from 6.02% to 0.06% in a network with 200 users.