Cooperative Shared Spectrum Sensing for Dynamic Cognitive Radio Networks

Cooperative spectrum sensing for cognitive radio networks is recently being studied to simultaneously minimize uncertainty in primary user detection and solve hidden terminal problem. Sensing wideband spectrum is another challenging task for a single cognitive radio due to large sensing time required. In this paper, we introduce a technique to tackle both wideband and cooperative spectrum sensing tasks. We divide the wideband spectrum into several subbands. Then a group of cognitive radios is assigned for sensing of a particular narrow subband. A cognitive base station is used for collecting the results and making the final decision over the full spectrum. Our proposed algorithm minimizes time and amount of energy spent for wideband spectrum scanning by a cognitive radio, and effectively detects the primary users in the wideband spectrum thanks to cooperative shared spectrum sensing.