Spectrum-energy-efficient sensing with novel frame structure in cognitive radio networks

Cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is a promising technology in spectrum sensing with an admirable performance. In this paper, we define a utility function which jointly considers the spectrum-efficiency and the energy-efficiency. In a single-user sensing scenario, by maximizing the utility function, a rigorous analytical expression for the optimal threshold of the energy detector is derived. In CSS, the general frame structure is inefficient since the time consumed by reporting contributes little to the sensing performance. In this paper, we propose a novel CSS frame structure, in which one secondary user's (SU's) reporting time is also used for other SUs’ sensing. For time varying channels, collecting the sensing results at different time points is expected to achieve a time diversity gain for a SU, then the novel multi-minislot CSS scheme is proposed. In CSS, the optimal randomized rule and the optimal final decision threshold are derived. Simulation results show a significant improvement of the utility by using the proposed multi-minislot CSS scheme. It is also shown that there exists an optimal number of cooperating SUs that maximizes the utility, and the optimal number decreases as the price of the sensing energy increases.