Sensing optimization in cooperative cognitive radio networks

Cooperative spectrum sensing is a key function in cognitive radio networks in order to provide unused spectrum access opportunities and mitigate the impact of interference to the primary networks. Cooperative sensing can incur additional cooperation overhead, increased energy consumption, extra sensing time and delay in heterogeneous networks. In this paper, the sensing time period is optimized to minimize energy consumption in a diverse cooperative network using square law combining decision rule. The evaluation results confirm significant improvement in the sensing time and sensing task energy consumption