A new mathematical analysis of the probability of detection in cognitive radio over fading channels

Cognitive radio (CR) enriches wireless technology systems by harnessing spectrum white spaces. Such systems require continuous and reliable sensing to provide high-quality service to their users and to minimize the interference they may cause to legacy networks. As the simplicity of implementation of energy detectors and their incoherent requirements make them an ideal candidate for this type of application, this work provides a further mathematical analysis to the probability of detection over different fading channels. We derive a tight closed-form expression for the probability of detection over Nakagami channels. In addition, we introduce an accurate recursive algorithm to compute the probability of detection for an odd degree of freedom over additive white Gaussian noise channels, which has been overlooked in the literature so far. Finally, we present the simulation results which concur with the numerical results and which are also a perfect match with the mathematical expressions derived.