Optimal cooperative spectrum sensing for 5G cognitive networks using evolutionary algorithms

Wireless communication technology is used in various applications and therefore the availability of wireless spectrum is a serious concern. The number of cellular users is increasing rapidly. The 5G network will be able to cater to the requirements of the increasing users. However, the spectrum efficiency needs to be improved. Cooperative spectrum sensing is being widely used by cognitive radios for utilizing the available spectrum in an efficient manner. Evolutionary Algorithm based optimization methods are used in various applications and have proved to be very efficient. These algorithms can also be used for optimizing the cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radios. In this paper, two methods are proposed for optimal Cooperative Spectrum Sensing for 5G cognitive networks. The optimization algorithms are designed using whale optimization algorithm (WOA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The objective is to increase the probability of detection by optimizing the ‘weighting vector’. In the first method, WOA is used for cooperative spectrum sensing optimization in cognitive radios. In the second method, WOA method is improved using the PSO algorithm. A hybridized WOA-PSO algorithm is proposed to further improve the probability of detection. The results obtained are compared with other existing algorithms. The proposed methods perform better than the existing methods.