Hard and softened combination for cooperative spectrum sensing over imperfect channels in cognitive radio networks

Recently, cognitive radio (CR) access has received much attention to overcome spectrum scarcity problem. Spectrum sensing methods are often used for finding free channels to be used by CR. In this paper, the problem of cooperative spectrum sensing will be investigated in CR networks over realistic channels. This problem is not clarified until now by taking into account the error effect on the decision reporting. The analytical expressions of the hard and softened one bit and two bits hard combination scheme for cooperative spectrum sensing will be derived. These expressions are investigated to compare with simulation results. The analysis and simulation results show that the performance of cooperative spectrum sensing is limited by the probability of reporting errors. Moreover, it is shown that there is a significant performance loss when a final decision regarding to primary user’s (PU) state made at the fusion depends on a set of local spectrum sensing information that are distorted by imperfect reporting channels during transmission. The probability of detection is degraded due to imperfect reporting channel by 16.5% and 12.2% with one bit hard combination and softened two bits hard combination, respectively. To reduce this performance loss, Amplify and Forward (AAF) relying mechanism will be proposed. The probability of detection is improved by 8% and 9.3% with one bit hard combination and softened two bits hard combination, respectively using AAF relaying mechanism.