A Comparison among Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Approaches for Cognitive Radios

In this paper, a comparison among different cooperative spectrum sensing approaches is provided. It is assumed that the secondary terminals autonomously perform local spectrum sensing and forward their decision to a fusion center. It combines the received data to obtain the global decision, i.e. the presence or the absence of the primary user in the monitored environment. In particular, three fusion rules, i.e. OR, AND and optimal, are compared in terms of required processing capabilities at the fusion center and at the secondary terminals, and required control channel capacity. Numerical simulations in a practical heavy multipath environment are provided to compared the performances of the considered approaches.