Cooperative Sensing among Cognitive Radios

Cognitive Radios have been advanced as a technology for the opportunistic use of under-utilized spectrum since they are able to sense the spectrum and use frequency bands if no Primary user is detected. However, the required sensitivity is very demanding since any individual radio might face a deep fade. We propose light-weight cooperation in sensing based on hard decisions to mitigate the sensitivity requirements on individual radios. We show that the "link budget" that system designers have to reserve for fading is a significant function of the required probability of detection. Even a few cooperating users (~10-20) facing independent fades are enough to achieve practical threshold levels by drastically…