Collaborative Spectrum Sensing Based on a New SNR Estimation and Energy Combining Method

In order for collaborative spectrum sensing to be effective, the sensing data provided by each radio should be weighted in proportion to their reliability during data combining. The time and processing requirements of the weight estimation process, however, can make weighted data combining infeasible in practical systems. This paper presents a new collaborative sensing method that exploits the correlation of the sensing data provided by a given radio in successive sensing intervals to keep the requirements of weighted data combining at acceptable levels. It is shown that the proposed method offers an excellent tradeoff between reliability and complexity, compared with conventional collaborative sensing methods.