Throughput analysis for cooperative sensing in cognitive radio networks

Spectrum sensing, as a key technology in cognitive radio networks, needs to detect signals from licensed primary radio systems to avoid harmful interference. However, due to the effects of fading, individual cognitive radios may not be able to reliably detect the existence of a primary radio. Cooperative sensing is proposed as a means to mitigate such effects. In this paper, we analyze a trade-off between the local processing overhead and the cooperation overhead. Numerical results show that the throughput of cognitive radio network decreases as the cooperation overhead increases due to the increase in the number of cooperation users.