Bargaining based pairwise cooperative spectrum sensing for Cognitive Radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) network is promising for military usage since it enables the CR users in the field to sense and take the opportunistic use of vacant frequency bands if no primary users are present. As a key component of the CR technology, spectrum sensing has been investigated actively in existing literature. Among all the problems related to spectrum sensing, two of them seem to be challenging: first, CR users are likely to miss the detection of the primary users, resulting in low sensing accuracy; second, to guarantee the frequency bands are available, CR users have to spend a large amount of time sensing those bands, which inevitably decreases their data transmission opportunities, leading to the so-called sensing efficiency problem. This paper proposes a bargaining based pairwise cooperative spectrum sensing (BBPCSS) scheme as a possible solution. In order to increase the sensing accuracy, the CR users are grouped into pairs for cooperative sensing instead of individual sensing. In each pair, rational CR users can bargain with each other over the sensing time division, and thus save the sensing time for data transmission. Our analysis and simulation results suggest that BBPCSS effectively improves the detection probability and enhances the sensing efficiency.