Efficient re-use of CRs under deep fading for improving cooperative sensing performance

It is well known in the research field of cooperative spectrum sensing that deeply faded local cognitive sensors need to be eliminated from contributing to the fusion pool at the fusion center in order to improve global detection reliability. Also, most current works on the topic unrealistically assume that the reporting channels between the cognitive sensors and the fusion center are free of loss and fading. This paper proposes an innovative technique to re-use those eliminated sensors by reassigning them to act as cooperative diversity relays to assist the surviving sensors in combatting outages due to Rayleigh fading in the reporting channel.