Cluster-based cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks under log-normal shadow-fading

In this paper, we consider the cooperative spectrum sensing when the links between primary user and CRs are subject to log-normal shadow fading and there is also noise uncertainty which is modeled as log-normal. The objective is to evaluate the performance of Equal Gain Combining (EGC) of local observations and propose a novel cluster-based algorithm to reduce the reporting channel bandwidth. In our proposed method, CRs in each group sense the spectrum in a distributive manner by the help of EGC method and send the hard decisions to the fusion center where final decision will be make by a simple counting rule. Lower bandwidth of reporting channel is the main advantage of the proposed method.