On the Selection of the Best Detection Performance Sensors for Cognitive Radio Networks

In cooperative spectrum sensing, information from several cognitive radios (CRs) is used for detecting the primary user. To reduce sensing overhead and total energy consumption, it is recommended to cooperate only with the CRs that have the best detection performance. However, the problem is that it is not known a priori which of the CRs have the best detection performance. In this letter, we are proposing three methods for selecting the CRs with the best detection performance based only on hard (binary) local decisions from the CRs. Simulations are used to evaluate and compare the methods. The results indicate that the proposed CR selection methods are able to offer significant gains in terms of system performance.