What is Spectrum Hole

A dual-hop cooperative spectrum sensing approach is studied in detail, where each cooperative Cognitive Radio (CR) makes a binary decision based on the local observation, by using an improved energy detector, and then forwards it to a common receiver. At the common receiver, all binary decisions are fused together. The authors provide an analytical framework for the analysis of performance of the improved energy detector-based cooperative CR network. They discuss how to choose an optimal number of cooperating CRs in order to minimize the total error rate by using an improved energy detector over perfect and imperfect reporting channels. Further, the error performance of dual-hop cooperative spectrum sensing with multiple antennae-based CR is discussed. The authors also exploit the multi-hop cooperative communication approach in an improved energy detector-based CR network for increasing the coverage area of the secondary communication systems with reduced power consumption.