Adaptive Double Threshold Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Algorithm Based on History Energy Detection

Abstract

Spectrum sensing is one of the key technologies in the field of cognitive radio, which has been widely studied. Among all the sensing methods, energy detection is the most popular because of its simplicity and no requirement of any prior knowledge of the signal. In the case of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the traditional double-threshold energy detection method employs fixed thresholds and there is no detection result when the energy is between high and low thresholds, which leads to poor detection performance such as lower detection probability and longer spectrum sensing time. To address these problems, we proposed an adaptive double-threshold cooperative spectrum sensing algorithm based on history energy detection. In each sensing period, we calculate the weighting coefficient of thresholds according to the SNR of all cognitive nodes; thus, the upper and lower thresholds can be adjusted adaptively. Furthermore, in a single cognitive node, once the current energy is within the high and low thresholds, we utilize the average energy of history sensing times to rejudge. To ensure the real-time performance, if the average history energy is still between two thresholds, the single-threshold method will be used for the end decision. Finally, the fusion center aggregates the detection results of each node and obtains the final cooperative conclusion through “or” criteria. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper improved detection performance significantly compared with the other four different double-threshold algorithms.