Efficient cooperative spectrum sensing for three-hop cognitive wireless relay networks

This paper is concerned with cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) mechanisms in three-hop cognitive wireless relay networks (CWRNs). The data transmission from a source to a destination is realised with the aid of two layers of cognitive radio (CR) users which are in the transmission coverage of two primary users. In this paper, we first propose a new CSS scheme for a layer of CR users to improve the spectrum sensing performance by exploiting both local decisions at the CR users and global decisions at the fusion centre. Particularly, we derive the probabilities of missed detection and false alarm for a practical scenario where all sensing, reporting, and backward channels suffer from Rayleigh fading. The derived expressions not only show that our proposed CSS achieves a better sensing performance than the conventional scheme but also characterise the effects of the fading channels on the sensing reliability. Furthermore, we propose a CSS scheme for two CR layers in a three-hop CWRN using binary XOR operator to help reduce one phase of sensing for a higher system throughput.