Sensing-Throughput Tradeoff for Cognitive Radio in TV White Spaces

Cognitive Radio (CR) dynamically finds the spectrum opportunity i.e. spectrum hole in space-time-frequency and code to do its adaptive transmission without harming the incumbent or the Primary User (PU). TV white spaces (TVWS) are the unused or underutiliised bands in the UHF and VHF part of the band which according to Federal Communication Commission (FCC) can be exploited if the secondary user (SU) with CR capabilities can adequately accommodate the transmission without introducing the harmful interference to incumbent or Primary Users (PU). TV band offers excellent building penetration and less propagation losses when compared to ISM bands of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. The focus of this article is to study cooperative sensing-throughout trade-off for SU with CR capabilities in TVWS. It is shown that with M cognitive users in cooperation we can get increased throughput with increase in sensing time for a fixed probability of false alarm and target probability of detection.