Hybrid SDF-HDF Cluster-Based Fusion Scheme for Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

In cognitive radio networks, cooperative spectrum sensing schemes are proposed to improve the performance of detecting licensees by secondary users. Commonly, the cooperative sensing can be realized by means of hard decision fusion (HDF) or soft decision fusion (SDF) schemes. The SDF schemes are superior to the HDF ones in terms of the detection performance whereas the HDF schemes are outperforming the SDF ones when the traffic overhead is taken into account. In this paper, a hybrid SFD-HDF cluster-based approach is developed to jointly exploit the advantages of SFD and HDF schemes. Different SDF schemes have been proposed and compared within a given cluster whereas the OR-rule base HDF scheme is applied to combine the decisions reported by cluster headers to a common receiver or base station. The computer simulations show promising results as the performance of the proposed scenario of hybridizing soft and hard fusion schemes is significantly outperforming other different combinations of conventional SDF and HDF schemes while it noticeably reduces the network traffic overhead.