Novel Distributed Spectrum Sensing Techniques for Cognitive Radio Networks

We consider distributed spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks with multiple primary and secondary user terminals. Two novel techniques based on the sphericity test, namely, the multisample sphericity test and meta analysis, are analysed in such a scenario. Instead of sending all the raw data received at the secondary user terminals, as in the case with centralized spectrum sensing, in the multisample sphericity and meta analysis tests only one or two real numbers are required to be sent to the central processor to make a decision about the presence of primary users. Accurate analytical expressions on the false alarm probability are derived for both techniques and numerical examples are provided to verify their accuracy. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves are also presented to compare the performance of the proposed methods and other simple fusion techniques.