Optimal Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Under Faded and Bandwidth Limited Control Channels

Most of the cooperative spectrum sensing related research assumes system models with perfect control channel (i.e. with unlimited channel bandwidth and no channel errors). However, the assumption is not realistic and can lead to incorrect conclusions regarding the performance analysis of the cooperative spectrum sensing detection capabilities. This paper proposes a novel cooperative spectrum sensing framework that mitigates the imperfect control channel features, like the limited control channel bandwidth and error proneness, and achieves the detection performances of cooperative spectrum sensing under ideal control channel. It utilizes node clustering and multi-antenna spatial multiplexing (i.e. beamforming) and provides a generic framework that can be exploited by any cooperative spectrum sensing and fusion technique. The performance analysis shows that the proposed framework alleviates the control channel bandwidth limitation and significantly decreases the control channel error rate. The performance evaluation results also show that the proposed framework achieves the upper bound detection performances, i.e. achieves the same detection performances as the conventional cooperative spectrum sensing with ideal control channel.