Optimisation of virtual cooperative spectrum sensing for UAV‐based interweave cognitive radio system

Abstract

In an interweave cognitive radio system, cooperative spectrum sensing has been recognised as a key technology to enable secondary users to opportunistically access licensed spectrum band without harmful interference to primary users. At the same time, the unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with spectrum sensing and data transmission facilities is gaining more popularity in different applications. An unmanned aerial vehicle-based interweave cognitive radio is investigated in which the unmanned aerial vehicle is used as a secondary user, but unlike the participation of multiple secondary users in traditional cooperative spectrum sensing, a virtual cooperative spectrum sensing model is introduced into the periodic spectrum sensing frame structure. Afterwards, the authors further propose an energy-efficient virtual cooperative spectrum sensing with the sequential 0/1 fusion rule to reduce the average number of decisions without any loss in the detection performance. Sequentially, the authors formulate the optimisation of virtual cooperative spectrum sensing for unmanned aerial vehicle-based interweave cognitive ratio system as the optimal sequential 0/1 fusion problem on the basis of the K-out-of-N fusion rule and prove the formulated problem indeed has one optimal K, which yields the highest throughput. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the correctness of theoretical analyses and the effectiveness of the virtual cooperative spectrum sensing with the sequential 0/1 fusion rule.