Threshold selection and cooperation in fading environment of cognitive radio network: Consequences on spectrum sensing and throughput

In this paper, we have analyzed the effects of cooperative spectrum sensing and threshold selection over the performance of cognitive radio network (CRN) using energy detector in the fading environment. Firstly, we have compared the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve of both the cooperative and non-cooperative scenario for different fading environments. Further, we have illustrated the probability density function (PDF) of binary hypothesis for proposed CRN system, and analyzed the necessity of dynamic selection of threshold over that of the fixed threshold selection. In addition to this, we have compared the spectrum sensing performance and throughput of proposed CRN for fixed and dynamic threshold selection approaches on the spectrum sensing error at low and high signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio. Moreover, we have improved the sensing performance of proposed CRN by employing cooperative spectrum sensing with dynamic threshold selection scheme. Further, the percentage improvement in detection probability, throughput and total error probability of the proposed system model has been presented.