Cooperative Multiband Joint Detection With Correlated Spectral Occupancy in Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, a frequency-coupled optimum linear energy combiner (OLEC) structure, recently proposed for single user scenarios, is generalized to multiple users and integrated into the spatial-spectral joint detection framework introduced by Quan , to take further advantage of subband occupancy correlation in cooperative wideband spectrum sensing. In particular, the design of the detection thresholds and fusion weights used by a bank of subband multiuser OLECs is formulated as a joint optimization problem, i.e. maximization of aggregate opportunistic throughput under interference constraints (or vice versa). Through numerical experiments with a Markov model of subband occupancy, the proposed scheme is shown to significantly enhance CR network performance in terms of these global metrics.