Energy detection based spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks over spatially-correlated channels

The well-known energy detector, due to its simplicity, has been proposed as an efficient spectrum sensing method for cognitive radio networks. However, shadowing and fading degrade performance of energy detector. In this paper, to combat these effects, we exploit multiple antennas for each user and cooperation among users. Moreover, we consider spatial correlation among users as well as among antennas to evaluate the method in a realistic environment. From simulation results, it can be found that two secondary users (SUs) each having three antennas show a better performance than a single SU with twenty antennas.