Fusion based spectrum decision framework for cognitive radio users

Cognitive radio technology is the outcome of dynamic spectrum access which allows the unlicensed users to occupy the vacant spectrum of licensed users for their communication. Spectrum decision is a fundamental requirement in the successful implementation of cognitive radios which enables the unlicensed users to occupy the best channel out of available channel slots. This paper presents a novel spectrum decision scheme which remains an unexplored area in cognitive radio research. The proposed decision making scheme is based on the fusion of three key channel parameters i.e. channel idle time, channel occupancy status and channel performance, thereby facilitating the secondary user to occupy the targeted channel without impairing the licensed user´s communication while maintaining its own QoS requirements. Decision structural function is used as an evaluation measure to check the robustness of the proposed scheme. We have also evaluated our method using receiver operating characteristic curve which signifies that our proposed method yields promising results.