• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.172-182
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• 2014

In this paper, we investigate the fundamental performance limits of the cooperative sensing using energy detection by considering the unlimited number of sensing nodes. Although a lot of cognitive radio research so far proposed various uses of energy detection because of its simplicity, the performance limits of energy detection have not been studied when a large number of sensing nodes exist. First, we show that when the sensing nodes see the independent and identically distributed channel conditions, then as the number of sensing nodes N goes to infinity, the OR rule of hard decision achieves zero of false alarm Pf for any given target probability of detection $\bar{P_d}$ irrespective of the non-zero received primary user signal to noise ratio ${\gamma}$. Second, we show that under the same condition, when the AND rule of hard decision is used, there exists a lower bound of $P_f$. Interestingly, however, for given $\bar{P_d}$, $P_f$ goes to 1 as N goes to infinity. Third, we show that when the soft decision is used, there exists a way of achieving 100% utilization of secondary user, i.e., the sensing time overhead ratio goes to zero so does $P_f$.We verify our analyses by performing extensive simulations of the proposed unlimited cooperative sensing. Finally, we suggest a way of incorporating the unlimited cooperative sensing into a practical cellular system such as long term evolutionadvanced by exploiting the existing frame structure of absolute blank subframe to implement the in-band sensing.