928
5, MAY 2013
Energy-Efficient Spectrum Sensing Strategy in Cognitive Radio Networks
Dongyan Huang, Guixia Kang, Member, IEEE, Bo Wang, and Hui Tian, Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this letter, a novel metric is proposed to evaluate
the average sensing energy-efficiency of cognitive radio (CR)
networks. A theorem as well as the related closed-form expression
for determining the optimum number of cooperative sensing
cognitive terminals is provided to optimize the proposed metric.
According to the theorem, we propose an efficient terminal-
assignment strategy for coordinated spectrum sensing. Simula-
tion results show that the proposed strategy can significantly
improve the overall average sensing energy efficiency of the CR
system.
Index Terms—Cognitive radio, energy-efficiency, coopera-
tive/coordinated spectrum sensing.
I. I NTRODUCTION
C OGNITIVE radio (CR) [1] is a potential technique for
improving spectrum efficiency by detecting unoccupied
spectrum holes and assigning them to cognitive terminals
(CTs). Therefore, spectrum sensing is an essential function of
CR. On one hand, CT has to execute immediate and reliable
spectrum sensing to protect primary uses (PUs). Cooperative
spectrum sensing has been proposed as an efficient approach
to improve sensing reliability by fusing the sensing results
from different CTs and making a decision on the presence or
absence of a PU [2]. On the other hand, to obtain more spec-
trum opportunities, CR networks have to perform wideband
spectrum sensing, which is difficult for a single CT because of
energy and hardware constraints. To address this problem, [3]
proposed a coordinated spectrum sensing scheme, in which the
wideband spectrum is divided into several narrow channels,
after which CTs are assigned to detect different channels
simultaneously.
In cooperative/coordinated sensing, higher sensing accuracy
can be achieved by assigning more CTs to sense the channel.
However, the participation of more CTs will result in the
increased consumption of spectrum sensing and reporting
energy. Considering that the CT is typically battery-powered,
energy efficiency is important for CR networks.
An optimal terminal-assignment strategy for a coordinated
sensing scheme was proposed in [4] to improve sensing
performance. However, [4] does not consider the energy-
efficiency issue. The authors in [5] identified the optimal
sensing interval and the number of sensors to minimize
sensing energy consumption assuming that all CTs exhibit
the same sensing performance. The authors in [6] reduced
Manuscript received January 17, 2013. The associate editor coordinating
the review of this letter and approving it for publication was O. Dobre.
This work was supported in part by the Important National Science and
Technology Specific Projects with No. (2010ZX03005-001-03), and the New
Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET) with NCET-11-0593.
The authors are with the Key Lab. of Universal Wireless Communications
for the Ministry of Education, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommu-
nications, Beijing 100876, China (e-mail: huangdongyan-gua@163.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2013.031913.130131
1089-7798/13$31.00 
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO.
sensing energy consumption by dividing the CTs into several
subsets and activating one subset at certain period. A partial
spectrum sensing algorithm with decision result prediction and
modification techniques [7] was proposed to reduce the co-
operative spectrum sensing energy. However, previous works
[5]– [7] merely focused on the minimization of sensing energy
consumption while failing to identify the metric that measures
both sensing performance and energy consumption. The opti-
mization of overall sensing energy efficiency performance in
multi-channel and multi-CT cases, i.e., coordinated spectrum
sensing, is also scarcely discussed.
In this letter, a metric is proposed to evaluate the average
sensing energy efficiency of cooperative spectrum sensing
scheme. To optimize the proposed metric, we provide a
theorem as well as the related closed-form expression for
determining the optimum number of cooperative CTs. Fur-
thermore, we extend this metric to measure the average
sensing energy efficiency of the coordinated spectrum sensing
scheme. According to the theorem, a CT-assignment strategy
for coordinated spectrum sensing is proposed to optimize the
overall average sensing energy-efficiency.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
In this letter, we consider a centralized CR system with
one cognitive base station (CBS) and L cooperative CTs. The
CR system can opportunistically access a wideband spectrum
that can be divided into K non-overlapping narrow channels,
where L  K. The CBS assigns CTs to detect different
channels simultaneously, and one CT can detect one channel
in one sensing slot. Each CTs performs local spectrum sensing
using energy detection. By combining the sensing results from
CTs, the CBS makes the final decision on the presence or
absence of a PU in each channel.
Assuming that the PU signals are subject to Rayleigh
fading channels, the probability of false alarm Pf a and the
average missed detection probability Pmd can respectively be
expressed as in [8].
Considering that [9] has proven that the OR rule always
outperforms the AND and majority rules in energy detector-
based cooperative spectrum sensing, we assume that the CBS
will apply the OR rule for fusion. Thus, the probabilities of
missed detection and false alarm of channel k are respectively
 l,k
Qkmd = Pmd (1)
l∈Dk
and 
Qkf a = 1 − (1 − Pfl,k
a ), (2)
l∈Dk
where Dk is the CT set assigned to detect channel k; and
l,k
Pmd and Pfl,k
a are the probability of missed detection and false
alarm of CT l for channel k, respectively.
c 2013 IEEE
HUANG et al.: ENERGY-EFFICIENT SPECTRUM SENSING STRATEGY IN COGNITIVE RADIO NETWORKS 929

In this letter, all local false alarm probabilities are set to 250 Pmd=0.1

be identical by assigning the same decision threshold to all Pmd=0.2

200 Pmd=0.3
CTs. For any CT, the missed detection probability for different
channels usually varies. Thus, the missed detection probability 150
across L CTs can be compactly represented in matrix form as

ηEE(dB/Joule/CT)
l,k
Pmd = [Pmd ]L×K , where l = 1, 2, · · · , L, k = 1, 2, · · · , K. 100

50
III. S ENSING E NERGY-E FFICIENCY M ETRIC AND
M ATHEMATICAL A NALYSIS 0

In this section, a novel metric called average sensing energy- -50

efficiency is proposed to evaluate the sensing energy-efficiency
-100
of a CT in the cooperative sensing scheme. A theorem as
well as the related closed-form expression for determining the 0 5 10 15 20 25
Number of CTs used for cooperative sensing
optimum number of cooperative CTs are provided.
Fig. 1. Average sensing energy-efficiency vs. the number of CTs (α=0.01J).
A. Sensing Energy-Efficiency Metric
Before describing the metric, we first list the primary
According to (7), we obtain f  (n)|n=n∗ < 0. Therefore,
notations that are going to be used in this section. ∗
n is the unique global optimum solution.
• α: a CT’s total sensing and reporting energy consumption
In practice, the number of cooperative CTs should be an
(Joule) per time unit. α is assumed to be the same for every
integer. Thus, the achievable optimum number of cooperative
CT.
sensing CTs should be modified as follows:
• Es (n) = αn: overall energy consumption per time unit
when n CTs sense one channel cooperatively. n∗ = [logPmd (Qmd )2 ], (9)
• Qmd : threshold of missed detection.
where [·] is a rounding to the nearest integer operation.
• Qmd : probability of missed detection of cooperative
Theorem 1 has been proven.
spectrum sensing.
To verify Theorem 1, Fig. 1 shows the average sensing
• G = 10 lg(Qmd /Qmd): cooperative sensing gain.
energy efficiency of cooperative spectrum sensing scheme at
Average Sensing Energy-Efficiency Metric: Define ηEE
different numbers of cooperative CTs.
as average sensing energy efficiency, which represents coop-
From Fig. 1, a lower Pmd indicates a higher maximum av-
erative sensing gain per Joule of energy per CT, i.e., sensing
erage sensing energy efficiency but smaller optimum number
energy-efficiency per CT. ηEE can be expressed as
of cooperative sensing CTs.
G
ηEE = (dB/Joule/CT). (3)
nEs (n) IV. P ROBLEM F ORMULATION AND P ROPOSED S TRATEGY
In this section, we extend the metric to coordinated spec-
B. Mathematical Analysis trum sensing. We aim at the optimization of the overall average
Given an unified local Pmd , the optimization of ηEE can sensing energy-efficiency of coordinated spectrum sensing
be formulated as scheme and formulate this task as an integer programming
10 lg(Qmd /(Pmd )n ) problem. According to Theorem 1 given in Section III, a
max ηEE (n) = , (4) CT-assignment strategy is proposed to solve the optimization
n αn2
where n is the number of CTs used for cooperative sensing, problem.
and n > 0.
Theorem 1: Assuming that all CTs possess same local A. Problem Formulation
missed detection probability Pmd , a unique global optimum The analysis given in Section III emphasizes that better
solution exists for problem (4), as given by sensing performance of the cooperative CT results in higher
optimum ηEE . Some CTs are better candidates for detecting
n∗ = [logPmd (Qmd )2 ]. (5)
some channels because they are subject to less noise or multi-
10 lg(Qmd /(Pmd ) ) n
path fading. Therefore, an optimal CT-assignment strategy that
Proof: Let f (n) = . The first and
αn2 optimizes the overall average sensing energy-efficiency can be
second derivatives of f (n) are shown in (6) and (7), respec- identified. Let xlk indicate whether CT l is assigned to sense
tively. channel k, that is,
10 lg(Pmd )n /(Qmd )2 ) 
f  (n) = (6) 1 if CT l is assigned to channel k;
αn3 x =
lk
(10)
0 else.
20 lg((Qmd )3 /(Pmd )n )
f  (n) = (7) Thus, the optimization of sensing energy efficiency for coor-
αn4
dinate spectrum sensing can be formulated as follows:
Let f  (n) = 0, a unique stationary point n∗ exists in the
  
domain of the function f (n) K K
10 lg(Qmd /( xlk =1 Pmdl,k
))
max ηEE =
k
L ; (11)
n∗ = logPmd (Qmd )2 . (8) X
k=1 k=1 ( l=1 x )
lk 2
930 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 5, MAY 2013

 TABLE I
s.t. Qkf a = 1 − (1 − Pf a ) ≤ Qf a , ∀ k; (12) C OMPUTATIONAL C OMPLEXITY C OMPARISON BETWEEN THE PROPOSED
xlk =1 ALGORITHM AND I TERATIVE H UNGARIAN ALGORITHM


K Algorithm Computation Complexity Instantiation
xlk ≤ 1, ∀ l, (13) (L, K, T ) =
k=1 (60, 10, 5)
Iterative Greedy O(T KL) 3000
where ηEE
k
is the average sensing energy-efficiency of channel Iterative Hungarian O(T L4 ) 64800000
k, whereas Qf a is the false alarm probability threshold.
Constraint (13) ensures that each CT can be only assigned TABLE II
SIMULATION PARAMETERS
to sense one channel in one sensing slot.

Parameter Value
B. Proposed Strategy Threshold of missed detection probability, Qf a 0.1
To solve problem (11), CBS has to determine: 1) how many Threshold of false alarm probability, Qmd 0.1
Number of channels, K 10
CTs should be assigned to sense each channel and 2) which Number of cognitive terminals, L Rang from 30 to 120
CTs should be assigned to sense a certain channel. α 0.01 J
When all CTs exhibit the same sensing performance for the Path loss exponent 3
Fading Rayleigh fading
same channel, the optimum number of assigned CTs can easily
be derived based on Theorem 1 given in Section III. However,
when different CTs have different Pmd for different channels,
the optimum solution can be achieved through an exhaustive The weaker CTs are then discarded to equate the number
search, which is impractical because of its high complexity. of assigned CTs to the theoretical optimum CT number. A
In this letter, we propose a low-complexity coordinated detailed description of Stage 3 is given as follows:
spectrum sensing strategy called Energy-Efficient (E-E) Iter- Step 1: For channel k, update Nopt k
by (9) using the
ative Greedy strategy. The proposed strategy comprises three k 1
 L l,k lk
assigned CTs’ P md = N k l=1 Pmd x , where Nasgn is
k
stages: asgn
the number of CTs assigned to channel k.
Stage 1: Initialization:
Step 2: If Noptk
< Nasgnk
, then discard Nasgn
k
− Nopt
k
Input Pmd , K, L, Pf a , Qmd , Qf a .
CTs with higher Pmd from the assignment subset, update the
Each channel’s initial theoretical optimum number of CTs
corresponding element of assignment matrix X as 0, and then
N0k is calculated by (9) using average missed detection prob-
k k L go back to step 1. Otherwise, go to step 3.
ability P md , where P md = L1 l=1 Pmd l,k
. Step 3: Given that Noptk
= Nasgn
k
, k = 1, 2, · · · , K, the
max max
Initialize Nopt = min{N0 , Ncoop }, where Ncoop
k k
= algorithm terminates and outputs X as final assignment result,
log1−Pf a (1 − Qf a ) is the maximum number of CTs co- or update k = k + 1, and go to step 1.
operatively sensing one channel to maintain Qf a . In Step 2 of Stage 2, pi,· = 1 ensures that the assigned CT
Initialize the assignment matrix X = [xlk ]L×K as X = 0; is unavailable for next steps.
the channel index k = 1; the operation matrix P = [pl,k ]L×K
as P = Pmd ;
Calculate the initial assignment iterative time t = C. Complexity Analysis
max{Nopt k
}. From the description above, the computational complexity
∀k
Stage 2: Assignment, where CTs are assigned to sense of the proposed algorithm is based on the number of com-
a channel in an iterative manner. In each iterative step, the parisons. The complexities of Stages 2 and 3 are respectively
greedy algorithm is run, and one CT is allocated to each O(T KL) and O(KT log T ), where T = max{Nopt k
}. Consid-
∀k
channel in turn. The assigned CTs are unavailable in the next ering that L  Nopt
k
, the complexity of the proposed strategy
steps. Provided that Nopt k
CTs have been assigned to detect is approximately O(T KL).
channel k, no CT is assigned to channel k in the next iterative Table I shows that the computation complexity of the
steps. A detailed description of Stage 2 is given as follows: proposed algorithm is significantly lower than that of the
Step 1: If Nopt
k
CTs have been assigned to channel k, then Iterative Hungarian algorithm.
go to step 3; else, run the greedy algorithm for P to assign
the CT with the lowest Pmd to sense channel k, and then go
to step 2. V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
Step 2: For every CT (denoted as i) assigned to sense Considering demand of wideband sensing and CT hardware,
channel k in previous step, set pi,· = 1 and xik = 1. the entire spectrum of interest is divided into 10 disjoint
Step 3: If k = K, go to step 4; else, update k = k + 1, and narrow channels in the simulation scenarios. We assume that
then go to step 1. only one channel is licensed to one PU.
Step 4: If t > 1, update t = t − 1 and set k = 1 then go to Based on IEEE 802.22 [10], the CTs are randomly dis-
step 1 to continue the iteration; else, set k = 1, and then go tributed within a 30 km radius of the CBS, and the CBS is
to Stage 3. approximately 150 km away from each PU. Pf a is set as 0.01
Stage 3: Modification, where the theoretical optimum num- for all the local sensing [8]. Simulation parameters are listed
ber of CTs is updated by (9) using the assigned CTs’ P md . in Table II.
HUANG et al.: ENERGY-EFFICIENT SPECTRUM SENSING STRATEGY IN COGNITIVE RADIO NETWORKS
70
Case I
65
Average ηEE (dB/J/CT) over the channels
60
55
50
45
40
35
30 40 50
Number of cognitive terminals
Fig. 2. Sensing energy efficiency performance of various algorithms.
In Fig. 2, we compare the performance of the proposed E-E
Iterative Greedy algorithm-based strategy, Iterative Hungarian
algorithm-based strategy [4] and E-E Iterative Hungarian
algorithm-based strategy that aims at the optimization of
average sensing energy efficiency by assigning CTs to sense
using the Hungarian algorithm. The strategy proposed in [4]
aims at optimizing the overall missed detection and will
max
terminate to maintain certain Qf a if Ncoop = 10 terminals
have been assigned to sense every channel. In addition, the
average upper bound derived by using the minimum local
detection probability of Pmd is also given as a reference.
Notably, the upper bound is not achievable.
To derive the statistical results, we obtain 10000 missed
detection probability matrices and run all strategies for each
matrix separately. We then compare the average performance
of the proposed strategy with those of the compared strategies.
As Fig. 2 shows, the performance of the proposed strategy
is close to that of the compared strategies if the number of
CTs is less than the sum of the optimum cooperative number
of CTs over the channels (see Fig. 2, Case I) because all
strategies assign all CTs to sense in this case. However, the
proposed strategy is more practical than the strategy proposed
in [4] because of the former’s lower complexity.
The proposed strategy significantly outperforms the strategy
proposed in [4] when the number of CTs is greater than the
sum of the optimum cooperative number of CTs over the
channels (see Fig. 2, Case II). The advantage becomes more
evident as the number of CTs increases. The average ηEE
of the proposed strategy is approximately 1.7 times higher
than that of the strategy proposed in [4] when the number
of CTs is 120 because the proposed strategy balances energy
consumption and sensing efficiency effectively, especially in
a CR system with a large number of CTs.
931
Fig. 2 shows that the performance of the proposed strategy
Case II
can approach that of the E-E iterative Hungarian algorithm-
based strategy. However, the proposed strategy is more prac-
tical than the E-E iterative Hungarian strategy because of
the former’s lower complexity. Fig. 2 further shows that the
performance of the proposed strategy can approach the average
Upper Bound upper bound as the number of CTs increases.
E-E Iterative Greedy
Iterative Hungarian [4] VI. C ONCLUSION
E-E Iterative Hungarian
This paper studies the approach by which to measure
and improve the sensing energy-efficiency performance of
CR networks. A novel metric measured in [dB/Joule/CT] is
proposed to measure the average sensing energy efficiency
60 70 80 90 100 110 120
performance of the cooperative/coordinated sensing scheme.
The proposed metric is useful for evaluating tradeoff sensing
gain and energy consumption. We show the application of the
metric in coordinated spectrum sensing. The proposed E-E
Iterative Greedy algorithm-based CT-assignment strategy aims
at the optimization of average sensing energy efficiency per-
formance. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy
can effectively improve the average sensing energy-efficiency
performance of CR systems, especially those containing a
large number of CTs.
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