Energy-efficient cooperative sensing scheduling for multi-band cognitive radio networks

In this paper, by taking both sensing performance and energy efficiency into consideration, the Cooperative Sensing Scheduling (CSS) problem for multi-band Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) is investigated under a practical scenario where both Primary User (PU) channels and Secondary Users (SUs) have heterogeneous characteristics. Unlike many existing works that merely claim that the CSS problem is NP-hard and then turn to heuristic methods, we analyze this problem under a solid discrete-convex framework. After formulating the CSS problem as a nonlinear binary programming problem, we adopt a three-step approach to solve it. In the first step, the number of SUs assigned to sense each PU channel is determined with the M/M^natural-convex theory. Based on the results obtained in the first step, we then find the SU assignment using the L/L^natural-convex theory in the second step. In the last step, the optimal number of SUs participating in sensing is obtained based on the SU assignment obtained in step two. By combining these three steps, a complete and efficient SU assignment scheme is obtained. Numerical results are provided to evaluate the performance of our proposed SU assignment scheme and validate the theoretical analysis.