Comparative analysis of blind detectors in a cluster-based cooperative Spectrum Hole detection

Prevention of authorized users from interference determine the accurate detection of Spectrum Hole (SH) is of great importance in a Spectrum Shearing Network (SSN). However, multipath fading and shadowing affect the accurate detection of SH resulting in interference. Cluster-Based Cooperative Spectrum Hole Detection (CBCSHD) used to address this problem depends on detector and number of clusters. Hence, comparative analysis of blind detectors in CBCSHD is carried out to evaluate its performance with various blind detectors and number of clusters. The CBCSHD is carried out using six Cognitive Users (CUs) that jointly carry out detection of SH and each of the CUs performs local sensing using Eigenvalue Detector (EVD), Energy Detector (ED) and Cyclostationary Detector (CD). The CUs form clusters to reduce reporting overhead between CUs. The local sensing results from individual user are combined at the Cluster Head (CH) using majority fusion rule. The performance of each of the detectors in CBCSHD is evaluated using Probability of Detection (PD) and Sensing Time (ST). PD values of 0.7661, 0.7160 and 0.6229 are obtained at SNR of 4 dB for ED, CD and EVD, respectively, while ST values of 3.0707, 3.7163 and 4.0907 s are obtained for ED, CD and EVD, respectively. The results obtained show that ED has the highest detection rate, followed by CD, while EVD shows the worst detection rate.