Multi-Channel Collaborative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive

Radio Networks
Saud Althunibat, Tung Manh Vuong and Fabrizio Granelli
University of Trento, DISI, Trento, Italy
althunibat@disi.unitn.it, manhtung.vuong@studenti.unitn.it, granelli@disi.unitn.it

AbstractCollaborative spectrum sensing (CSS) consumes a

significant amount of energy during sensing and reporting the
sensing results. Such an issue becomes a challenge in the multichannel systems. In this paper we propose two different energyefficient CSS schemes, namely, Reduced-Energy Sensing Scheme
(RESS) and Reduced-Energy Reporting Scheme (RERS). In
RESS, the channels that have been identified as occupied will
not be sensed for a number of next sensing rounds, while in
RERS, only the sensing results of a subset of the sensed channels
will be reported channels. In both schemes, the energy and
time resources expended in CSS will be saved. Moreover, the
saved time will be exploited in data transmission, improving the
throughput. Simulation results show a significant improvement
in the energy efficiency of multi-channel CSS.

I. I NTRODUCTION
In the light of the increasing demand on limited spectrum resources, cognitive radio (CR) has been proposed as
a smart solution for spectrum shortage problem. CR enables
an efficient usage of the licensed spectrum bands, where it
gives unlicensed users, also called cognitive users (CUs), the
capability to exploit the temporally-unused portions of the
licensed spectrum [1].
The initial necessary process of a cognitive transmission is
called spectrum sensing [2]. Spectrum sensing aims at identifying the instantaneous spectrum status in order to use the
unoccupied portions. It is greatly important to perfectly perform spectrum sensing as it guarantees an efficient resources
utilization and avoids collisions with the licensed users. Thus,
aiming at accurate sensing results, spectrum sensing is usually
performed in a collaborative approach, called collaborative
spectrum sensing (CSS) [3], [4], [5].
CSS implies that individual spectrum sensing results should
be reported to a common entity, called fusion center (FC). The
FC is in charge of processing the received results and making a
global decision regarding spectrum availability. Although CSS
improves the reliability of the spectrum decision by mitigating
the shadowing and multi-path fading experienced by individuals [6], it creates other challenges including transmission delay,
energy consumption and security threats [7]. In this work, we
focus on the energy consumption challenge in multi-channel
CSS.
CSS in multi-channel systems expends a significant portion
of time and energy resources due to the large number of
sensed channels. Thus, many works in the literature have
investigated this problem, where some energy-efficient CSS
schemes have been proposed. For example, in [8], the CUs
are divided into non-disjoint subsets such that only one subset
senses the spectrum while the other subsets enter a low power
mode. The energy minimization problem is formulated as a
network lifetime maximization problem with constraints on
the detection accuracy. Another algorithm for user selection
This work is funded by the Research Project GREENET (PITN-GA-2010264759).

is proposed in [9], where the user subset that has the lowest
cost function and guarantees the desired detection accuracy
is selected. The cost function is related to the system energy
consumption. A distributed approach for selecting the participating CUs is proposed in [10], where the expected energy
consumption is calculated by each CU prior to the beginning
of the CSS process: if it is lower than a given threshold,
the corresponding CU will participate; otherwise, it will not
participate. The multi-channel spectrum sensing problem is
formulated as a coalition formation game in [11]. A utility
function of each coalition takes into account both the sensing
accuracy and energy efficiency, and a distributed algorithm
is proposed to find the optimal partition that maximizes the
aggregate utility of all the coalitions in the system.
In this work, we propose two different CSS schemes,
namely, Reduced-Energy Sensing Scheme (RESS) and
Reduced-Energy Reporting Scheme (RERS). In RESS, the
channels that have been identified as occupied will not be
sensed for a number of next sensing rounds. The idea is based
on exploiting the correlation in the licensed users activity. Reducing the number of channels can save the energy consumed
in sensing the non-sensed channels and the energy consumed
in reporting their sensing results. Moreover, the time dedicated
for CSS will be shorter, and hence more time will be reserved
for data transmission, improving the achievable throughput.
However, the achievable throughput might be degraded if the
number of non-sensing rounds is large. Thus, the role of the
number of non-sensing rounds has been discussed. In the
other proposed scheme, RERS, only the sensing results of a
subset of the sensed channels will be reported. Therefore, the
amount of energy consumed in reporting the sensing results
will be reduced. Similar to the RESS, the reporting time will be
shortened, and hence, the data transmission will be extended.
As a result, less energy consumption and more data throughput
can be attained. However, the number of reported channels has
an important role that has been discussed and shown in the
simulation results.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
describes the system model, while the conventional CSS for
multi-channel systems is discussed in Section III. The two
proposed schemes are presented in Section IV. Section V
presents the simulation results of both schemes compared to
the conventional scheme, and the conclusions are drawn in
Section VI
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
Consider a primary network (PN) that includes a set of primary users (PUs). The licensed spectrum of the considered PN
is divided into L identical channels. The channel occupancy
by PUs is modeled as a two-state Markov process as shown
in Fig. 1. As indicated in Fig. 1, each channel can be in one
of the two states, either busy (1) or free (0). The probabilities

shown in Fig.1 represent the transition probabilities between

the two states. For example, P01 is the transition probability
from the free state to a busy state. On the other hand, we
consider another set of N CUs that try to exploit the licensed
channels once they are unused by the PUs. To do so, CUs
sense the licensed spectrum and forward their results to the
FC in order to identify the free channels and perform their
own data transmission.

where the last term represents the average energy consumption

in the data transmission stage, et is the energy amount consumed in data transmission, and the factor (1P0 PF P1 PD )
represents the transmission probability.
Regarding the average achievable throughput by the cognitive radio network (CRN), it can be expresses in terms of the
successfully delivered data in bits as follows
DTC = LP0 (1 PF )RTt

(6)

where R is the average data rate, Tt is the data transmission

time, and the factor P0 (1 PF ) represents the probability of
the correct identification of the free spectrum. Notice that we
consider that the data will be successfully delivered only if
the channel is unoccupied by PUs.
IV. T HE P ROPOSED E NERGY-E FFICIENT S CHEMES
Fig. 1.

The considered channel state model.

The simplest and most efficient spectrum sensing technique

is energy detection. In energy detection, the channel occupancy
is checked by measuring the contained energy for a specific
time called sensing time (ts ). The local sensing results (collected energy samples) are then forwarded to the FC where
they are summed and compared to a predefined threshold ().
If the summed results is larger than , the global decision of
the corresponding channel will identify it as busy. Otherwise,
the channel is identified as free.
The reliability of the global decision is evaluated by two
probabilities, namely, detection probability (PD ) and falsealarm probability (PF ). The former represents the probability
that the channel is identified as busy given that it is actually
busy, while the latter represents the probability that the channel
is identified as busy given that it is actually free. Based on the
made decisions, only the channels that have been identified as
free will be exploited by CUs. The other channels will not be
targeted in order to avoid collisions with PUs.
III. M ULTI -C HANNEL C OLLABORATIVE S ENSING
In the conventional scheme, all channels should be sensed
and the results should be reported to the FC [12]. The
expended time and consumed energy in local sensing by all
CUs according to the conventional scheme are given as follows
TsC = Lts
EsC

= N Les

(1)
(2)

where es is the consumed energy in sensing one channel by

one CU.
Likewise, if we denote the amount of time required to report
one sensing result regarding one channel by tr , The expended
time and consumed energy in results reporting by all CUs
according to the conventional scheme are given as follows
TrC = N Ltr

(3)

ErC = N Ler

(4)

where er is the consumed energy in reporting one sensing

result of one channel by one CU. The difference in calculating TsC and TrC is due to the assumption that CUs sense
simultaneously and report the results based on TDMA scheme.
The total energy consumption can be given as follows
ETC = N L(es + er ) + L(1 P0 PF P1 PD )et

(5)

Clearly, increasing the number of channels increases the

energy consumption in sensing and reporting stages, as shown
in (2) and (4). However, a large number of channels helps
to improve the achievable throughput of the CRN. Therefore,
energy efficient algorithms are highly demanded in order to
limit the energy consumption in multi-channel sensing while
achieving an acceptable amount of the throughput. In the
following we propose two reduced-energy schemes for sensing
and reporting stages.
A. Reduced-Energy Sensing Scheme
Although the CUs can sense a channel simultaneously, the
sensing process still consumes a significant amount of energy
and time in the multi-channel systems. Thus, a limit on the
number of the sensed channels should be kept in order to avoid
high energy/time expenditure. However, reducing the number
of channels may degrade the achievable throughput due to the
probable missing of free channels. Thus, the selection of the
sensed channels among the whole set of the channels plays an
important role in striking a balance between the saved energy
ad the achievable throughput.
In this subsection, we exploit the statistics of the PU
activity in order to limit the number of sensed channels.
As described earlier, the PU activity is modeled as two-state
Markov process, which implies that the next channel state can
be predicted based on the current state. In other words, if a
PU was detected in a specific channel in a sensing round,
there is a high probability that the PU will keep using the
channel during the next sensing round(s). Thus, it is better
not to sense the corresponding channel during these rounds as
the result is almost known. It is noticed that the same action
could be applied if a channel was identified as free and then
the FC realized that the PU is miss-detected due to the failure
in delivering the transmitted data.
Accordingly, the proposed reduced-energy sensing scheme
is performed as follows
At the initialization, all channels should be sensed and
classified as free or busy.
Any channel that has been classified as busy will not be
sensed for B next sensing rounds.
Any channel that has been classified as free and the
transmitted data were not successfully delivered will be
reclassified as busy, and will not be sensed for B next
sensing rounds.
Any channel that has been classified as free and the transmitted data were successfully delivered will be sensed in
the next sensing round.

Fig. 2 shows a flow chart describing the proposed RESS

algorithm. Clearly, as the number of sensed channels in the
proposed RESS is less than or equal to the total number of
available channels (i.e. Ls L), a reduction in the consumed
time in sensing and reporting phases will be gained. This saved
time will be dedicated to data transmission, if any. Moreover,
reducing the sensed channels will save energy as well. On the
other hand, as non-sensed channels will be marked as used,
this will increase both detection and false-alarm probabilities.
Consequently, the amount of transmitted data will decrease
and the transmit energy as well.

Fig. 2.

The flow chart of the proposed RESS for each channel.

The value of B has an important role in the performance

of the proposed RESS. High values of B lead to more energy
saving in the CSS process, whereas the achievable throughput
is degraded since the probability of missing unused channels
increases as B increases. Therefore, B should be carefully
adjusted as will be carried out in the Section V.
B. Reduced-Energy Reporting Scheme
Another significant amount of energy is spent in reporting
the local sensing results to the FC. In addition, a significant
portion of the time frame is consumed in the reporting phase
since CUs report their results consecutively to the FC. Thus,
energy efficient reporting schemes are highly demanded. In
this section we propose a reduced-energy reporting scheme
(RERS) aiming at limiting the amount of the reported data
from the CUs to the FC.
The proposed RERS implies that a CU does not need to
report the local sensing results of all the sensed channels.
Instead, each CU should report only the sensing results of a
selected subset of the channels. The selection of the reported
subset should be carefully chosen in order not to degrade
the overall detection accuracy, and consequently, reduce the
overall achievable throughput. In the proposed RERS, we
allow each CU to report only Lr channels that have the lowest
sensing results among its own sensing results. Therefore, each

CU will report results for a different set of channels based on

its local sensing results.
The proposed RERS reduces only the reporting time, while
the sensing time is identical to the conventional scheme.
However, it should be noticed that the index of each channel
whose sensing result will be reported should be attached and
sent to the FC. Similar to the RESS, the saved reporting time
will be exploited in data transmission, leading to improve
throughput. On the other hand, since the number of reporting
CUs is different among channels ( N ), both detection
and false-alarm probabilities should be affected. As a result,
the achievable throughput, energy consumption and energy
efficiency will experience contrasting influences as will be
shown in Section V.
The number of reported channels per user (Lr ) has a dominating role in the performance of the proposed RERS. Low
values of Lr yield in a lower energy consumption accompanied
with a lower throughput, while high values of Lr lead to a less
energy saving but the throughput will be slightly affected.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
A cognitive radio network of 20 CUs is considered. The
number of channels is assumed 10 identical channels. For each
channel, P00 and P11 are considered 0.7 and 0.9, respectively.
The variance of the licensed signal and the noise are assumed
0.1 and 1, respectively. The total frame length is assumed
100 ms. The time dedicated for sensing one channel is 1 ms
with a sampling frequency of 0.1 GHz, while the time spent in
reporting one sensing result is 0.4 ms. The consumed powers
during sensing, reporting and data transmission stages are
assumed 0.1 W , 0.25 W and 0.25 W , respectively. As the
energy is the product of time and power, for a channel, the
sensing energy is 0.1 mJoule and the reporting energy is
0.1 mJoule. At the FC, the global decision regarding the
availability of a channel is obtained by comparing the average
of the sensing results to a predefined fusion threshold that
is assumed = 1.05. The data rate over one channel is
considered 100 Kbps.
A. The performance of the proposed RESS
In this subsection, we evaluate the proposed RESS in terms
of energy consumption, throughput and energy efficiency.
Fig. 3, Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 show the effect of the variable B
on the total energy consumption, total achievable throughput
and energy efficiency, respectively.
As presented in Fig. 3, increasing the values of B results
in decreasing the total energy consumption. This is expected
since as we increase B the number of sensed channels will
be reduced, and thus the energy consumed in sensing and
reporting will be lower. However, reducing the number of
sensed channels degrades the total achievable throughput of
the considered CRN, as shown in Fig. 4. In Fig. 4, the initial
improvement in the throughput, i.e. at B = 2 and B = 3, is
due to not sensing the channels that are almost occupied. This
interesting property of the proposed RESS gives us the ability
to decrease energy consumption and simultaneously improve
the throughput.
The energy efficiency behavior as B increases, shown in
Fig. 5, is almost improving. Such a behavior is due to the
larger reduction in the energy consumption accompanied by a
less reduction in the throughput.
The shown results motivate the need of optimizing the
variable B. High values of B may save high amount of

0.045

2.5
Propsed RESS
Conventional CSS

0.04

Energy Efficiency [bit/Joule]

Total energy consumption [Joule]

0.05

0.035

0.03

x 10

2
Proposed RESS
Conventional CSS
1.5

0.025
0.5
0.02

Fig. 3. The total energy consumption versus B for the proposed RESS and
the conventional CSS.
10000

Fig. 5. The energy efficiency versus B for the proposed RESS and the
conventional CSS.

8000
7000
6000
5000

0.042
0.04

4000
3000

Fig. 4. The total achievable throughput versus B for the proposed RESS
and the conventional CSS.

energy and achieve high energy efficiency. On the other hand,

the throughput is deeply degraded at high values of B. An
option is to optimize B for throughput maximization setup in
which the optimal B is the value that achieves the highest
throughput. Another option is to find the optimal B to the
value that maximizes energy efficiency. However, to avoid the
negative effect on the throughput, a threshold can be set on
the minimum achievable throughput.
B. The performance of the proposed RERS
We consider the same simulation parameters that have been
considered in the previous subsection. Additionally, the time
and the energy consumed to report one channel-index are
assumed 50s and 50Joule , respectively. In order to reduce
the number of reported indexes, we report the minimum
of L Lr and Lr . Fig. 6 plots the energy consumption
only sensing and reporting process, i.e. without including the
transmit energy, versus the number of reported channels per
CU. Clearly, the energy expenditure increases as Lr increases
until it reaches the maximum energy consumption (when
all channels are sensed and reported) which corresponds the
conventional CSS. However, taking into account the total

Energy consumption in CSS [Joule]

Total achievable throghput [bits]

energy consumption, the conventional CSS consumes less

energy than the proposed RERS whatever the value of Lr ,
as shown in Fig. 7. This is due to the fact that the saved time
from reporting process will be exploited in data transmission,
and although both reporting and transmission spend the same
power, the transmit energy should be less as it conditioned
by the transmission probability, i.e. it only exists if a data
transmission occurs.

Proposed RESS
Conventional CSS

9000

2000

2
B

0.038
0.036
0.034

Proposed RERS
Conventional CSS

0.032
0.03
0.028
0.026
0.024
0.022

10

The number of reported channels (Lr)

Fig. 6. The energy consumption in sensing and reporting versus the number
of reported channels per CU Lr for the proposed RERS and the conventional
CSS.

Fig. 8 shows the total achievable throughput versus the

number of reported channels Lr . As the number of reported
channels increases, the saved time from reporting process will
be decreased. Thus, the transmission time will be less, and
consequently, the total throughput will be degraded as shown
in Fig. 8.
Notice that the minimum energy consumption occurs at
Lr = L (when all channels are reported), see Fig. 7, while
the maximum throughput can be achieved at Lr = 1 (when
only one channel per CU is reported), see Fig. 8. Therefore,
it is worth considering another comparison metric to evaluate
the performance of the proposed RERS. In Fig. 9, the energy

0.2

12

x 10

Proposed RERS
Conventional CSS

0.18

Proposed RERS
Conventional CSS

Energy efficiency [bit/Joule]

Total energy consumption [Joule]

11
0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06

10

0.04
6
0.02
2

10

The number of reported channels (Lr)

efficiency versus the number of reported channels per CU is

shown for the proposed RERS and the conventional CSS.
Obviously, the proposed RERS can achieve higher energy
efficiency than the conventional CSS for the whole range of
Lr . Furthermore, it is noticed that based on the results shown
in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 both the maximum throughput and the
maximum energy efficiency occur when only once channel
per CU is reported (Lr = 1).
4

x 10

Proposed RERS
Conventional CSS

Total achievable throughput [bits]

1.5

0.5

10

The number of reported channels (Lr)

Fig. 7. The total energy consumption versus the number of reported channels
per CU Lr for the proposed RERS and the conventional CSS.

2.5

10

The number of reported channels (L )

r

Fig. 8.
The total achievable throughput versus the number of reported
channels per CU Lr for the proposed RERS and the conventional CSS.

VI. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the problem of high energy consumption in
multi-channel cooperative spectrum sensing is investigated.
Two energy-efficient schemes have been proposed, namely,
reduced-energy sensing scheme and reduced-energy reporting
scheme. The proposed sensing scheme aims at reducing the
consumed energy in sensing stage by reducing the number of
sensed channels, while the proposed reporting scheme reduces
the number of reported sensing results. The effects on energy
consumption, achievable throughput and energy efficiency
have been discussed in the paper. Simulation results have

Fig. 9. The energy efficiency versus the number of reported channels per
CU Lr for the proposed RERS and the conventional CSS.

shown considerable amount of improvement on the overall

performance compared to the conventional schemes.
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