Mobility-aware, correlation-based node grouping and selection for cooperative spectrum sensing

Cooperative spectrum sensing has been proposed as a solution to increase the sensing function accuracy in cognitive radio networks, but the research has, so far, mainly focused on static scenarios, all but neglecting the impact of mobility on spectrum sensing. In this work a novel cooperative spectrum sensing scheme for mobile cognitive networks, based on a correlation-based, mobility-aware node selection algorithm is proposed. Correlation among sensing decisions is used to divide nodes into groups, and mobility is taken into account in the group leaders selection by means of a node selection metric that considers both sensing performance and mobility. Performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by computer simulations taking into account mobility and a detailed modeling of temporal and spatial correlation of fading and shadowing components in the channel path loss, going way beyond the performance evaluation carried out in previous works on correlation-based cooperative sensing schemes. Simulation results highlight that the proposed metric leads to a significant increase of the update period required to maintain acceptable sensing performance, and correspondingly to a strong reduction in the overhead caused by the grouping and node selection procedure.