This paper describes a novel scheme for the fusion of spectrum sensing information in cooperative spectrum sensing for cognitive radio applications. The scheme combines a spectrum-efficient, pre-distortion-based fusion strategy with an energy-efficient censoring-based fusion strategy to achieve the combined effect of reduction in bandwidth and power consumption during the transmissions of the local decisions to the fusion center. Expressions for computing the key performance metrics of the spectrum sensing of the proposed scheme are derived and validated by means of computer simulations. An extensive analysis of the overall energy efficiency is made, along with comparisons with reference strategies proposed in the literature. It is demonstrated that the proposed fusion scheme can outperform the energy efficiency attained by these reference strategies. Moreover, it attains approximately the same global decision performance of the best among these strategies.
Keywords: bandwidth efficiency; censoring; cognitive radio; cooperative spectrum sensing; energy efficiency; fusion of sensor information; pre-distortion.