Impact of Propagation Environment on Cooperative Spectrum Sensing with Direct Conversion Receiver

This article analyzes the performance of an eigenvalue-based cooperative spectrum sensing cognitive radio (CR) system under the joint influence of short- (<tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\alpha-\mu$</tex> model) and long-term (Gamma model) fading phenomena, path loss (powerlaw decay), and mobility (random way-point). Each CR adopts a direct conversion receiver. The performance is evaluated under both slow- and fast-fading channels. The results demonstrate that the shadowing parameter and the path loss exponent significantly influence the spectrum sensing performance. Furthermore, the coverage analysis under various channel conditions indicates that the severity of shadowing significantly impacts system coverage capabilities. Less severe shadowing allows for greater coverage without compromising performance. Additionally, increasing the channel severity necessitates more CRs to maintain the desired performance, whereas less severe channels allow for effective performance with fewer CRs. It is revealed that the mobility scenario requires fewer cooperating CRs to achieve specified performance targets than the static scenario.