Efficient Deep Wavelet Gaussian Markov Dempster–Shafer Network-Based Spectrum Sensing at Very Low SNR in Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) rely heavily on spectral sensing to detect primary user (PU) activity, yet detection at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) remains a major challenge. Hence, a novel "Deep Wavelet Cyclostationary Independent Gaussian Markov Fourier Transform Dempster-Shafer Network" is proposed. When the signal waveform is submerged within the noise envelope and residual correlation emerges in the noise, it violates white Gaussian assumptions, leading to misidentification of signal presence. To resolve this, the Adaptive Continuous Wavelet Cyclostationary Denoising Autoencoder (ACWC-DAE) is introduced, in which the Adaptive Continuous Wavelet Transform (ACWT), Cyclostationary Independent Component Analysis Detection (CICAD), and Denoising Autoencoder (DAE) are introduced into the first hidden layer of a Deep Q-Network (DQN). It restores the bursty signal structure, separates the structured noise, and reconstructs clean signals, leading to accurate signal detection. Additionally, bursty and fading-affected primary user signals become fragmented and dip below the noise floor, causing conventional fixed-window sensing to fail in accumulating reliable evidence for detection under intermittent and low-duty-cycle conditions. Therefore, the Adaptive Gaussian Short-Time Fourier Transform Dempster-Shafer Model (AGSTFT-DSM) is incorporated into the second DQN layer, Adaptive Gaussian Mixture Hidden Markov Modeling (AGMHMM) tracks the hidden activity states, Adaptive Short-Time Fourier Transform (ASFT) resolves brief signal bursts, and Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST) fuses uncertain evidence to infer occupancy, thereby detecting an accurate user signal. The results obtained by the proposed model have a low error and detection time of 0.12 and 30.10 ms and a high accuracy of 97.8%, revealing the novel insight that adaptive wavelet denoising, along with uncertainty-aware evidence fusion, supports reliable spectrum detection under low-SNR conditions where existing models fail.