Enhanced Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in CRAHNs Using Distributed Dynamic Load-Balanced Clustering Scheme

Cognitive Radio (CR) is a promising and potential technique to enable secondary users or unlicenced users to exploit the unused spectrum resources effectively possessed by primary users (PUs) or licenced users. The proven clustering approach is used to organize nodes in the network into logical groups to attain energy efficiency, network scalability, and stability for improving the sensing accuracy in CR through cooperative spectrum sensing. In this paper, a distributed dynamic load-balanced clustering algorithm is proposed. In this algorithm, each member in the cluster is to calculate the cooperative gain, residual energy, distance, and sensing cost from the neighboring clusters to perform the optimal decision. Each member in a cluster participates in selecting a cluster head through cooperative gain, and residual energy that minimise network energy consumption and enhances the channel sensing. First, we form the number of clusters using the Markov decision process model to reduce the energy consumption in a network. In this algorithm, CR users effectively utilize the PUs’ reporting time slots when PUs are not available. The simulation results reveal that the cluster convergence, energy efficiency, and accuracy of channel sensing increased considerably by using the proposed algorithm.