Scheduling of sequential periodic sensing for cognitive radios

Spectrum sensing enables cognitive radios (CRs) to opportunistically access the under-utilized spectrum. Existing efforts on sensing have not adequately addressed sensing scheduling over time for better detection performance. In this work, we consider sequential periodic sensing of an in-band channel. We focus primarily on finding the appropriate sensing frequency during an SU's active data transmission on a licensed channel. Change and outlier detection schemes are designed specifically to facilitate short-term sensing adaptation to the variations in sensed data. Simulation results demonstrate that our design guarantees better conformity to the spectrum access policies by significantly reducing the delay in change detection while ensuring better sensing accuracy.