Spectrum Sensing Optimization and Performance Enhancement of Cognitive Radio Networks Mostafa Emara 1 • Hanaa S. Ali 2 • Salah Eldeen A. Khamis 1 • Fathi E. Abd El-Samie 3 Published online: 29 August 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract Cognitive radio (CR) is an attractive approach to face the shortage in the electromagnetic spectrum resources and improve the overall spectrum utilization. In this paper, two spectrum sensing techniques are considered for CR networks; one based on energy detection and the other based on multi-taper spectral estimation. Energy detector (ED) is examined in detail for both single user and cooperative multiple users using K out of M fusion rule. Simulation results in both scenarios are evaluated and verified using a Genetic Algorithm optimizer. The results show that cooperative sensing is better in per- formance than standalone sensing. The superiority of the Multi-taper spectral estimator (MSE) to the ED is comprehensively explained for a single secondary user scenario. The probability of detection at different target false alarm probabilities is evaluated. Simulation results show that MSE outperforms the ED by about 10 dB. Simulation results also show that as the target false alarm probability is decreased, the required Signal-to-Noise Ratio to achieve the same probability of detection gets higher. Keywords Cognitive radio  Genetic algorithm  Spectrum sensing  Energy detection  Multi-taper spectral estimator & Fathi E. Abd El-Samie fathi_sayed@yahoo.com Mostafa Emara mostafa.emara@f-eng.tanta.edu.eg Hanaa S. Ali hanahshaker@yahoo.com Salah Eldeen A. Khamis salah@yahoo.com 1 Faculty of Engineering, Tanta University, Tanta, Egypt 2 Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt 3 Faculty of Electronic Engineering, Menoufia University, Menouf, 32952, Egypt 123 Wireless Pers Commun (2016) 86:925–941 DOI 10.1007/s11277-015-2962-5