Abstract: Spectrum availability is becoming scarce due to the rise of number of users and rapid development in wireless environment. Cognitive radio (CR) is an intelligent radio system which uses its in-built technology to use the vacant spectrum holes for the use of another service provider. In this paper, genetic algorithm (GA) is used for the best possible space allocation to cognitive radio in the spectrum available. For spectrum reuse, two criteria have to be fulfilled - 1) probability of detection has to be maximized, and 2) probability of false alarm should be minimized. It is found that with the help of genetic algorithm the optimized result is better than without using genetic algorithm. It is necessary that the secondary user should vacate the spectrum in use when licensed users are demanding and detecting the primary users accurately by the cognitive radio. Here, bit error rate (BER) is minimized for better spectrum sensing purpose using GA.
Key words: cognitive radio, genetic algorithm, probability of detection, probability of false alarm, bit error rate.