Cooperation in cognitive radio networks is a powerful tool for dealing with hidden terminals and shortening spectrum sensing time. The pioneering work carried out by Ganesan and Li [1] in 2005 has shown the benefits obtained by cooperative spectrum sensing in multiple secondary users (SUs) cognitive radio networks. More recent research on cooperative cognitive radio networks has been focused on the trade-off between sensing, reporting, and data transmission slots at SUs. The shorter the sensing and report slots, the more data that is transmitted and the greater the efficiency.

SUs conduct sensing, reporting, and data transmissions separately in a general structure of cooperative spectrum sensing. This paper goes beyond the state of the art and proposes a more efficient cooperative spectrum sensing framework by overlapping sensing and reporting slots among multiple SUs. The optimal sensing time and diversity gain via multiple slots are derived to achieve minimum SU transmission delay in cognitive radio networks. The theoretical studies on the novel framework are worth reading for those who are looking for recent updates in this area.