The inefficient use of spectrum is the key subject to overcome the upcoming spectrum crunch issue. This paper presents a study of performance of cooperative cognitive network via hard combining of decision fusion schemes. Simulation results presented different cooperative hard decision fusion schemes for cognitive network. The hard-decision fusion schemes provided different discriminations for detection levels. They also produced small values of Miss-Detection Probability at different values of Probability of False Alarm and adaptive threshold levels. The sensing performance was investigated under the influence of channel condition for proper operating conditions. An increase in the detection performance was achieved for cognitive users (secondary users) of the authorized unused dynamic spectrum holes (primary users) while operating in a very low signal-to-noise ratio with the proper condition of minimum total error rate.
