This paper focuses on multi-channel Cooperative Spectrum Sensing (CSS) where Secondary Users (SUs) are assigned to cooperatively sense multiple channels simultaneously. A multi-channel CSS optimization problem of joint spectrum sensing and SU assignment based on data fusion rule is formulated, which maximizes the total throughput of the Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) subject to the constraints of probabilities of detection and false alarm. To address the optimization problem, a Branch and Bound (BnB) algorithm and a greedy algorithm are proposed to obtain the optimal solutions. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms and show that the throughput improvement is achieved through the joint design. It is also shown that the greedy algorithm with a low complexity achieves the comparable performance to the exhaustive algorithm.
