  Spectrum sensing is a key enabling technique for cognitive radio (CR), which
provides essential information on the spectrum availability. However, due to
severe wireless channel fading and path loss, the primary user (PU) signals
received at the CR or secondary user (SU) can be practically too weak for
reliable detection. To tackle this issue, we consider in this letter a new
intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided spectrum sensing scheme for CR, by
exploiting the large aperture and passive beamforming gains of IRS to boost the
PU signal strength received at the SU to facilitate its spectrum sensing.
Specifically, by dynamically changing the IRS reflection over time according to
a given codebook, its reflected signal power varies substantially at the SU,
which is utilized for opportunistic signal detection. Furthermore, we propose a
weighted energy detection method by combining the received signal power values
over different IRS reflections, which significantly improves the detection
performance. Simulation results validate the performance gain of the proposed
IRS-aided spectrum sensing scheme, as compared to different benchmark schemes.
