In this paper, the performance of a cooperative cognitive radio (CR) network is investigated under continuous energy harvesting scenario. A CR node harvests energy from both the sources: non-radio frequency (RF) signal (ambient sources) or from RF signal (primary user signal). It harvests from non-RF signal during sensing time of its detection cycle, and from both the sources, RF signal and non-RF signal, during transmission time as per sensing decision. Several novel analytical expressions are developed to indicate the harvested energy, energy reward, energy cost in a detection frame, and throughput. The performance of the CR network is investigated to maximize the throughput considering energy causality constraints and collision constraints. Analytical results are validated through extensive simulation results. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.