Increasing demand of wireless communication led to inefficiency in spectrum utilization. To solve this problem, cognitive radio networks came up as a key technology. In a Cognitive radio network, the secondary user uses the licensed spectrum of the primary user by monitoring the communication channel and instantly moves to the vacant channel when found, provided the transmission of the primary user is not interrupted. In a cooperative mode of communication, each entity is aware of each other and they cooperate to maximize the system performance. A cooperative spectrum sensing using energy detection with data fusion technique is implemented using MATLAB. The fusion center compares the energy of the received signal with the threshold value in order to detect the primary user presence in the channel. A two-stage dynamic spectrum sensing with adaptive thresholding using energy detection with data fusion technique in an QAM-16 platform is implemented using MATLAB, and the sensing efficiency is evaluated. © 2018, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.