Abstract: Aimed at solving the problem of low cooperative effectiveness between sensing users (SU) in cognitive radio network, the coalitional game based distributed cooperative spectrum sensing method in cognitive wireless network is proposed. Firstly, the method operates local spectrum sensing by the aid of SU. Then, according to the formation rules, the SU is divided into several coalitions, among which information exchange is achieved under the single user priority rule. A stable coalitional structure is formed after several iterations. Finally, the spectrum sensing is completed through integrating the sensing information in the coalition. Simulation results show that, compared with the traditional rules of merger and division, the single user priority rule adopted is more flexible in usage and more effective in coalition utility. The detection probability of cooperative spectrum sensing is improved, while its false alarm probability is reduced, indicating that the proposed method has better spectrum sensing performance than other methods.