A lot of research shows that spectrum is not effectively used in wireless communications. There are several gaps in spectrum that are unused. Cognitive radio (CR) is a smart technique of addressing inefficient usage of spectrum resources. Spectrum sensing is a vital task in cognitive radio systems. The objective of the spectrum sensing process is to investigate the presence and absence of primary user signals in different spectrum holes. To increase the feasibility of the spectrum sensing process, it can be implemented in a cooperative mode. The cooperative spectrum sensing depends on a decision making task at a group of secondary users. One of the most popular spectrum sensing techniques is the energy detection. Unfortunately, this technique fails in low SNR scenarios to give high detection results. So, there is a need for cooperative spectrum sensing in addition to noise reduction techniques to enhance the performance of the CR system. This paper presents noise reduction techniques based on additive wavelet transform (AWT) with homomorphic decomposition and Haar discrete wavelet transform (HDWT) with homomorphic decomposition to reduce the noise prior to the decision making process. This scenario is investigated with several fusion rules that are used for the cooperative spectrum sensing with fixed-time sensing. Simulation results prove that with OR fusion rule, the proposed scenario increases the probability of detection in the range of SNR from − 20 to − 15 dB using the AWT with homomorphic decomposition. The achievable throughput increases using the HDWT with homomorphic decomposition. The AND fusion rule is not recommended with the HDWT, but the probability of detection is high with the AWT. The majority fusion rule achieves high throughput with the HDWT and a high probability of detection with the AWT.