This paper mainly focuses on solving the energy efficiency (EE) maximization problem in double threshold‐based soft decision fusion (SDF) cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) in the cognitive radio network (CRN). The solution to this objective problem starts with the selection of suitable secondary users (SUs) both for the spectrum sensing and data transmission. Here, energy efficiency is maximized under the constraints of interference to the primary user (PU), an acceptable outage of SUs, the transmission power of the SUs and the probability of false alarm. We propose a novel algorithm called iterative Dinkelbach method (IDM) which jointly optimizes the sensing time and transmission power allocation to the SUs. Further, Lagrangian duality theorem is employed to find the exact power assigned to the SUs. Finally, simulation results are carried out to validate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme by comparing with the other existing schemes. The performance is also analyzed for different system parameters.