In order to support the ever growing demand of wireless communication systems and wireless local area network based 802.11 devices, the regulators are developing techniques to overcome the permanent scarcity of radio resources. Spectrum sensing in cognitive radio (CR) is considered as a key technology which estimates the availability of the licensed spectrum band for additional usages. The underutilized licensed band can be exploited among the secondary users provided that they would not cause any interference to the primary user. So, evaluation of spectrum occupancy is the main approach towards the successful deployment of CR. This paper studies the various spectrum occupancy models used in diverse locations by research campaigns worldwide. The detail analyses of the empirical results in different scenarios of measurement have been compared. The purpose of this survey is to evaluate up to what percentage the whole spectrum band is occupied by different services.