Proceedings of the International Conference on Electronics and Sustainable Communication Systems (ICESC 2020)

IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP20V66-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-4108-4

Spectrum Sensing in OFDM using Energy

Detection
-A Comparative Study in AWGN and Rayleigh Channels

Kommula Vamsi Rama Bhaskar*, Anuraj K*, Poorna S S, Rasineni Pavan Kumar, Garlapati Shashidhar, Ankireddy
Dinesh Reddy
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Amrita Viswa Vidyapeetham,
Amritapuri, India.

Abstract—Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing based
modulation schemes has the advantage of reducing IS I in
Cognitive Radios (CR). An OFDM modulation scheme for CR,
with QAM and PS K symbol mapping techniques, is
implemented. S pectrum sensing is carried out for this IS I free
system using Energy Detection method, both in AWGN and
Rayleigh fading channels. The performance of these systems is
compared using ROC curves and Area under RO C’s. Results of
the analysis showed that QAM-OFDM in AWGN channel
conditions yielded better performance for energy detection based
spectrum sensing.
Keywords—OFDM; spectrum sensing; Energy Detection; ROC;
AWGN; fading channel; AUC.
I. INT RODUCT ION
One of the limitations of communication systems is
the inadequacy of allotted spectrum. Due to rise in the number
of users, aggravated by the exponential growth of wireless
systems leads to interference. One of the solutions to this
challenge is to use cognitive radio (CR) technology, where the
dynamic spectrum allocation has replaced static. This allows
spectrum reuse, thereby increasing the spectral efficiency [1].
practically. Besides that, they consume a lot of time to trace
the signal, which adds a further complexity within the
detection process. However, Energy Detection (ED) [3]
scheme is commonly used, where the prior information about
the PU is not needed and is easy to implement.
In addition to spectrum allocation, other issues
noticed in current communication systems are Inter Symbol
Interference (ISI) and reduced data rates. Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) scheme is adopted
in CR’s [4] to overcome this. OFDM employs multiple
orthogonal sub carriers for data transmission compared to
conventional CR, which uses a single carrier. Since the sub
carriers are orthogonal, ISI is reduced. The paper consolidates
the implementation of OFDM modulation for CR’s with QAM
and PSK symbol mapping techniques. Spectrum sensing using
ED is implemented and the same system is analyzed in
additive and fading channel models. The performance is
evaluated using Receiver Operating Curves (ROC) and area
under ROC curves (AUC).
The paper is structured as follows: section II gives
the related works carried out in the same area, system under
analysis is given in section III, a brief description of results
obtained in section IV, tailed by conclusion.

The pioneer study on CR’s was done by Joseph II. RELAT ED W ORKS
Mitola III [2]. CR is of great interest to technologists due to its
ability to increase the efficiency of spectrum management. CR
Some of the related works published in this area are
has the capability to continuously monitor the allotted
as given below. A review of different signal processing
spectrum and make a decision on the spectrum usage of the
techniques which aid spectrum sensing for CR is provided in
primary user (PU). Spectrum sensing [2] is the crucial
[7]. The paper also discusses the uncertainties associated with
building blocks of CR. There are a lot of techniques for
signal, noise and channel for CR system, along with the errors
sensing the spectrum which can be grouped as narrow and
due to quantization, synchronization, calibration and self-
wideband sensing techniques [1]. The former senses single
interference.
channel at a particular time whereas the latter goes for a
variety of frequencies. Narrowband sensing is again
Estimating the parameters influencing energy
categorized based on energy, cyclostationary features and
detection in OFDM CR’s was done by Chin [5]. The paper
matched filters.
concentrated on energy detection in multipath fading channels
The latter two detection techniques depend on the
over the unspecified nois e variances. Maximum Likelihood
primary signal, tough it is not perpetually accomplishable

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 Proceedings of the International Conference on Electronics and Sustainable Communication Systems (ICESC 2020)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP20V66-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-4108-4
(ML) technique was used to estimate the power of signal and
noise. Further the corresponding Cramer Rao Lower Bound
(CRLB) values are also computed. The method employing
these estimated parameters yielded 40-50 % increase in the
number of sample detection compared to conventional energy
detection.
Chatterjee et al. [6] proposed Genetic Algorithm
(GA) for optimizing different spectrum sensing constraints
under low SNR. They also considered the alterations in
spectral holes due to change in geographical conditions. The
method proved to be a good solution for CR networks in low
SNR environments.
In [8] spectrum sensing using ED with additional
relay technology was discussed. The method was evaluated by
introducing relays viz. single and multiple, at various locations
in the communication path. They compared ‘amplify and
forward’ mode with ‘decode and forward mode’, and the latter
yielded better performance. The analysis showed that the
detection performance of the system improved with the
number of relays. In order to improve the performance of ED
at low SNR’s, Alom et al. [9] proposed an ED method with
adaptive threshold. The results show that the adaptive
threshold exhibited better performance than the ordinary one.
III. SYST EM UNDER A NALYSIS
OFDM offers high data rate operation with minimum
interference. Hence it is a promising technique, used in most
of the advanced communication systems including 5G, CR’s
etc. The OFDM model in our analysis follows the same
structure in [10, 11, 12]. The input bit stream is modulated
using Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) or Phase
Shift Keying (PSK) and transmitted by using an OFDM
system. Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) is adopted in
OFDM, to accomplish the transmission using orthogonal
carriers [13].
Fig.1. Block diagram of OFDM based energy detection.
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AWGN and Rayleigh channel models are adopted to
evaluate the system performance in additive and fading
environments respectively. Integrating CR with OFDM can
provide a high quality transmission, with the effective
utilization of spectrum, along with low interference. Here the
dynamic spectrum allocation, provided by CR network
accounts for the efficient spectrum utilization, whereas OFDM
provides ISI free transmission. The model for spectrum
sensing is given in Eq.1, where r(n) and x(n) are received
signals of primary user (PU) and secondary user (SU)
respectively, w(n) is the AWGN and h represents the channel
gain.
w(n) ; abscence of PU
r (n)   (1)
h  x(n)  w(n) ; presence of PU
Amongst the diverse spectrum sensing techniques
used in CR, Energy Detection (ED) has the advantage of low
complexity, since no prior information of the PU is required.
ED in CR uses energy computation and comparison with a
threshold, as shown in fig.1. An ISI free transmission system
with OFDM is implemented in both AWGN and Rayleigh
environments. Energy is computed by squaring the absolute
value of the samples, followed by summation. The threshold
(Td ) computation follows Eq.2, where Q (.) represents the Q
function, Pf is the false alarm probability, Nsample the total
number of samples and σ,2 the noise variance.
Td  (Q 1 ( Pf ) 2 N sample  N sample ) 2 (2)
The comparison of computed energy is made with the
threshold obtained and if it is above the brink, that indicates
the presence of PU. It is important to note that poor sensing of
the spectrum adversely affects the utilization of white spaces
and hence the chances of secondary user to make use of the
vacancy available is missed.
IV. RESULT S A ND DISCUSSION
An OFDM transmission system was modeled using
MATLAB R2018b. The symbol mapping schemes followed
32 QAM and 32 PSK for comparison. Spectrum sensing using
energy detection was implemented for the above transmission
scheme.
1119
 Proceedings of the International Conference on Electronics and Sustainable Communication Systems (ICESC 2020)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP20V66-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-4108-4

The simulations were carried out for 1000 Monte
Carlo trials, to get the probability of detection (Pd ) in OFDM.
The simulation computes Pd by counting the proportion of
signal values in each case that exceeds the threshold. A
comparative analysis of ED was done in AWGN and Rayleigh
environments with SNR values in the range -16 dB to +30 dB
using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curve. It is
basically the graph of Pd versus Pf, for evaluating the
exactness of detection.
ROC curves of ED system for QAM-OFDM and PSK-
OFDM systems in AWGN channel is shown in Fig.2 (a) & (b)
respectively. The corresponding plots in Rayleigh channel is
depicted in Fig.2 (c) & (d). From the curves it is inferred that
as SNR increases, the probability of detection increases. Also
it is noted that for AWGN channel, reasonable values for Pd is
obtained for lower SNR values.
the AUC values in all the four schemes gradually increases
with SNR. Also QAM performed better than PSK in both
additive and fading environments. Further AWGN proved to
be a better medium than Rayleigh for the analysis with
different SNR values.
V. CONCLUSION AND FUT URE W ORKS
An ED system for OFDM in two different channel
conditions is analyzed in this work. ED is the simplest and
low-cost spectrum sensing method, since it does not need any
information regarding PU, channel gain or any other
parameter estimates. The simulation under different channel
conditions showed that OFDM with QAM symbol mapping
under AWGN environment exhibited better performance with
highest AUC value of 0.9897. Future work aims at analyzing
other spectrum sensing techniques and carrying out a
comparative study.

Fig.2 . ROC Curves (a) QAM-OFDM in AWGN (b) PSK- OFDM in AWGN (c) QAM –OFDM in Rayleigh (d) PSK-OFDM in Rayleigh.

TABLE I. AUC OF OFDM IN AWGN AND RAYLEIGH CHANNELS

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 Proceedings of the International Conference on Electronics and Sustainable Communication Systems (ICESC 2020)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP20V66-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-4108-4

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