Spectrum Sensing

R.ANN CAROLINE JENIFER

 Introduction
•Licensed spectrum remains unused—both in time and in
frequency: traffic in wireless networks tends to be bursty.

•Efficient exploitation of the spectrum requires the ability

to exploit instantaneous opportunities at a rather fine time
scale.

•For cognitive networks to operate efficiently, secondary

users should be able to exploit radio spectrum that is
unused by the primary network.
 Introduction
• A critical component of cognitive networking is thus spectrum
sensing. -The secondary user (SU) should
• sense the spectrum efficiently,
• quickly seize opportunities to transmit,
• and vacate the spectrum should a primary user (PU)
reoccupy the spectrum.
• Hence, a critical component of opportunistic spectrum
allocation is the design of the spectrum sensor for
opportunity detection.
 Primary Signal Detection
• The spectrum sensor essentially performs a
binary hypothesis test on whether or not
there are primary signals in a particular
channel.
• The channel is idle under the null hypothesis
and busy under the alternate:
• H0 (idle) vs. H1 (busy)
 Primary Signal Detection
• H0: y(k) = w(k)
• H1: y(k) = s(k) + w(k)
• for k = 1, . . . , n, where n is the number of
received samples, w(k) represents noise, and
s(k) represents the PU signal.
 Sensing errors
• Regardless of the precise signal model or
detector used, sensing errors are inevitable due
to additive noise, limited observations, and the
inherent randomness of the observed data.
• False alarms (or Type I errors) occur if an idle
channel is detected as busy, and
• missed detections occur when a busy channel
is detected as idle
 Performance metrics
• The performance of a detector is characterized by two
parameters
– Probability of missed detection (PMD)
– Probability of false alarm(PFA)

- Also Probability of Detection (Pd): 1-Pm

 Higher Pd (lower Pm) and lower PFA are preferred.

•A typical receiver operating characteristic (ROC), which is a plot of 1 − δ, the
probability of detection (PD), versus PFA, is shown in Figure.
•Choosing different sensors, detection algorithms, or sensing parameters (such
as an observation window) leads to different ROCs.
•The choice of operating point, however, should be dictated by the MAC layer
performance in terms of the throughput of the SU and the interference constraint for
protecting the PU
SPECTRUM SENSING TECHNIQUES
 Energy Detector
• the signaling scheme of the PU may be
unknown to the SU;
 Energy Detector

 Test statistic:

 Noise (AWGN), Signal (deterministic/random), Channel.

 Compared with threshold.

11
Measures the energy of available radio resource
and compare it against a predefined threshold
level.

 If the measured energy falls below the defined

threshold level spectrum is marked as available.

When the measure energy level is above the

defined threshold, it’s considered as occupied.
 ADVANTAGES
It does not require any prior information of the signal
optimum detection technique if the primary user
signal is not known
 low implementation and computational complexities

DISADVANTAGES
 Cannot distinguish between Signal and Interference
 No reliable detection beyond SNR wall
 Cyclostationary Feature Detector
• Often quite a bit about the PU’s signal
structure is known.
• For example, the data rates, the modulation
type, the carrier frequency, and location of
guard bands may be known.
– Pilot signals, use of a cyclic prefix
• Digitally modulated signals have periodic
features that may be implicit or explicit.
 Cyclostationary Feature Detector
• The means and correlation sequences of such
signals exhibit periodicity and are, hence,
called cyclostationary signals
 Advantages
• The main advantage of the feature detection is
its robustness to the uncertainty in noise
power.
• Furthermore, it can distinguish the signals
from different networks. This method allows
the CR user to perform sensing operations
independently of those of its neighbours
without synchronization.
 MATCHED FILTER DETECTOR

It is a method of detection when the

transmitted signal is well-known
Detection of PU based on prior knowledge
(bandwidth, operating frequency , modulation
type etc).

r(t) Decide H0 or H1
 MATCHED FILTER DETECTOR

• The matched filter is the linear optimal filter

used for coherent signal detection to
maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the
presence of additive stochastic noise.
ADVANTAGES:
The detector does not suffer from the “SNR wall”
problem
It takes moderate time for execution

DISADVANTAGES:
 It necessitates the faultless knowledge of primary
users signaling features
Complexity is large
Huge power consumption
 COMPARISON

DETECTION Execution time Ability to Prior Implementation

METHODS distinguish Information
Signal&
Interference

Matched Filter Moderate time Medium Necessary Complex

Energy Detection Less time Low Not Necessary Simple

Cyclostationary More time High Necessary Very Complex

detection
COMPARISON

MF
Accuracy
Eigenvalue

Cyclo
ED

Complexity
 CO-OPERATIVE SPECTRUM SENSING

• To enhance the sensing performance by

exploiting the spatial diversity in the
observations of spatially located CR users- Co-
op sensing
 CO-OPERATIVE SPECTRUM SENSING

• Under fading or shadowing, received signal strength can be very

low and this can prevent a node from sensing the signal of
interest.
• Noise can also be a challenge when energy detection is used for
spectrum sensing, although there are spectrum sensing
techniques that are robust in the presence of noise, such as
cyclostationary feature detection, Due to a low signal to-noise
ratio (SNR) value, the signal of interest may not be detected.
• The idea of cooperative spectrum sensing in a RF sensor
network is the collaboration of nodes on deciding the
spectrum band used by the transmitters emitting the signal of
interest
SYSTEM MODEL
Forms of CO-OPERATIVE SPECTRUM SENSING
• Nodes send either their test statistics or local decisions
about the presence of the signal of interest to a decision
maker, which can be another node.
• There are three forms of cooperation in spectrum
sensing:
– hard decision (also known as decision fusion) - local decisions
are sent
– soft decision (also known as data fusion) - raw data is sent
– quantized decision- quantized LLRs are sent
The difference between these forms is the type of
information sent to the decision maker.
 HARD DECISION
• Three rules used by the decision maker under
hard decision are
– logical –OR rule,
– logical-AND rule
– and majority rule.
 Pros and Cons
• As the number of collaborating nodes increases, the
probability of missed detection for all nodes
decreases.
• Cooperation in spectrum sensing also improves the
overall detection sensitivity of a RF sensor network
without the requirement for individual nodes to have
high detection sensitivity. Less sensitive detectors on
nodes means reduced hardware and complexity.
• The trade-off for cooperation is more communication
overhead.