Spectrum Sensing In Cognitive

Radio Networks
Spectrum Scarcity
Rapid development in wireless communication applications has increased the
demand on available wireless spectrum
Traditionally the available spectrum is statically allocated by frequency
regulation bodies
However, spectrum occupancy measurements shows the underutilization of
some licensed bands
Cognitive Radio Networks
Accordingly, dynamic spectrum allocation paradigms
emerged, called cognitive radio (CR) networks
Cognitive Radio (CR): capable of sensing operating
environment and dynamically utilize available radio
resources
Cognitive Radio Networks
Two types of users:

Primary users :users of high priority or legacy

rights to use the spectrum.
Secondary users :users with lower priority, who
are not assigned a specific frequency band to operate
at.

Secondary users can only use the spectrum such

that they do not cause interference to primary
users
Cognitive Radio Networks
Three main functions to facilitate CR operation:
Spectrum sensing
Spectrum management and hand off
Dynamic spectrum allocation and sharing
Spectrum sensing is a fundamental in CR
operation. Its performance decides the level of
interference with PUs and spectrum utilization
efficiency
The performance of a spectrum sensing techniques can be
evaluated using two metrics:
Detection probability: probability that a CR correctly decides that the spectrum is busy,
when primary transmission is taking place
False alarm probability: probability that the CR makes a wrong decision that the spectrum
is occupied while it is actually not

Note: For the spectrum sensing algorithm to be efficient, it should satisfy both high spectral
utilization as well as minimal interference with primary users. In other words, the sensing
techniques needs to achieve high detection probability and a low false alarm probability, a
requirement that seems to be contradicting based on the above graph.
6
 Spectrum Sensing
Techniques

Blind Knowledge Based

no prior information is required information on primary signal needs to be
about the primary signal to be available a priori at the cognitive user end
detected

Spectrum
Energy based sensing based Eigenvalue Cyclostationary Coherent
spectrum on statistical based sensing feature detection detection/matched
sensing covariance filtering
1.Energy Based Sensing
Most common sensing technique with least
computational complexity

Secondary user decides whether or not there is primary

signal transmitted based on the energy of the received
signal x(t). Hence the detection statistics can be defined
as follows:

Where x(n) is the received signal and Ns is the number of

samples over which energy is computed
 1.Energy Based Sensing
Let the received signal has the following hypothesis

H0 represents the null hypothesis meaning that there is no primary signal and only
AWGN noise exists , H1 describes the existence of a primary users signal in addition
to AWGN noise
The detection statistics T is compared with a threshold to know whether the primary
users signal exists or not. The primary users signal exists only if the detection
statistics T is larger than the threshold .
The probability of detection Pd , at hypothesis H1 ,and the probability of false alarm Pf
,at hypothesis H0 ,can therefore be defined as follows:

Pd = Pr(T > | H1)=

Pf = Pr(T > | H0)=

2. Spectrum Sensing Based On Statistical
Covariance
The received signal under H1 and H0 can be given by:

Considering L samples, define the following vectors (Parameter L is called

the smoothing factor:
x(n)= [ x(n) x(n-1)x(n-L-1)]T
s(n)= [ s(n) s(n-1)s(n-L-1)]T
(n)= [(n) (n-1) (n-L-1)]T

Hence, the statistical covariance matrices of the received signal can be defined
as:

It can be shown that

2. Spectrum Sensing Based On Statistical
Covariance
If the signal s(n) is not present Rs=0. Hence, the off-diagonal
elements of Rx are all zeros. If there is a signal and the signal
samples are correlated, Rs is not a diagonal matrix. Hence, some of
the off-diagonal elements of Rx should be nonzero. Denote rnm as
the element of matrix Rx at the nth row and mth column, and let

Then, if there is no signal, T1 / T2 = 1. If the signal is present, T1 / T2

> 1. Hence, ratio T1 / T2 can be used to detect the presence of the
signal.
2. Spectrum Sensing Based On Statistical
Covariance
In practice, the statistical covariance matrix can
only be calculated using a limited number of
available signal samples at the receiver. Hence,
we can compute the sample autocorrelations of
the received signal as

where Ns is the number of available samples

2. Spectrum sensing based on statistical covariance

Statistical covariance matrix Rx can be

approximated by the sample covariance matrix
defined as

Based on the above sample covariance matrix we

can use the Covariance Absolute Value(CAV)
detection algorithm
Covariance Absolute Value(CAV) Detection Algorithm
1. Sample the received signal
2. Choose a smoothing factor L and a threshold 1, where 1 should
be chosen to meet the requirement for the probability of false
alarm
3. Compute the autocorrelations of the received signal (l), l = 0, 1, .
. . , L 1, and form the sample covariance matrix
4. Compute

5. Determine the presence of the signal based on T1 (Ns), T2(Ns), and

threshold 1. That is, if T1(Ns)/T2(Ns) > 1, the signal exists;
otherwise, the signal does not exist.
Theoretical Analysis for the CAV Algorithm
The above proposed CAV algorithm is valid
based on the assumption that the transmitted
primary signal samples are correlated, i.e., Rs is
not a diagonal matrix (Some of the off-diagonal
elements of Rs should be nonzeros)

Obviously, if signal samples s(n) are i.i.d., then

in this case, the assumption is invalid,
and the algorithm cannot detect the presence of
the signal.
Theoretical Analysis for the CAV Algorithm
However, usually, the signal samples should be
correlated due to three reasons:
1. The signal is oversampled
2. The propagation channel has time dispersion;
3. The original signal is correlated. In this case,
even if the channel is a flat-fading channel and
there is no oversampling, the received signal
samples are correlated.
 Threshold Selection
As mentioned earlier, for a good detection algorithm, a high Pd
and low Pf should be achieved. The choice of threshold is a
compromise between Pd and Pf

Usually, the threshold is chosen such that a certain value of

false alarm probability Pf is achieved

The threshold selection can be based on either theoretical

derivation or computer simulation:
1- If threshold selection based on computer simulation:
We first set a value for Pf
We find a threshold to meet the required Pf : to do so we can
generate white Gaussian noises as the input (no signal) and adjust the
threshold to meet the Pf requirement. Note that the threshold here is
related to the number of samples used for computing the sample
autocorrelations and the smoothing factor L
Threshold Selection
2- If theoretical derivation is used:
We need to find the statistical distribution of T1(Ns)/T2(Ns) which is generally a
difficult task. In [1], using the central limit theorem, the distribution of this
random variable is approximated and the theoretical estimations for the two
probabilities Pd , Pf and the threshold associated with these probabilities are
derived as follows (equations (74)(76)(77) in [1]):
References
[1] Yonghong Zeng and Ying-Chang Liang, Spectrum-sensing
algorithms for cognitive radio based on statistical covariances,
IEEE transactions on vehicular technology. Vol. 58. no. 4, pp.1804-
1815, May 2009

[2] Z. Quan,, S. Cui, and A. H. Sayed, "Optimal linear cooperation for

spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks," IEEE Journal of
Selected Topics In Signal Processing, vol.2, pp.23 -40, 2008.