Performance Optimization of a Soft and Hard Detector in
Cognitive Radio environment using WARP
Abhishek Bhattacharya,Student,
University of Engineering and Management
bhattacharyaron10@gmail.com
Nilanjan Byabarta, Assistant Professor
,University of Engineering and Management
nilanjan.byabarta@uem.edu.in
Debrup Chatterjee,Student,
University of Engineering and Management
chatterjee.debrup28@gmail.com
Abstract—Cognitive Radio, Software Defined radio
Spectrum Sensing represents three development
areas which are changing the world of Wireless
Communication. The objective of this paper is to
implement a new Hard and Soft detector based
spectrum sensing method in a real time transmission
network and optimize it. In particular, the aim is to
detect the signals in the air, and estimate the power
spectral density of the sources emitting these signals
through collaborations of the receiver nodes. To
achieve this, a receiver network based cooperative
wideband spectrum sensing scheme is implemented
using real time Transmission and receiving system
using MATLAB and WARP environment. Two
different types of Hard and Soft detection techniques
have been compared with a new Softened Hard
Detection scheme to show that the new method
increases efficiency.
Keywords- Cognitive radio, Software Defined radio,
MATLAB, WARP, Spectrum Sensing, Hard Detection,
Soft Detection, Cooperative Spectrum Sensing.
I.INTRODUCTION
Cognitive radio (CR) [1] is widely considered to be a
promising approach to address the spectrum scarcity
issue [3] by revolutionizing spectrum utilization,
which enables secondary users (SUs) to access the
Debojyoti Chakravarty,Student ,
University of Engineering and Management
d333chakraborty@gmail.com
Arkanil Das,Student,
University of Engineering and Management
arkanildas99@gmail.com
Subhajit Majumder, Student,
University of Engineering and Management
subhajitmajumder96@gmail.com
unused frequency band provided that they do not
interfere with the licensed primary users (PUs).The
performance of spectrum sensing suffers from
shadowing, multipath fading, and time-variant nature
of wireless channels. Thus, to combat these negative
effects, cooperative sensing (CS) [2] is widely
accepted to be indispensable because it takes
advantage of diversity gain of SUs. The most well-
known CS scheme is hard decision [4] based CS , in
which each SU delivers only 1-bit detection result to
the Decision Center, named as DC, and then DC
combines all the detection results based on Logical
Disjunction (viz., OR) rule. Although this scheme has
very low signaling overhead, information loss is
caused by 1-bit quantization. An optimization method
for hard decision based CS combines the hard
detection [4] results only from part of SUs with the
highest PU’s signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). But the
signaling overhead increases since each SU needs to
send its SNR to DC other than hard detection results.
A softened hard [5] combination scheme [6] uses 2-
bit overhead to define 4 detection regions, in which 3
thresholds need to be calculated by the detection
statistics: Pd (detection probability) or Pf (false alarm
probability),
The main purpose of this paper is to create a real time
cognitive Radio Transceiver system based on FPGA
 platform so that it behaves like software defined
Radio which can be directly controlled by the
programming of VHDL and MATLAB. A
Transmitter and Two receivers System is
implemented in WARP FPGA [8, 9] platform using
real time Transmitters and receivers. Using the
created physical scenario the conventional
Figure 1: WARP FPGA Board
cooperative Signal detection techniques have been
applied and the result is observed and verified by the
Specifications WARP 4.2
theoretical values. Also a new performance Architecture(GPP, DSP, FPGA(Xilinx Virtex-4)
enhancement method has been proposed based on the FPGA) GPP Power PC
RF Bandwidth 30 MHz
real time network based data. The purpose is to find
2.4 Ghz-5 GHz(ISM /
out the optimum detection technique under low scale RF Range UNII)
cognitive Radio Network. RF Channels 4
USB 2.0, Gig Ethernet
Connectivity (Marvel)
II. WARP FPGA PLATFORM FOR SCENARIO
14 bit. 65 MS/s. (AD
DEVELOPMENT
ADCs 9248)
Rice Wireless Open-Access Research Platform 16 bit. 160MS/s. (AD
DACs 9777)
(WARP) [8] the wireless open-access research Power 12 Volt
platform of Rice University is a scalable and Price $6,500.00
extensible programmable platform, built for
Table 1 Specifications of WARP FPGA Board [10]
prototyping advanced wireless networks. The Xilinx
Virtex-4 FX100 FPGA is used to enable III. PROTOTYPE SYSTEM DESIGN
programmability of both physical and network layer Soft information fusion strategy provides the
protocols on a single platform. The integration of fusion center with all the information obtained
several wireless tools and software with WARP by the distributed sensing users and gives the best
provides a powerful toolkit. The platform can work achievable fusion performance [7]. This strategy,
with MATLAB and C/C++ [9]. A standard WARP however, requires heavy data transmission between
hardware contains a FPGA board and a peripheral the fusion center and the sensing users. To avoid high
daughter board. FPGA board provides 10/100 data transmission overhead in hard information
Ethernet interface which is suitable for real-time fusion strategy, each distributed sensing user makes
communication between the wired network and the its own decision locally based on its sensed signal.
custom designed wireless environment (see table. 1) Then it forwards its one-bit hard decision to the
.There are four daughterboard slots (as shown in Decision center(DC). The soft [6] and hard [4]
Figure 1) in a regular WARP which allows building a combination gives the same performance if hard
4x4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system cooperative energy detection scheme is 1.6 times as
[10]. With a couple of WRAP devices and multiple that soft cooperative [7] energy detection scheme.
antennas, the SDR test-bed can be set up. For our method we use seven decision thresholds for
each CR user λ1, λ2 ,λ3, λ4, λ5, λ6 and λ7 corresponding
to Pf1 , Pf2 , Pf3, Pf3 , Pf4 , Pf5 , Pf6 , and Pf7 (or Pd1 ,
Pd2 , Pd3, Pd3 , Pd4 , Pd5 , Pd6 ,and Pd7). As shown in Where Ni is the number of observed
Table 2, it divides the whole range of observed energy values falling in the i’th region. Then Nc is
energy value into 8 regions. Each CR user needs to compared with the threshold, NT = L. If Nc ≥ NT,
exchange three bit information on their observed primary signal is declared present; otherwise, it is
energy values. Compared to conventional hard declared absent.
combination with only one-bit and two bits, less
information is lost at each CR user in the proposed
scheme and hence performance improvement is
expectable. Our proposed three-bit softened
combination scheme is designed to work as follows:
primary signal will be declared present if one node of
the observed energy values falls in region 7, or 20%
of nodes of them fall in region 6, or 40% of nodes of
them fall in region 5, or 50% of nodes of them fall in
region 4, or 70% of nodes of them fall in region 3, or
90% of nodes of them fall in region 2 or 100% of
nodes of them fall in region I. For our experiment we
use 2 receiver Nodes and one transmitter node for
real time communication with additional simulated Figure 2 Prototype System Design Using WARP
nodes for calculation.

Table 2 Threshold Levels in Energy Detection

IV.EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Energy Experimental results show the variations in
Region 7 T7 λ7 performance of cooperative spectrum sensing to
substantiate our hypothesis that the sensing
Region 6 T6 λ6
efficiency increases with an increase in the number of
Region 5 T5 λ5 levels of observation energy, where the detection

Region 4 T4 λ4 probability (Pd) is improved by 18.8% and 3.5 %

over conventional hard combination and two-bit
Region 3 T3 λ3
softened combination, respectively with P F =0.004
Region 2 T2 λ2 at SNR = -2 dB. Figure 2 shows the comparative

Region 1 T1 λ1 results between conventional hard combination and

two-bit softened combination with the proposed
Region 0 T0
method, Figure 3 shows some more expansion of the
The weighted summation for the Decision center conventional methods in comparison with the
taken in account with the cooperation from all the proposed method and results tell the same.
Users and is given by [7].

7
Nc ¦T N
i 0
i i
 V.CONCLUSION

Thus we have introduced a modification to the

Figure 3: Different sensing Schemes performance
Figure 4: Proposed scheme under different PSD averages taken
Below Figure 4 shows their results under using
different number of users in the system. For our
experiment 2 users (Nodes) have been verified with
the simulated results from a large number of Users.
Also Figure 5 shows the detection percentage for a
varying number of Nodes when different Number of
PSD averages are taken. Each of the result shows an
increment in efficiency when considering about No.
of Nodes and Number of PSD averages. The result
shows the increment in Pd from 10% to 90% when
proposed method is used.
current algorithm proposed a new technique which is
not defined until now. Comparisons between
proposed scheme and other schemes had been
achieved. Performance results of the proposed
scheme with optimal values of thresholds that
maximize the average overall detection probability
had been investigated. Simulation results showed that
a significant improvement of detection performance
had been achieved under the proposed spectrum
method. The Hardware test bench results show that
though the system is still not up to the mark in
comparison with the theoretical value still it follows
the same direction and characteristics and supports
the theoretical algorithm. It had been also
demonstrated that the proposed scheme exhibits
comparable performance with the conventional hard
and soft detection scheme. Therefore, it achieves a
good tradeoff between detection performance and
complexity.
Figure 6: Proposed scheme with Varying Nodes under Different
PSD Averages taken

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Figure 5: Proposed scheme under different Number of

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