Acropolis Institute of Technology & Research

Spectrum Sensing Issues of Cognitive Radio

Guided By

Submitted By

Prof. Kamlesh Gupta

Md. Shahnawaz Shaikh

(0827EC11MT07)

Overview

Introduction
Cognitive Radio
Spectrum sensing
Spectrum Sensing Techniques
Propagation Channel
Project Work
Flow Chart
Implementation of Spectrum Sensing Techniques
Result Analysis
Future Work
Conclusion
2

Introduction
This dissertation explores the concept for dynamic spectrum allocation and investigates different
aspects of spectrum sensing in cognitive radio (CR) technology.
Spectrum sensing is a basic approach and requirement to implement cognitive radio technology.
It is one of the most challenging issues of CR process to prevent interference between primary user
and secondary user.
In this dissertation we implement spectrum sensing techniques such as Matched filtering, Energy
detection, and Cyclostationary feature detection spectrum sensing techniques.
Implementation done on Matlab through simulation of Matched filtering, Energy detection and
Cyclostationary feature detection cognitive radio spectrum sensing techniques over AWGN, Rician
fading and Rayleigh fading channel.
It also contain combined analysis of Matched filtering, Energy detection and Cyclostationary feature
detection technique for common scenario through decision accuracy vs SNR plots over
AWGN, Rician fading and Rayleigh fading channel. It explores performance of each technique.
3

Cognitive Radio
Cognitive Radio (CR) systems are radios with the ability to exploit their environment to increase
spectral efficiency and capacity.
CR technology explores, an opportunistic and promising technology to utilize available
communication spectrum in efficient and dynamic way.
It proposes secondary users to optimally utilize reserved frequency bands of primary users that are
not occupied all the time by primary users and should vacate the band when required by primary
user. This increases spectrum efficiency of available communication spectra.
CR has emerged as a leading technology because it can intelligently sense an unused spectrum
without creating any harmful interference to authorized users.
CR is able to monitor and analyze the spectrum usage and then determine its operating parameters
to effectively adapt to the varying radio environment.
Cognitive radio might operate at 400-800 MHz (UHF TV bands) and 3-10 GHz. These frequency
bands have good propagation properties over long range communication applications.
4

Cognitive Radio

Spectrum Sensing
Spectrum sensing is basic approach to perform cognitive radio operation. Spectrum sensing is the
most crucial part in the successful implementation of cognitive radios.
Spectrum sensing should be performed first before permitting the secondary user to access the
vacant licensed band as it is a key element in CR communication.
Spectrum sensing is measuring the interference temperature over the spectrum to nd the unused
channels.
Spectrum sensing is also involved in determining the type of the signal, like carrier frequency,
modulation scheme, waveform etc.
In spectrum sensing, secondary user need to detect, sense and dynamically select the idle
frequency band within their permissible ranges which are not occupied by primary user.

Various Aspects of Spectrum Sensing

In Cognitive Radio

Spectrum Sensing Techniques

Matched Filtering
Matched filter detection is very accurate and most promising technique for spectrum sensing
which maximizes SNR.
Matched filter is a linear filter, based on coherent detection of primary user signal.
When we pass the signal from the filter, it passes the useful signal while attenuate noise signal
at the same time.
If the desired signal is present, large peak appear at the output of filter and output is not present
at absence of desired signal (Presence of noise signal).

Matched Filtering
Features:
1. As cognitive radio user (secondary user) knows information about licensed user signal (primary
user), Matched filter detection require less detection time.
2. Matched Filtering needs short time to achieve a certain probability of
false alarm or probability of missed detection.

Limitations:
1. It requires a prior knowledge of every primary signal
2. CR needs a dedicated receiver for every type of primary user.
3. Cognitive radio needs receivers for all signal types, the implementation complexity of
sensing unit is impractically large
4. Matched filtering consumes large power as various receiver algorithms are needed to execute
for detection.
10

Energy Detection
Energy detection is the non coherent detection based sensing technique of CR. The energy detection
method is very simple to implement as compared to the other techniques.
Detection and comparison of energy of signal introduces, principle of this technique.
The energy detection method calculates, energy of the signal whose frequency band is to be sensed and
compares it with a perfectly decided threshold energy level.

11

Energy Detection
Features:
1. Energy detection method is popular due to its simplicity, ease of implementation and applicability.
2. It has low computational and implementation cost .
3. It has short sensing time.

Limitations:
1. Threshold used for primary user detection is highly susceptible to changing noise levels, while it
would be set adaptively. Presence of any undesired band possessing equal energy level could confuse
to energy detector.
2. Energy detector does not differentiate between PU signals, noise and interference.
3. Energy detector is not useful for direct sequence, frequency hopping signals and spread spectrum
signals.
4. When there is heavy fluctuation in signal power so it becomes difficult to differentiate desire
signal.
5. Comparing to Matched Filtering, Energy Detection technique requires longer time to achieve desired
performance level.
6. Energy detection mechanism used in ultra wide band communication bands.
7. It has poor performance under low SNR condition.
12

Cyclostationary Feature Detection

Cyclostationary feature detection is a two dimensional complex valued spectrum sensing
technique.
Modulated primary user signals are associated with sine wave carriers, pulse trains, repeating
spreading, hoping sequences, or cyclic prefixes to exploit periodicity.
As statistics, mean and autocorrelation of PU signals exhibits periodicity which typically
introduced in signal format. This periodicity characterize cyclostationary feature of PU signals
Receiver exploits cyclostationary features of PU signals such as parameter estimation, carrier
phase, pulse timing, or direction of arrival.
These parameters are used for detection of a random signal in radio environment
in the presence of other modulated signals and noise

13

Cyclostationary Feature Detection

Features:
1. Cyclostationary feature detection performs better than Energy detection technique in low SNR
regions.
2. It is not affected by noise uncertainties. It is robust to noise. It provide reliable spectrum sensing .
3. The cyclostationarity approach offer signal classification and has the ability to distinguish cochannel interference.
4. Frequency and phase synchronization of signal is not required .

Limitations:
1. CFD requires long observation time, high sampling rate and higher computational complexity.
2. CFD also requires the prior knowledge of the primary user signal.
3. There are possibilities of sampling time error.

14

Cooperative Spectrum Sensing

Increasing the detection sensitivity of CR approaches to technique where more than one CRs could
work together and can share their sensing information with each other and cooperatively take
decision about spectrum occupancy.
This approach introduces to Cooperative or Collaborative or Distributed technique of spectrum
sensing of CR.

Decentralized Uncoordinated Techniques

Centralized Coordinated Techniques
Decentralized Coordinated Techniques

15

Cooperative Spectrum Sensing

16

Cooperative Spectrum Sensing

Features:
1. Cooperative sensing decreases missed detection and false alarm probabilities.
2. It solves hidden primary user problem and also decreases sensing problems.
3. This provides higher spectrum capacity gains then local sensing .
4. It requires less sensitive detectors, which result in flexibilities, reduced hardware cost and
complexities.

Limitations:
1. Combining sensing results of more than one CR users having different sensitivities.
2. This technique requires a control channel to convey information among all CR users.

17

Propagation Channel
AWGN Channel
Additive white gaussian noise (AWGN) is a basic noise model in communication channels, which
defines linear addition of wideband or white noise gaussian distribution of amplitude.

Rician Fading Channel

Rician fading of propagated signal is a random model for radio propagation caused by partial
cancellation of a radio signal. In Rician fading channel a strong dominant component is present. This
dominant component can be the line of sight wave and this strongest component goes into deeper fade
compared to the multipath components.

Rayleigh Fading Channel

Rayleigh fading is the specialized model for random fading, when the objects in the environment are
gets attenuate, reflect, refract, and diffract the signal before it arrives at the receiver and there is no-lineof sight signal.
18

Project Work
Our project work is summarized to implement matched filtering, energy detection and
cyclostationary feature detection techniques of spectrum sensing for cognitive radio system. We
simulate these implementations on MATLAB platform.
Plot the graphs between decision accuracy vs SNR over AWGN channel, Rician fading
channel and Rayleigh fading channel.
Our simulation also results, plots for transmitted signals of all users, transmitted signal for
single user, received signal and status of spectrum sensing either signal of specied primary user
is present or not.
It also contain combined analysis of Matched Filtering, Energy detection and Cyclostationary
feature detection technique for common scenario through the decision accuracy Vs SNR plots
over AWGN, Rician fading and Rayleigh fading channel.

19

Flow Chart

20

Implementation And Result

Matched filtering, Energy detection and Cyclostationary Feature Detection techniques are
implemented to sense 20 users over AWGN, Rician fading and Rayleigh fading channel.
Primary user signals are defined by N point FFT signal with N = 256, within Signal to Noise
Ratio (SNR) range of -40 : 0 : 20. Following parameters are define in implementation:
Rectangular window size (w) = 256.
Bit duration Tb = 0.4e- 3 seconds.
Sampling Time Ts = 1e -6/128 seconds.
Spectrum occupancy percentage = 70%
Sinusoidal carrier signals in frequency range of 20MHz to 40MHz is defined for each of 20
users and calculate signal power and noise power.
Modulate the signal using BPSK modulation before passing it through channel. At output of
channel these modulated signals are contained noise signal also. So the spectrum sensing
technique is applied on noise affected signals.
21

Matched Filtering
Define the number of users, number of frame per user, FFT size for specified SNR range, also specify bit duration and sampling time.
Calculate signal power and noise power.
Define primary user status for reference to calculate decision accuracy.
Calculate equation for BPSK modulated transmitted signal.
Calculate received signal with addition of noise after passes through AWGN channel.
Performed spectrum sensing :
Reform the received signal and represent it by a temporary matrix (temp).
Calculate the signal for each user (signal1)
Calculate opposite signal for these signals and represent it by other notations (signal0).
Apply two filters Y 1, and Y 0 to filter original signal (signal1) and its opposite signal (signal0).
Calculate status of signal using some threshold value either signal1 is present or absent.
Calculate decision accuracy over AWGN channel.
Define Rician fading channel with suitable parameters.
Pass the signal through defined Rician fading channel.
Perform spectrum sensing over defined Rician fading channel.
Calculate decision accuracy over Rician fading channel.
Define Rayleigh fading channel with suitable parameters.
Pass the signal through defined Rayleigh fading channel.
Perform spectrum sensing over defined Rayleigh fading channel.
Calculate decision accuracy over Rayleigh fading channel.
Plot graphs between Decision accuracy Vs SNR over AWGN channel, Rician fading channel and Rayleigh fading channel.
Plot graphs for transmitted signals of all users , transmitted signal for single user, received signal and status of spectrum sensing
either signal of specified user is present or not.
22

Matched Filtering
Transmitted signals of all users

23

Matched Filtering

24

Matched Filtering

25

Matched Filtering

26

Matched Filtering

27

Energy Detection
Define the number of user, number of frame per user, FFT size for specified SNR range, also specify the bit duration and sampling time.
Calculate signal power and noise power.
Calculate equation for modulated transmitted signal and received signal after passes through channel.
Perform spectrum sensing :
Reform the received signal and represent it by a temporary matrix (temp).
Calculate signal power and average power.
Calculate threshold value of energy to find status of signal.
Calculate status of signal using calculated threshold value either user signal is present or absent.
Calculate decision accuracy over AWGN channel.
Define Rician fading channel with suitable parameters.
Pass the signal through defined Rician fading channel.
Perform spectrum sensing over defined Rician fading channel.
Define Rayleigh fading channel with suitable parameters.
Pass the signal through defined Rayleigh fading channel.
Perform spectrum sensing over defined Rayleigh fading channel.
Calculate decision accuracy over Rayleigh fading channel.
Plot graphs between decision accuracy Vs SNR over AWGN channel, Rician fading channel and Rayleigh fading channel.
Plot graphs for transmitted signals of all users, transmitted signal for single user, received signal and status of spectrum sensing
either signal of specified user is present or not.

28

Energy Detection

29

Energy Detection

30

Energy Detection

31

Energy Detection

32

Energy Detection

33

Cyclostationary Feature Detection

34

Cyclostationary Feature Detection

Define the number of user, number of frame per user, FFT size for specified SNR range, also specify bit duration and sampling time.
Calculate signal power and noise power.
Calculate equation for modulated transmitted signal and received signal after passes through channel.
Calculate received signal for each user.
Reform the received signal of each user for all the user frames for specified FFT window.
Calculate signal power (Pt) of reformed signal and find correlated component (Pcort) in signal power matrix (Pt).
Store average (Pavgt) of these correlated component (Pcort) as reference feature of signals to find status of user either it is present or not.
Performed spectrum sensing :
Reform the received signal and represent it by a temporary matrix (temp).
Calculate signal power and find correlated component (Pcor) in signal power matrix P.
Calculate features for each user.
Using these calculated features nd decision parameters to calculate threshold value of these features.
Calculate status of signal using calculated threshold value either user signal is present or absent.
Calculate decision accuracy over AWGN channel.
Define Rician fading channel with suitable parameters.
Pass the signal through defined Rician fading channel.
Perform spectrum sensing over defined Rician fading channel.
Define Rayleigh fading channel with suitable parameters.
Pass the signal through defined Rayleigh fading channel.
Perform spectrum sensing over defined Rayleigh fading channel.
Calculate decision accuracy over Rayleigh fading channel.
Plot graphs between decision accuracy vs SNR over AWGN channel, Rician fading channel and Rayleigh fading channel.
Plot graphs for transmitted signals of all users , transmitted signal for single user, received signal and status of spectrum sensing
either signal of specified user is present or not.
35

Cyclostationary Feature Detection

36

Cyclostationary Feature Detection

37

Cyclostationary Feature Detection

38

Cyclostationary Feature Detection

39

AWGN Channel

40

Rician Fading Channel

41

Rayleigh Fading Channel

42

Future Work
Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) is approaching towards relay based cooperative communication to
extend transmission coverage, and improve system capacity.
This approach will be helpful to reduce interference to primary users, and achieve fairness in data
transmission among the CR users.
The relay based cooperative cognitive transmission is also defines two scenario, i.e., cooperative
transmission between secondary users as well as cooperative transmission between primary users
and secondary users.
In the first scenario, the secondary users act as a relay to assist only secondary users transmissions.
In the second scenario, each secondary relay cooperates by relaying primary user's signal to its
primary receiver, and as an incentive, each secondary relay gets an opportunity to transmit in the
same spectrum that is used by the primary user.

43

Conclusion
Increasing demand of bandwidth for effective and healthy communication requires efficient and
beneficial advancement with valuable spectrum utilization of communication resources.
A novel approach to fulfill these requirements, implemented using CR concept.
Most popular techniques for spectrum sensing are enlightened in this paper.
CR systems increase throughput and user mobility over available spectra, which increase efficiency
of communication networks.
The improvement of spectrum efficiency through CR technology relies on a robust and cost-effective
design involving identification and reuse of spectrum opportunities changing over time, frequency,
and space.

44

References
[1] Sajjad Ahmad Ghauri, I M Qureshi, M. Farhan Sohail, Sheraz Alam, M. Anas Ashraf, \Spectrum sensing for cognitive radover fading channels,
"International Journal of Computer and Electronics Research Vol. 2, Issue 1, February 2013.
[2] Anita Garhwal and Partha Pratim Bhattacharya,\A Survey on Spectrum Sensing Techniques in Cognitive Radio,"International Journal of
Computer Science Communication Networks, Vol. 1(2), 196-206.
[3] V. Stoianovici, V. Popescu , M. Murroni, \A survey on spectrum sensing techniques for cognitive radio,"Bulletin of the Transilvania University of
Brasov, Vol. 15 (50) { 2008.
[4] Anirudh M. Rao, B. R. Karthikeyan, Dipayan mazumdar, Govind R. Kadambi, \Energy detection technique for spectrum Sensing in cognitive
radio,"SASTECH Vol. 9, Issue 1, April 2010.
[5] Mahmood A. Abdulsattar and Zahir A. Hussein, \Energy detection technique for Spectrum sensing in cognitive Radio,"International Journal of
Computer Networks Communications (IJCNC) Vol.4, No.5, September 2012.
[6] Danijela Cabric, ,Shridhar Mubaraq Mishra, Robert W. Brodersen Berkeley Wireless Research Center, University of California, Berkeley IEEE Paper,
\Implementation Issues in Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radios,"in Proc. the 38th. Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems,
and Computers, year 2004, pages 772-776.
[7] Tevk Yucek and Huseyin Arslan, \A Survey of Spectrum Sensing Algorithms for Cognitive Radio Applications,"IEEE communications surveys
tutorials, Vol. 11, no. 1, rst quarter 2009. 49
[8] Simon Haykin, David J. Thomson and Jerey H. Reed, \Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio."Proceedings of the IEEE Vol. 97 , Issue: 5 May
2009.
[9] Mansi Subhedar and Gajanan Birajdar, \Spectrum sensing techniques in cognitive radio networks: a survey,"International Journal of
Next-Generation Networks (IJNGN) Vol.3, No.2, June 2011 ,DOI : 10.5121/ijngn.2011.3203 37.
[10] Priyank Anand, Ankit Singh Rawat, Dr. Hao Chen and Dr. Pramod K. Varshney, \Collaborative Spectrum Sensing in the Presence of Byzantine
Attacks in Cognitive Radio Netwroks,"Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering of Syracuse University as well as by AFOSR under FA955009-C-0146. On January 8, 2010.
[11] Ying-Chang Liang, Yonghong Zeng, Edward C.Y. Peh, and Anh Tuan Hoang, \Sensing-Throughput Tradeo form Cognitive Radio Networks,"IEEE transactions on excitingwireless communications, Vol. 7, no. 4, april 2008.
[12] A. Rahim Biswas, Tuncer Can Aysal, Sithamparanathan Kandeepan, Dzmitry Kliazovich and Radoslaw Piesiewicz, \Cooperative Shared
Spectrum Sensing for Dynamic Cognitive Radio Networks,"Broadband and Wireless Group, Create-Net International Research Centre, Trento,
Italy, EUWB (FP7-ICT-215669).

45

References
[13] Nishant Dev Khaira, Prateek Bhadauria, \Cooperative spectrum sensing and Detection eciency in cognitive radio network,"International
Journal of Electronics and Computer Science Engineering ISSN-2277- 1956.
[14] Zhi Quan, Shuguang Cui, and Ali H. Sayed, \Optimal Linear Cooperation for Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks,"IEEE journal
of selected topics in signal processing, Vol. 2, no. 1, February 2008.
[15] Zhaoyu Gao, Haojin Zhu, Shuai Li, Suguo Du and Xu Li, \Security and Privacy of Collaborative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks,"DRAFT January 28, 2012.
[16] Amir Ghasemi, Communications Research Centre Canada and Univer- sity of Toronto Elvino S. Sousa, University of Toronto,\Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks: Requirements, Challenges and Design Trade-os,"IEEE Communications Magazine, April 2008. 50
[17] Ruiliang Chen, Jung-Min Park, Y. Thomas Hou, and Jerey H. Reed, \Toward Secure Distributed Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks,"This paper was presented in part in the First IEEE Workshop on Networking Technologies for Software Dened Radio (SDR) Networks,
Sept. 2006, Reston, VA.
[18] Zhi Quan, Shuguang Cui, Ali H. Sayed, and H. Vincent Poor, \Wide- band Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks,"Department of
Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095.
[19] Paul D. Sutton, Keith E. Nolan and Linda E. Doyle, \Cyclostationary Signatures in Practical Cognitive Radio Applications,"IEEE journal on
selected areas in communications, Vol. 26, no. 1, January 2008.
[20] Dong-Chan Oh and Yong-Hwan Lee, \Energy Detection Based Spectrum Sensing for Sensing Error Minimization in Cognitive Radio Networks,"International Journal of Communication Networks and Information Security (IJCNIS) Vol. 1, No. 1, April 2009.
[21] Komal Arora, Ankush Kansal and Kulbir Singh, \Comparison of Energy Detection Based Spectrum Sensing Methods Over Fading Channels in
Cognitive Radio,"Signal Processing: An International Journal (SPIJ), Vol. 5, Issue 2, 2011 44.
[22] Md. Shamim Hossain, Md. Ibrahim Abdullah and Mohammad Alamgir Hossain, \Energy Detection Performance of Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio,"I.J. Information Technology and Computer Science, 2012, 11, 11-17 Published Online October 2012 in MECS (http://www.mecspress.org/) DOI: 10.5815/ijitcs.2012.11.02.
[23] Miguel Lopez-Bentez and Fernando Casadevall, \Improved Energy Detection Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio,"This paper published in
IET communication publication, IET Communications(2012), 6(8):785.
[24] Saqib Saleem and Khurram Shahzad, \Performance Evaluation of Energy Detection Based Spectrum Sensing Technique for Wireless Channel,"International journal of multidisciplinary sciences and engineering, Vol. 3, no. 5, may 2012.

46

References
[25] Zhiqiang Bao, Bin Wu, Pin-Han Ho and Xiang Ling, \Adaptive Threshold Control for Energy Detection Based Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive
Radio Networks,"This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication
in the IEEE Globecom 2011 proceedings.
[26] S.Shobana, R.Saravanan, R.Muthaiah, \Matched Filter Based Spectrum Sensing on Cognitive Radio for OFDM WLANs,"International Journal
of Engineering and Technology (IJET), Vol. 5, Issue 1, p142, February 2013.
[27] Waleed Ejaz, Najam ul Hasan and Hyung Seok Kim, \SNR-Based Adap tive Spectrum Sensing For Cognitive Radio Networks,"International
Journal of Innovative Computing, Information and Control ICIC In- ternational c 2012 ISSN 1349-4198 Vol. 8, Number 9, September 2012
[28] Oxford advanced Learner's Dictionary new 7th edition page No. 288.
[29] Federal Communications Commission, \Spectrum Policy Task Force,"Rep. ET Docket no. 02-135, Nov. 2002.
[30] FCC, \FCC 03-322,"Dec. 2003. [Online]. Available: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocspublic/attachmatch/FCC-03-322A1.pdf
[31] Sanjiv Kumar, P. K. Gupta, G. Singh and D. S. Chauhan, \Performance Analysis of Rayleigh and Rician Fading Channel Models using Matlab
Simulation,"I.J. Intelligent Systems and Applications, 2013, 09, 94-102, Published Online August 2013 in MECS (http://www.mecs-press.org/),
DOI: 10.5815/ijisa.2013.09.11
[32] Wei Ren, Qing Zhao, and Ananthram Swami, \Power Control in Cognitive Radio Networks,"arXiv:0809.0533v2 [cs.NI] 17 Mar 2009.

47

48