SPECTRUM SENSING METHODS IN COGNITIVE RADIO

SEMINAR REPORT submitted in partial fulllment of the requirements for the award of the degree of

Bachelor of Technology in
ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING of MAHATMA GANDHI UNIVERSITY

by PAUL JAMES (201029)

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi, 682039 2012

Rajagiri Valley, Cochin - 682 039

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

CERTIFICATE

Certied that this document titled SPECTRUM SENSING METHODS IN COGNITIVE RADIO is a bonade report of the seminar presented by Paul James (Uni. Reg. No: 201029) of seventh semester Electronics and Communication Engineering in partial fulllment of the requirements for the award of degree of Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering of the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, during the academic year 2012-2013.

Mr. Jaison Jacob Seminar Guide

Mr. Jaison Jacob Head of Department

Place: Kakkanad Date:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to my guide Mr. Jaison Jacob, Head of the Department, Dept. of ECE, for his exemplary guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement throughout the course of the preparation of the seminar. It was a good learning experience working with him. I am obliged to sta members of the Dept. of ECE, for the valuable information provided by them in their respective elds. I am grateful for their cooperation during the period of preparation and presentation of the seminar. Lastly, I thank almighty, my parents, and my friends for their constant encouragement without which this seminar would not be possible.

ABSTRACT

Frequency spectrum is usually licensed users by government agencies in a xed manner where licensee has exclusive right to access the allocated band. This policy has been followed to protect systems from mutual interference for many years. In India, the government has earned 67,719 crore from the 3G spectrum auction. ie, the spectrum is very precious. However, with increasing demand for the spectrum and scarcity of vacant bands, a spectrum policy reform seems inevitable. Cognitive radio (CR) is a form of wireless communication in which a transceiver can intelligently detect which communication channels are in use and which are not, and instantly move into vacant channels while avoiding occupied ones. This optimizes the use of available radio-frequency (RF) spectrum while minimizing interference to other users. Dierent spectrum sensing methods in cognitive radio like Matched Filter Detection, Energy Detection and Cyclostationary Feature Detection is discussed in this seminar.

List of Figures

1.1 2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

spectrum holes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cognitive cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . matched lter detection block diagram . . . . . . energy detection block diagram . . . . . . . . . . cyclostationary feature detection block diagram . comparison of dierent spectrum sensing methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Acknowledgements Abstract List of Figures 1 Introduction 2 Cognitive radio 2.1 Denition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Cognitive Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Cognitive Radios Key Benets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Spectrum sensing Methods 3.1 Matched Filter Detection . . . . . 3.2 Energy Detection . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Cyclostationary Feature Detection 3.4 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conclusion References

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Chapter 1 Introduction

The available electromagnetic radio spectrum is a limited natural resource and getting crowded day by day due to increase in wireless devices and applications. It has been also found that the allocated spectrum is underutilised because of the static allocation of the spectrum. Also, the conventional approach to spectrum management is very inexible in the sense that each wireless operator is assigned an exclusive license to operate in a certain frequency band. And, with most of the useful radio spectrum already allocated, it is dicult to nd vacant bands to either deploy new services or to enhance existing ones. In order to overcome this situation, we need to come up with a means for improved utilization of the spectrum creating opportunities for dynamic spectrum access.

Figure 1.1: spectrum holes

Figure 1 show relatively low utilization of the licensed spectrum which is largely due to inecient xed frequency allocations rather than any physical shortage of spectrum. This observation has forced the regulatory bodies to search a method where secondary (unlicensed) systems are allowed to opportunistically utilize the unused primary (licensed) bands commonly referred to as white spaces. Cognitive radio can change its transmitter parameters based on interaction with environment in which it operates.

Chapter 2 Cognitive radio

2.1

Denition

Wireless communication in which the transmission or reception parameters are changed to communicate eciently without interfering with licensed users. Cognitive Radio (CR) is a system/model for wireless communication. It uses the methodology of sensing and changes its transmission or reception parameters to communicate eciently by learning from the environment and adapting to statistical variations in real time. The concept was rst originated by Defense Advance Research Products Agency (DARPA) Scientist, Dr. Joseph Mitola and the result of that concept is IEEE 802.22 , which is a standard aimed at using cognitive radio for Wireless Regional Area Network (WRAN) using white spaces in the TV frequency spectrum while assuring that no harmful interference is caused to the incumbent operation, i.e., digital TV and analog TV broadcasting, and low power licensed devices. Building on spectrum sensing and other basic tasks,the ultimate objective of a cognitive radio network is twofold: 1. It should provide highly reliable communication for all users of the network, wherever and whenever needed 2. It facilitate ecient utilization of the radio spectrum in a fair-minded and costeective manner. 2.2 Cognitive Cycle

A basic cognitive cycle comprises of following three basic tasks: Spectrum Sensing 2

Figure 2.1: cognitive cycle Spectrum sensing is the ability to measure, sense and be aware of the parameters related to the radio channel characteristics, availability of spectrum and transmit power, interference and noise, radios operating environment, user requirements and applications, available networks (infrastructures) and nodes, local policies and other operating restrictions. It is done across Frequency, Time, Geographical Space, Code and Phase[1]. Spectrum Analysis Spectrum Analysis is based on spectrum sensing which is analyzing the situation of several factors in the external and internal radio environment (such as radio frequency spectrum use by neighbouring devices, user behaviour and network state) and nding the optimal communication protocol and changing frequency or channel accordingly. It is also known as channel estimation. Spectrum Decision Making Spectrum Decision Making calls for reconguration for the channel and protocol required for constantly adapting to mobile changing environments and adjustment of output power or even alteration of transmission parameters (such as modulation formats (e.g. low to high order QAM), variable symbol rates, dierent channel coding schemes) and characteristics by the Cognitive radio devices. CR should be able to use multiple antennas for interference nulling, capacity increase or range extension. 2.3 Cognitive Radios Key Benets Spectrum Eciency- This will allow future demand for spectrum to be met and is the basic purpose of implementing CR.

 Higher bandwidth services- Demand of MBMS is constantly on the rise which will be facilitated by the implementation of CR. Commercial Exploitation- CR promotes spectrum liberalization (makes it much easier to trade spectrum between users). Benets to the Service Provider- More customers in the market and/or increased information transfer rates to existing customers. More players can come in the market. Common hardware platform- Manufacturers will gain from economies of scale because they no longer need to build numerous hardware variants, instead using a single common platform to run a wide range of software. This also assists in rapid service deployment. Emergency service communications- Joint operations during major incidents would benet greatly as police, re, ambulance and coastguard could be linked together in one radio with each radio user sensing the spectrum being used by the other parties and reconguring itself. Benets to the Licensee- CR can pave the way for spectrum trading, where licensees would be allowed to lease a portion of their spectrum rights to third parties and make money.

Chapter 3 Spectrum sensing Methods

A major challenge in cognitive radio is that the secondary users need to detect the presence of primary users in a licensed spectrum and quit the frequency band as quickly as possible if the corresponding primary radio emerges in order to avoid interference to primary users. This technique is called spectrum sensing. Spectrum sensing and estimation is the rst step to implement Cognitive Radio system . To be specic, the task of spectrum sensing involves the following subtasks: Detection of spectrum holes. Spectral resolution of each spectrum hole. Estimation of the spatial directions of incoming interferes. Signal classication. Dierent Spectrum Sensing methods are : 3.1 Matched Filter Detection

A matched lter (MF) is a linear lter designed to maximize the output signal to noise ratio for a given input signal. However, a matched lter eectively requires demodulation of a primary user signal. This means that cognitive radio has a priori knowledge of primary user signal. e.g. modulation type and order, pulse shaping, packet format. Matched lter operation is equivalent to correlation in which the unknown signal is convolved with the lter whose impulse response is the mirror and time shifted version of a reference signal. The operation of matched lter detection is expressed as:

Y [n] =
k=

h [n k ] x [k ]

(3.1)

Where x is the unknown signal (vector) and is convolved with the h, the impulse response of matched lter that is matched to the reference signal for maximizing the SNR. Detection by using matched lter is useful only in cases where the information from the primary users is known to the cognitive users.

Figure 3.1: matched lter detection block diagram

Advantages : Matched lter detection needs less detection time because it requires only O (1/SNR) samples to meet a given probability of detection constraint. When the information of the primary user signal is known to the cognitive radio user, matched lter detection is optimal detection in stationary gaussian noise[2]. Disadvantages: Matched lter detection requires a prior knowledge of every primary signal. Ifthe information is not accurate, MF performs poorly. Also the most signicant disadvantage ofMF is that a CR would need a dedicated receiver for every type of primary user. 3.2 Energy Detection

It is a non-coherent detection method that detects the primary signal based on the sensed energy .Due to its simplicity and no requirement on a priori knowledge of primary user signal, energy detection (ED) is the most popular sensing technique. In order to measure the energy of the received signal the output signal of bandpass lter with bandwidth W is squared and integrated over the observation interval T. Finally the output of the integrator is compared with a threshold to detect weather the primary or licensed user is present or not. It can also be computed in frequency domain by averaging bins of a Fast Fourier Transform. In this the processing gain is proportional to FFT size N and the averaging time T. Increase in the size of FFT improves the frequency resolution which is helpful in detecting narrowband signals. Also if we reduce the averaging time it improves the SNR by reducing the noise power. It estimates the presence of the signal by

Figure 3.2: energy detection block diagram comparing the energy received with a known threshold derived from the statistics of the noise[3]. Advantages : The ED is said to be the Blind signal detector because it ignores the structure of the signal Disadvantages : sensing time taken to achieve a given probability of detection may be high Detection performance is subject to the uncertainty of noise power. ED cannot be used to distinguish primary signals from the CR user signals. As a result CR users need to be tightly synchronized and refrained from the transmissions during an interval called Quiet Period in cooperative sensing. ED cannot be used to detect spread spectrum signals 3.3 Cyclostationary Feature Detection

Modulated signals are in general coupled with sine wave carriers, pulse trains, repeating spreading, hoping sequences, or cyclic prexes which result in built -in periodicity. Even though the data is a stationary random process, these modulated signals are characterized as cyclostationary, since their statistics, mean and autocorrelation, exhibit periodicity. This periodicity is typically introduced intentionally in the signal format so that a receiver can exploit it for: parameter estimation such as carrier phase, pulse timing, or direction of arrival. These features are detected by analysing a spectral correlation function.

Figure 3.3: cyclostationary feature detection block diagram Advantages: cyclostationary feature detection is robust to noise uncertainties and performs better than energy detection in low SNR regions. Although it requires a priori knowledge of the signal characteristics, cyclostationary feature detection is capable of distinguishing the CR transmissions from various types of PU signals. This eliminates the synchronization requirement of energy detection in cooperative sensing. Disadvantages: it have high computational complexity and long sensing time. Due to these issues, this detection method is less common than energy detection in cooperative sensing 3.4 Comparison

The comparison of dierent transmitter detection techniques for spectrum sensing and the spectrum opportunities is shown in gure. As it is evident from the gure, that matched lter based detection is complex to implement in CRs, but has highest accuracy. Similarly, the energy based detection is least complex to implement in CR system and least accurate compared to other approaches. And other approaches are in the middle of these two.

Figure 3.4: comparison of dierent spectrum sensing methods[4]

Chapter 4 Conclusion

Spectrum is a very valuable resource in wireless communication systems and it has been a major research topic from last several decades. Cognitive radio is a promising technology which enables spectrum sensing for opportunistic spectrum usage by providing a means for the use of white spaces. Considering the challenges raised by cognitive radios, the use of spectrum sensing method appears as a crucial need to achieve satisfactory results in terms of ecient use of available spectrum and limited interference with the licensed primary users. We have discussed three spectrum sensing methods in this seminar. Each one have its own advantages and disadvantages . In order to reduce the error in single transmitter detection , we can go for co-operative sensing .Furthermore, in order to fully realize the CR system in wireless communications for ecient utilization of scarce RF spectrum, the method used in identifying the interference and/or spectrum sensing should be reliable and prompt so that the primary user will not suer from CR system to utilize their licensed spectrum.

References

[1] Haiyun Tang, Some Physical Layer Issues of Wide-band Cognitive Radio Systems, ADAPTRUM, INC., 2005 [2] Amit Kataria, Cognitive radios Spectrum sensing issues, University of MissouriColumbia, 2007 [3] Danijela Cabric, Shridhar Mubaraq Mishra, Robert W. Brodersen, Implementation Issues in Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radios,Berkeley Wireless Research Center, 2006 [4] Amir Ghasemi and Elvino S. Sousa, Collaborative Spectrum Sensing for Opportunistic Access in Fading Environments, University of Toronto, 2005

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