Unit-3

SPECTRUM SENSING AND

DYNAMIC SPECTRUM ACCESS
 Spectrum Sensing
Multiple measurement campaigns reveal that much of the licensed
spectrum remains unused—both in time and in frequency: traffic in
wireless networks tends to be bursty. Hence, 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. 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.
 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)

Under the idle scenario, the received signal is essentially the

ambient noise in the radio frequency (RF) environment, and under
the busy scenario, the received signal would consist of the PU’s
signal and the ambient noise; thus,
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 ambient noise, and s(k) represents the PU signal.
 1.Energy Detector
In many cases, the signalling scheme of the PU may be unknown to
the SU.
This may correspond to the case where an agile PU has considerable
flexibility and agility in choosing its modulation and pulse shaping.
In such a case the signal can be modeled as a zero-mean stationary
white Gaussian process, independent of the observation noise, which
is also modeled as white Gaussian.
The spectrum sensing problem is now one of distinguishing between
two mutually independent and identical Gaussian sequences:
H0: y(k) = w(k)
H1 : y(k) = s(k) + w(k)
for k = 1, ..., n. Here w(k) and s(k) are zero-mean complex Gaussian
random variables with variances σ2w and σ2s per dimension.
 Energy Detector
The Neyman-Pearson detector is a threshold detector on the
likelihood ratio or equivalently the log-likelihood ratio (LLR):

where τ’ is a suitably chosen threshold. Given the independent and

identical assumption, the detector is easily seen to be equivalent to
deciding H1 if

This is simply an energy detector (ED). The statistic z is a scaled

version of a standard χ2 random variable with 2n degrees of
freedom.
2.Cyclostationary Feature Detector
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.
Digitally modulated signals have periodic features that may be
implicit or explicit.
The carrier frequency and symbol rate can easily be estimated via
square-law devices.
In some standards, the PU network uses a pilot tone frequency
that can be exploited by the SU.
The use of a cyclic prefix also leads to periodic signal structures.
The means and correlation sequences of such signals exhibit
periodicity and are, hence, called cyclostationary signals.
 Cyclostationary Feature Detector
The test statistic in a cyclic detector is

If the received signal y(n) can be written as

where sk(n) are mutually independent zero-mean wide-stationary processes,

independent of the circularly symmetric white noise sequence w(n), then for
a large N

Where

This detector is easily implemented via fast Fourier transforms (FFTs).

Knowledge of the noise variance is not required to set the detection
threshold; hence the detector does not suffer from the “SNR wall” problem
of the energy detector.
 3.Matched Filter
Often the pilot or sync sequences used in the primary network are
known to the SU.
For example, the WRAN 802.22 standard specifies these sequences.
Let s(n),n = 1, ...,N, denote the known pilot sequence.
Assuming perfect synchronization, the received signal at the SU can
be written as

where w(n) is additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and h

represents an unknown channel gain.
For this AWGN setting, the optimal detector is the matched filter.
The test statistic is
 4. Cooperative Sensing
The performances of a single detector can be severely degraded due
to fading, shadowing, or a faulty sensor.
This is one motivation for cooperative sensing, where observations
from multiple SUs are combined to improve detector performance.
Let the received signal at the kth SU be given by

where θ =l under Hl and K is the number of cooperating users.

The noise sequences are assumed to be independent and identically
distributed in time n and mutually independent across the sensors.
The channel gain coefficient hk is assumed to be independent across
the sensors; in other words, this represents a diversity system with K
degrees of freedom.
 5. Other Approaches
If the primary traffic is heavy, SU would seek to monitor multiple
bands.
But this entails increased sampling rates, receiver complexity, and
energy consumption.
A related issue is whether the SU can sense (and transmit on)
multiple (possibly well-) separated channels or whether the channels
should be contiguous.
Multiresolution- and wavelet-based methods have been proposed to
deal with the wideband problem.
The power spectral density is smooth within each subchannel but
possibly discontinuous across subchannel boundaries.
By using the wavelet transform, the discontinuities can be identified
and thus spectrum activity detected.
 Other Approaches
Compressed sensing ideas are exploiting the sparseness of the signal
spectrum;
sub-Nyquist sampling schemes, in conjunction with wavelet-based
edge detection, are used to provide coarse estimates of spectrum
occupancy and transmitter location.
Fundamental Tradeoffs in spectrum
sensing
A fundamental question in designing the spectrum opportunity
detector is how to choose the detector operating point (P*FA, P*MD)
to achieve the optimal trade-off between false alarms and miss
detection.
Such a trade-off, however, should be addressed in terms of MAC
layer performance: the throughput of the secondary user and the
probability of colliding with primary users.
A translation from the physical layer performance in terms of {PFA,
PMD} to the MAC layer performance in terms of throughput and
interference constraint is therefore crucial in choosing the optimal
operating point of the spectrum opportunity detector.
MAC Layer Performance Measures
The MAC layer performance is measured by the throughput of the
secondary user and the interference to the primary users.
The design objective is to maximize the throughput under a
constraint on the maximum outage probability ζ that the interference
at an active primary receiver exceeds the noise floor ρ.
The figures of merit at the MAC layer are given by the probability
PS of successful data transmission and the probability PC of colliding
with primary users.
The objective and constraint at the MAC layer is thus given by
max PS subject to PC ≤ ζ
FUNDAMENTAL TRADE-OFFS: SENSING ACCURACY
VERSUS SENSING OVERHEAD
Increasing the sensing time improves the fidelity of the sensing
outcomes, thus reducing overlooked spectrum opportunities.
On the other hand, increasing the sensing time results in less
transmission time.
The trade-off between sensing accuracy and sensing overhead
depends on the SNR level, the duration of spectrum opportunities,
and the interference constraint ζ.
Spectrum Sharing Models of Dynamic
Spectrum Access
Spectrum sharing is the simultaneous usage of a specific radio
frequency band in a specific geographical area by a number of
independent entities, leveraged through mechanisms other than
traditional multiple- and random-access techniques.
UNLICENSED SPECTRUM SHARING
Unlicensed frequency bands are chunks of spectrum set aside to be
used by devices that wish to operate in a way that is not constricted
by licenses and the associated complicated transmission/ownership
rules and are therefore prone to interference.
The most commonly used unlicensed bands are the 2.4 GHz ISM
band, used by IEEE 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth devices, and the 5
GHz UNII band, as used by IEEE 802.11a and the European
HyperLAN standards.
As mentioned previously, as they are unlicensed, none of these
bands is solely reserved for specific wireless communications
technologies; for instance, most microwave ovens also operate in the
2.4 GHz ISM band, thereby creating additional interference.
 LICENSED SPECTRUM SHARING
licensed bands are frequency bands assigned exclusively to a
licensee, for instance, a specific mobile operator.
Traditionally, such a license award also stipulates a specific
technology to be used in the band, for example, GSM or UMTS.
Depending on the technology used in the licensed band of a specific
service provider, various MAC techniques are used to allow end
users to share the medium.
Consider a pool of spectrum shared among a number of
equal-priority RANs; that is, a horizontal spectrum sharing scenario.
A central entity, such as a spectrum server or centralized spectrum
coordinator (CSC),allocates bandwidth to each RAN, where these
allocations are updated at periodic intervals.
LICENSED SPECTRUM SHARING
The spectrum allocation decision is based on the requests of every
RAN, which itself is based on traffic load prediction for the next
period in the corresponding RANs.
Traffic load predictions are calculated using information about
traffic in previous periods, among other possible parameters.
Fundamental Limits of Cognitive Radio
Secondary Market-Oriented Policies
Spectrum leasing: Allowing unlicensed users to lease any part of or
all the spectrum of a licensed user.
Dynamic spectrum leasing: Temporary and opportunistic usage of
spectrum rather than a longer term sublease.
Private commons: A licensee could allow unlicensed users access
to his/her spectrum without a contract, optionally with an access fee.
Interruptible spectrum leasing: Suitable for a leaser that wants a
high level of assurance that any spectrum temporarily in use, or
leased, to an incumbent cognitive radio could be efficiently
reclaimed if needed.
Fundamental Limits of Cognitive Radio
In current FCC proposals on opportunistic channel usage, the
cognitive radio listens to the wireless channel and determines, in
either time or frequency, which resources are unused.
It then adapts its signal to fill this void in the spectrum domain, by
transmitting either at a different time or in a different band, Thus, a
device transmits over a certain time or frequency band only when no
other user does.
Another potentially more flexible, general and spectrally efficient
approach would be to allow two users to transmit simultaneously
over the same time or frequency.
Under this scheme, a cognitive radio listens to the channel and, if
sensed idle, could proceed as in the current proposals (i.e., transmit
during the voids).
On the other hand, if another sender is sensed, the radio may decide
to proceed with simultaneous transmission. The cognitive radio has
not to wait for an idle channel to start transmission.
Fundamental Limits of Cognitive Radio

The challenge with this new model would be: is this spectrally more
efficient than time sharing the spectrum?
what are the achievable rates at which two users could transmit, and
how does this compare to when the devices are not cognitive radios,
and yet still proceed in the same fashion?
Cognitive radios have the ability to listen to the surrounding wireless
channel, make decisions on the fly and encode using a variety of
schemes. In order to exploit these abilities fully, consider the
simplest example.
Example: (a)The cognitive radio channel is defined as a
two-sender (X1, X2), two-receiver (Y1, Y2)
Examble: (b) Rate regions (R1, R2) for different
two-sender, two-receiver wireless channels.