Tian 2019
Tian 2019
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TVT.2019.2943997, IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology
1
Abstract—This paper addresses the spectrum sensing problem rendering them infeasible to handle the hidden node problems
in an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system ubiquitous in many spectrum sensing applications.
based on machine learning. To adapt to signal-to-noise ratio Machine learning (ML) based approaches have recently
(SNR) variations, we first formulate the sensing problem into
a novel SNR-related multi-class classification problem. Then, been proposed to provide a new avenue to general spec-
we train a naive Bayes classifier (NBC), and propose a class- trum sensing [8], including that for OFDM configuration.
reduction assisted prediction method to reduce spectrum sensing In [9], supervised and semi-supervised learning algorithms
time. We derive the performance bounds by translating the were developed for a unchanged RF environment with fixed
Bayes error rate into spectrum sensing error rate. Compared SNR, where the eigenvalues of the received signal covariance
with the conventional methods, the proposed method is shown
by simulation to achieve higher spectrum sensing accuracy, in matrix are utilized as the features. Given received signal
particular at critical areas of low SNRs. It offers a potential energy and likelihood ratio test statistic with different SNRs,
solution to the hidden node problem. binary classification based artificial neural network (ANN) was
Index Terms—Machine learning, spectrum sensing, naive
adopted in [10], and shown to outperform the classical energy
Bayes classifier. detection method. In addition to these localized spectrum sens-
ing methods, ML based cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS)
methods were also studied in the literature [11], [12]. For
I. I NTRODUCTION example, [11] comprehensively investigated the unsupervised
and supervised learning techniques in CSS for a fixed received
The ever-increasing demand for ubiquitous broadband ser- SNR for each node. It is worth noting that the aforementioned
vice and massive connection has led to explosive growth in work designs either an individual binary classifier for each
the requirement for spectrum resource. Cognitive radio, an SNR level exhibited in the received samples, or a unified
intelligent wireless technology, opens a potential communica- binary one for multiple SNR levels. The former requires the
tion paradigm to achieve more efficient and flexible spectrum accurate estimate of the current SNR on a continuous basis for
use. Spectrum sensing is one of the key enabling function the prediction in spectrum availability, which is usually very
in cognitive radio. It detects spectrum opportunities so that challenging. The latter finds it difficult to capture the complex
the secondary user (SU) can determine its access strategy [1]. relationship between the input features and the output labels
On the other hand, as a promising multicarrier transmission with a simple classifier structure.
technique to combat multipath fading, orthogonal frequency Bearing these limitations in mind, in this paper, we take a
division multiplexing (OFDM) has seen its wide adoption in different approach on the spectrum sensing for OFDM systems
a number of standards [2]. Therefore, spectrum sensing for while tapping the benefits of ML. The novelty of our ML
OFDM systems has received considerable attention in recent approach lies in the adoption of both the received signal
years. power and CP-induced correlation as the features. Further-
Among many OFDM sensing methods, energy detection more, different from the conventional methods in [8]–[12],
(ED) is widely adopted due to its simplicity and efficiency. we formulate the spectrum sensing problem as an SNR-related
However, it is sensitive to noise uncertainty (NU), and there multi-class one. This eliminates the tedious process of contin-
exists a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) wall at low SNRs [3]. uous SNR estimation, while enabling a simple training model
Some specific characteristics of OFDM signal could also be for accurate prediction. Specifically, the main approaches and
utilized to identify the primary user (PU) spectrum usage. contributions of this paper are summarized as follows.
For example, it was shown in [4] and [5] that the correlation • First, we formulate the spectrum sensing problem as
induced by cyclic prefix (CP) can be leveraged to overcome multi-class classification problem, adapting to unknown
the SNR wall phenomenon in ED. However, the CP-based SNR variations. This means that the learning in our
sensing methods generally generate poor correlation, and can approach is one-off, regardless of the ensuing SNR vari-
not achieve good detection performance [6]. Recently, an ations.
asymptotic simple hypothesis test (ASHT) based detector • Second, we train a machine learning model with a naive
was proposed in [7] for OFDM signal sensing, where both Bayes classifier (NBC), which takes full advantage of
the received signal strength and CP-induced correlation are the statistical information of the data features and has
exploited. This method enjoys the advantage of improved a simple modeling structure. Furthermore, we propose
detection probability over ED and CP. In commonality, all a class-reduction assisted prediction method to reduce
these detection methods do not perform well at low SNRs, spectrum sensing time.
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∗
• Third, we analyze the error probability introduced by quantifies the CP-induced correlation1 , where < {·} and (·)
class reduction and NBC, which results in the expression denote the real part and complex conjugate, respectively. Note
for the spectrum sensing error rate (SSER). Then its that these two statistics were used in [7] for an approximate
performance bounds are developed based on the bounds likelihood ratio test with the estimated noise power. In this
of Bayes error rate. paper, we will utilize F1 and F2 in a totally different way, and
• Finally, simulation results show that the proposed method develop a novel data-driven based spectrum sensing method.
can achieve more accurate spectrum sensing compared to
the conventional ones, in particular at low SNRs, offering III. T HE P ROPOSED M ACHINE L EARNING BASED
a potential solution to the hidden node problem. S PECTRUM S ENSING M ETHOD
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II In this section, we elaborate on the proposed machine-
introduces the system model and input features. In Section learning based sensing method. We first formulate the spec-
III, a class-reduction assisted NBC method is proposed based trum sensing process into an SNR-related multi-class classi-
on the formulated SNR-related multiclass classification model. fication problem. Then we train a NBC model. After that,
Its performance bounds are derived in Section IV. Numerical we develop a novel class-reduction assisted NBC to reduce
results are provided in Section V to validate the benefits and the number of candidate classes and determine the spectrum
effectiveness of our methods. Finally, conclusions are provided occupancy.
in Section VI.
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obtaining the PU occupancy within the training period. For our method features reduced spectrum sensing time, as well
example, checking the operational time table of the PU or as excellent mathematical tractability.
placing a measurement equipment of high sensitivity adjacent Specifically, our method takes advantage of F1 to reduce
to the PU. the search scope of candidate classes. Assume that the testing
sample F∗ belongs to class Ck∗ ∈ Ω. Our class-reduction
B. NBC Model Training criterion can be written as
The goal of training the NBC is to learn the unknown func- |F1∗ − µ̂1,k | ≤ b0 σ̂1,k , (13)
tion of posterior probability p(Ck |F) over all possible classes
of Ck . According to Bayes rule, p(Ck |F) ∝ p(Ck ) · p(F|Ck ), where b0 is a predefined parameter. Here, based on the rule
where p(Ck ) and p(F|Ck ) denote the prior probability and of standard deviation and coverage in Gaussian distribution2 ,
likelihood function, respectively. Here, F1 and F2 are not inde- we roughly identify all the possible Gaussian distributions
pendent. However, the NBC makes a fundamental assumption (with different mean and variance, i.e., all the possible
of conditionally independent features, i.e., classes) that F1∗ belongs to. In specific, we include the
selected class Ck satisfying (13) into a candidate class subset
p(F|Ck ) = p(F1 |Ck ) · p(F2 |Ck ). (8) Ωsub,k∗ ∈ Ω. Based on updating the prior probability p(Ck )
This can substantially reduce the computational complexity from o(m) ∈ Ωsub,k∗ , we then adopt (12) to determine the
and is found to work well in many real-world cases [16], [17]. predicted class CkN B within Ωsub,k∗ . As a result, the binary
Consequently we follow this assumption in our approach. hypothesis Hj can be determined by j = mod (kN B , 2), where
Under this assumption, the NBC rule which resorts to find mod denotes the modulus operator.
the maximum posterior probability can be described as
( 2
) D. Algorithm Summary
Y
arg max p(Ck ) p(Fq |Ck ) . (9) The procedure of the proposed machine learning based
Ck q=1 spectrum sensing method can be summarized as follows.
Therefore, the naive Bayes learning algorithm transforms 1) Based on the features of F1 and F2 , we formulate the
into estimating p(Ck ) and p(Fq |Ck ). In fact, p(Ck ) can be spectrum sensing problem as an SNR-related multi-class
estimated by the frequency of Ck from the class set Ω. For classification problem.
p(Fq |Ck ), it is clear from (5) and (6) that it follows a Gaussian 2) With the collected training samples and their labels, we
distribution. Then, in training the NBC, we need to estimate train an NBC to learn the function of p(Ck |F) over
2
the mean µq,k 2
variance σq,k of each p(Fq |Ck ) based on the all possible Ck , where p(Ck ), µ̂q,k and σ̂q,k can be
and
(m) (m) obtained.
training set F , o . The maximum likelihood estimates
for the mean and variance of p(Fq |Ck ) can be written as 3) The class prediction can be implemented by (12). Fur-
thermore, to avoid the complexity of the multi-class
(m)
Fq δ(o(m) = Ck )
P
classifier increasing with the class number, we use (13)
µ̂q,k = m P (m) = C )
(10) to select all the possible Gaussian distributions (classes)
m δ(o k
that F1∗ belongs to, obtaining a reduced candidate class
(m)
(Fq − µ̂q,k )2 δ(o(m) = Ck )
P
2 subset Ωsub,k∗ . Then the trained NBC as (12) is applied
σ̂q,k = m P , (11)
( m δ(o(m) = Ck )) − 1 to predict CkN B within Ωsub,k∗ .
4) We finally determine the binary hypothesis Hj based on
where δ(o(m) = Ck ) equals 1 if o(m) = Ck and 0 otherwise. In j = mod (kN B , 2).
other words, δ(o(m) = Ck ) aims to select only those training
examples for which o(m) = Ck . IV. P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS
Next, we analyze the SSER of the proposed method. Basi-
C. Class Prediction and Spectrum Sensing cally, the error is determined by both pCR and pN BC
, referring
e e
2 to the error probability induced by the class reduction (c.f.
With µ̂q,k and σ̂q,k obtained in (10) and (11), now we can
predict the class CkN B associated with a new sample F∗ = (13)) and the NBC, respectively.
[F1∗ , F2∗ ]T as
( 2 (F ∗ −µ̂ )2
) A. Class Reduction
Y 1 − q 2 q,k
2σ̂
CkN B = arg max p(Ck ) exp q,k . (12) We first quantify the cardinality of the candidate class subset
Ck σ̂
q=1 q,k after class reduction. Based on (5), the mean and standard
However, we find it time-consuming to calculate (12) for deviation of F1 in class Ck (Ck corresponds to SN Ri under
each Ck , entailing excess spectrum sensing time when I is Hj ) can be written in a compact form as
potentially large due to the wide SNR range. Furthermore, its SN Ri
µ1,k = 10− 10 + j σz2 , j = 0 or 1 (14)
SSER performance analysis becomes very complicated due to
multiple classes. In this case, we adopt a different approach 2 If X ∼ N (µ, σ 2 ), then we have P {|X − µ| ≤ b σ} = 0.997 for
0
and propose a novel class-reduction based prediction method b0 = 3. In other words, we have a probability of 0.003 to fail to select the
with a comparable classification accuracy. Most importantly, possible distribution X belongs to.
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Transactions on Vehicular Technology
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0018-9545 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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TABLE I 1
NBC with class reduction
ACCURACY OF ML ALGORITHMS USING DIFFERENT TRAINING SAMPLES 0.9 NBC without class reduction
BPNN
Number of training samples Ntrain Proposed BPNN 0.8 ASHT
0.2
Figs. 1 and 2 illustrate the probability of correct detection 0.1
and spectrum sensing error rate, respectively, where Ntrain =
0
1000 and the false alarm probability of the threshold-based −20 −15 −10 −5 0
SNR (dB)
methods is set to be 0.05. Fig. 1 shows that the class-reduction
assisted NBC method has the same detection performance as Fig. 1. Probability of correct detection versus SNR.
the NBC without class reduction. Furthermore, the proposed
NBC methods outperform the BPNN method and all the
0
10
threshold-based ones, significantly so at the lower end of SNR
scope. In addition, the ASHT-based method is superior to
CP-based method while the latter outperforms the ED-based
0.7
BPNN methods, where SNR = −18 dB. It is clearly shown
0.6
that the proposed method achieves much higher classification
0.5
accuracy than the BPNN method. This supremacy originates Proposed, Ntrain=1000
from the fact that the proposed method utilizes the Gaussian 0.4 Proposed, Ntrain=10
BPNN, Ntrain=1000
statistical information of the data features. For both classifiers, 0.3
BPNN, Ntrain=10
the prediction accuracy enhances with the number of training 0.2 ASHT
samples. It can be observed that a quick convergence is 0.1
CP
ED with 1dB NU
achieved with a small number of training samples, and the Optimal LRT
0
accuracy improvement becomes slow when the number of 0 0.2 0.4 0.6
Probability of false alarm
0.8 1
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