Spectrum Sensing Measurements of Pilot, Energy, and Collaborative Detection

Abstract

In this paper we present an experimental study that comprehensively evaluates the performance of three different detection methods proposed for sensing of primary user signals in cognitive radios. For pilot and energy detection, our measurement results confirmed the theoretical expectations on sensing time performance. However, a physical implementation of these detectors in the presence of real noise uncertainties, analog impairments and interference allowed us to establish practical bounds on the detectable signal levels. In the case of collaborative detection, our analysis of experimental data collected in indoor environments identified the design parameters that can significantly improve the sensing gain: adaptive threshold, spatial separation and multiple antennas