Blind spectrum sensing algorithms for cognitive radio networks

In a cognitive radio network, the spectrum that is allocated to primary users can be used by secondary users if the spectrum is not being used by the primary user at the current time and location. The only consideration is that the secondary users have to vacate the channel within a certain amount of time whenever the primary user becomes active. Thus, the cognitive radio faces the difficult challenge of detecting (sensing) the presence of the primary user, particularly in a low signal-to-noise ratio region, since the signal of the primary user might be severely attenuated due to multipath and shadowing before reaching the secondary, user. In this paper, a blind sensing algorithm is derived, which is based on oversampling the received signal or by employing multiple receive antennas. The proposed method combines linear prediction and QR decomposition of the received signal matrix. Then, two signal statistics are computed from the oversampled received signal. The ratio of these two statistics is an indicator of the presence/absence of the primary signal in the received signal. Our algorithm does not require the knowledge of the signal or of the noise power. Moreover, the proposed detection algorithm in this paper is blind in the sense that it does not require information about the multipath channel distortions the primary signal has undergone on its way to reaching the secondary user. Simulations have shown that our algorithm performs much better than the commonly used energy detector, which usually suffers from the noise uncertainty problem.