Real-Time In-Lab Test of Eigenvalue-Based Spectrum Sensing Using USRP RIO SDR Boards

The diversity of prevailing and emerging cognitive radio (CR) applications makes CR an attractive domain to the researchers as well as the industry. The spectrum sensing (SS) is considered as the backbone of any autonomous CR. Thus, in this letter, we go one step further towards industrial integration of such CR feature by conducting in-lab test of a real communication scenario using a software defined radio (SDR) which is the universal software radio peripheral (USRP) platform. The eigenvalue-based SS (ESS) approaches have been, consistently, assessed in literature. Accordingly, in this work, we have proposed and tested a prototype integrating an ESS algorithm with the USRP (NI-2954R) reconfigurable I/O (RIO) devices. We have conducted real-time in-lab experiments. The proposed testbed has empirically demonstrated its capability to carry out a realistic communication scenario without loss of detection performances compared to software-based simulations.