Spectrum Sensing Techniques

A Comparison Between Energy Detector and Cyclostationarity Detector

Aswathi Satheesh, Aswini S. H., Lekshmi S. G., Sruthi Sagar, Hareesh Kumar M
Department of Electronics and Communication
L.B.S. Institute of Technology for Women
Trivandrum, India
Email: aswathisatheesh10@gmail.com, sh.aswinish@gmail.com,sruthy.sagar@gmail.com


AbstractSpectrum Sensing is the most challenging and
enabling technology for Cognitive Radio (CR). The future of
wireless / radio communication will be driven by CRs through
efficient use of unutilized or underutilized spectrum (White
Space). However, the major challenge in reliable communication
over a CR System lies in detecting such White Spaces through
robust spectrum sensing techniques. Ever since the concept of CR
had been proposed, several detection techniques were explored
by researchers. Among these, Energy Detection based spectrum
sensing, Cyclostationarity based spectrum sensing, Filter Bank,
Matched Filter detection and Wavelet Transform based detection
are identified as the candidate detection schemes for spectrum
sensing in CR. In this paper, we design a cyclostationarity based
spectrum sensing for BPSK, BFSK and GMSK channels for
application in CR. We shall also evaluate its performance against
the basic ED based sensing through their respective Receiver
Operating Characteristics (ROC), through simulation in
MATLAB.
KeywordsCognitive Radio; Spectrum Sensing;
SpectrumScarcity; Energy Detector; Cyclostationarity Detector;
Receiver Operating Characteristics.
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Background
The electromagnetic radio spectrum is a natural resource,
which is used by transmitters and receivers for radio
communication. As the number of users trying to use the
spectrum for different applications increases, the demand for
spectrum also increases. This leads to the main problem faced
in wireless communication Spectrum Scarcity.
This electromagnetic spectrum is allocated to specific
users for specific applications by the government. These users
who are legally allowed to use a specific portion of a spectrum
are known as Primary Users (PUs).
If we try to analyse the spectrum usage pattern across the
spectrum, we can find that:
1) Some portions of the spectrum are mostly not utilized;
2) Some other portions are rarely utilized;
3) The remaining portions are heavily utilized.
From these observations, we can conclude that the main
problem in wireless communication is not spectrum scarcity.
The underutilization of the scarce resource is a more
significant problem than the scarcity of the resource.
Theunderutilization of the spectrum leads to the formation of
spectrum holes which can be defined as [1]
A spectrum hole is a band of frequencies assigned to a
primary user, but, at a particular time and specific geographic
location, the band is not being utilized by that user.
So it is important to improve the spectrum utilization in
order to carry out effective communication. Spectrum
utilization can be improved significantly by making it possible
for a user who is not allowed to access the spectrum legally
(i.e. a user who is not a PU), to access a spectrum hole at a
particular time and location. These users are known as
Secondary Users (SUs).
Cognitive Radio (CR) can be viewed as a novel approach
for improving the utilization of radio spectrum. The term
Cognitive Radio was coined by Joseph Mitola. The concept
of CR evolved from Software Defined Radio (SDR).
B. Limitations of existing method Energy based Spectrum
Sensing
When the primary signals are unknown to the SUs, Energy
Detection can be used for spectrum sensing. Energy Detector
(ED) acts as an optimal detector if the noise power is known
to the CR users. In terms of implementation complexity, this
approach is suitable for CR systems even though it is a less
accurate method. It is prone to variation in noise level and
interference over time. If the SNR of the received signal falls
below SNR
wall
(minimum value of SNR required for optimum
performance), the signal cannot be detected using ED. Also,
ED has increased sensing time.
So we go for a Cyclostationarity based Spectrum Sensing
which takes advantage of the cyclostationarity properties of
the received signal to detect the presence of a PU. The main
advantage of a Cyclostationarity based Detector (CD) is that
2013 International Conference on Control Communication and Computing (ICCC)
978-1-4799-0575-1/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE 388
the cyclostationarity features of the received signal does
notvary with SNR which enables it to deliver optimum
performance even under low SNR condition.
II. BASIC DETECTORS
The received signal at CR receiver is given by:
y(n) = _
w(n), B
0
s(n) +w(n), B
1
(1)
where w(n) denotes the Additive White Gaussian Noise
(AWGN), s(n) denotes the primary transmitted signal. H
0
and
H
1
are the two hypotheses which denote the absence and
presence of the primary signal respectively.
A basic detector detects the received signal, computes the
test statistics and compares it with a predetermined threshold
(). If the test statistic is greater than , then it indicates the
presence of the primary signal i.e. hypothesis H
1
. Hypothesis
H
0
is considered otherwise.
There are mainly two types of errors that can occur while
detecting the presence of the primary user. If is set to a very
large value, then the detection device will not indicate the
presence of the primary signal even if it is actually present.
This indicates an error in decision making known as a Missed
Detection. Similarly, if is too low, the detection device will
indicate the presence of the primary signal even when the
primary signal is not present. This type of error is known as a
False Alarm. For an optimum detector, it is essential to
minimise both the Probability of False Alarm (P
fa
) and the
Probability of Miss Detection (P
md
) where
P
d
= P(H
1
| H
1
) (2)
P
fa
= P(H
1
| H
0
) (3)
P
md
= 1 - P
d
(4)
We analyze the performance of the given detector by
plotting the ROC which considers the variation of P
d
and P
fa
for different SNRs.
A. Energy based Detector
In an ED, the test statistic is the energy of the received
signal. The test statistic is:
T(y) = |y(n)|
2 N
n=1
(5)
where y(1), .y(N) are the samples of received signal.

Fig. 1. Block diagram for the determination of test statistic (energy) for
Energy Detector

In this paper, we consider a noise only case for fixing the
threshold value, as it is not possible to reduce both P
fa
and
P
md
simultaneously. So to minimize the total Probability of
Error (P
e
), the Neyman Pearson (NP) approach [2] is used
where a particular P
fa
is fixed minimizing P
md
and the
corresponding value is used for detection. The PDF of the
test statistic (energy) for Energy based detectors can be
approximated as a Gaussian distribution.


(6)

2
2
2
) ) ( (
0
2
1
) ); ( (

=
y T
e H y T P
(7)
B. Cyclostationarity Detector
In CD, the cyclostationarity properties of the received
signal are used to detect the primary signal. A signal x(t) is
said to possess cyclostationarity property if its statistics, mean
and autocorrelation, are periodic with some period T
0
.

p
x
(t) = p
x
(t + I
0
) (8)

R
x
(t, ) = R
x
(t + I
0
, ) (9)

From Equation (9), it is clear that the Autocorrelation
Function is periodic in nature. So, it can be represented as a
Fourier series [3].
R
x

() = lim
1-
1
1
] x [t +
:
2
x [t -
:
2

-
c
-]2nut
Jt
1
(10)
R
x
u
() = E|x(n)x
-
(n - )c
-]2nun
] (11)
where R
x
u
() is the Cyclic Autocorrelation Function (CAF)
and is the cyclic frequency.
S(, o) = R
x
u
()c
-2n]:
:=-
(12)
where S(, o) is called the Spectral Correlation Function
(SCF) or Cyclic Spectrum Density (CSD).
For detecting the primary signal, CD computes the SCF of
the received signal and compares it with the predetermined
threshold. Here also, the NP approach is used to fix the
threshold. It is also assumed that the SCF of the received
signal is Gaussian in nature.
There are mainly two features which makes the CD more
superior than ED [4]. They are:
1) It is possible to distinguish White Gaussian Noise
(WGN) from the received signal as WGN is a WSS
process. So, when 0, SCF is ideally zero.
2) Cyclostationarity features are different for different
signals. This enables signal classification.

) ( ) ); ( (
0
y dT H y T P P
fa
389
Generally, the SCF function of the received signal y(n) can
be expressed as:
I(y) = S

(, o) = _
S
w
(, o) E
0
S
x
(, o) + S
w
(, o) E
1
(13)

A series of algorithms are available to estimate the SCF of
a given signal. In this paper, an FFT based time smoothing
algorithm called the FFT Accumulation Method (FAM) is
used to compute SCF [5].


Fig. 2.Block diagram for the determination of test statistic (SCF) for
Cyclostationarity Detector (using FAM)
III. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this paper, the input BFSK, BPSK and GMSK signals
(with length N) are generated using Simulink. Here, ROCs of
Energy Based Detector and Cyclostationarity Based Detector
for both BFSK, BPSK and GMSK signals with variable SNR
are compared and robustness of each method is analyzed. The
performance of energy based detector against cyclostationarity
based detector under noise uncertainty is also evaluated.
The magnitude of SCF of BFSK and BPSK signals are
plotted in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 respectively. The presence of
discrete peaks in the plot represents the frequency components
of the signals. The peaks at 0 are used for detecting the
presence of signal in a CD.
On comparing the ROCs of ED and CD for BFSK, BPSK
and GMSK signals respectively, we can observe that for lower
SNR values the value of P
d
is higher for CD when compared
to ED. This can be observed by comparing the Fig.3 with
Fig.4, Fig. 7 with Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 with Fig. 10.

Fig. 3.Energy Based Detector for BFSK signal (N=100)

Fig. 4. Cyclostationarity Based Detector for BFSK signal (N=100)

Fig. 5. Magnitude of SCF of BFSK Signal

Fig. 6. Magnitude of SCF of BPSK Signal
390
Fig. 7.Energy Based Detector for BPSK sign
Fig. 8. Cyclostationarity Based Detector for BPSK
Fig. 9 .Energy Based Detector for GMSK sig
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Pfa
P
d
Cyclostationarity Based Detector - BPSK signa


nal (N=100)

K signal (N=100)

gnal (N=100)
Fig. 10. Cyclostationarity Based D
The evaluation of the perfo
sensing technique is based on t
which that particular technique
P
fa
. To find this minimum SN
for a constant P
fa
. Fig. 11 and
results are summarized in Ta
uncertainty, the SNRs require
100% and 90% are -4 dB a
achieves the same values of
respectively. This means that
signals with P
d
90% when com
uncertainty, CD achieves 100%
dB respectively. But in this ca
becomes worse; it achieves t
-2.8 dB respectively. Similarly
dB, the performance of ED
compared to CD. Similarly,
compared and the results are su
Fig. 11. Pd vs SNR plot for Energy
0.8 0.9 1
l (N=100)

SNR = 0dB
SNR = -2dB
SNR = -4dB
SNR = -6dB
SNR = -8dB
SNR = -10dB

Detector for GMSK signal (N=100)
ormance of a particular spectrum
the value of minimum SNR with
e can achieve the required P
d
and
NR we use a plot of P
d
vs. SNR
d Fig. 12 are compared and the
able I. In the case of no noise
ed by a CD to achieve a P
d
of
and -6.8 dB respectively. ED
f P
d
at -0.8 dB and -3.75 dB
CD can detect 3.1 dB weaker
mpared to an ED. For 1 dB noise
% and 90% P
d
at -2 dB and -4.35
ase the performance of the ED
these values at 0.996 dB and
y, for a noise uncertainty of 3
D degrades furthermore when
Fig. 13 and Fig. 14 can be
ummarized in Table II.

y Based detector (BFSK) with Pfa=10%
391

Fig. 12. Pd vs SNR plot for Cyclostationarity Based detector (BFSK) with
Pfa=10%

TABLE I PERFORMANCE EVALUATION SUMMARY (BFSK)
BFSK SENSING
NOISE
UNCERTAINITY
SNR REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE 90% Pd
CYCLOSTATIONARITY
BASED DETECTOR
ENERGY
BASED
DETECTOR
0dB -6.8dB -3.75dB
1dB -4.35dB -2.8dB
2dB -3.15dB -1.6dB
SNR REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE 100% Pd
0dB -4dB -1dB
1dB -2dB 0.996dB
2dB -0.01dB 1dB



Fig. 13. Pd vs SNR plot for Energy Based detector(BPSK) with Pfa=10%

Figure 14. Pd vs SNR plot for Cyclostationarity Based detector (BPSK) with
Pfa=10%

TABLE II PERFORMANCE EVALUATION SUMMARY (BPSK)
BPSK SENSING
NOISE
UNCERTAINITY
SNR REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE 90% Pd
CYCLOSTATIONARITY
BASED DETECTOR
ENERGY
BASED
DETECTOR
0dB -6.86dB -3.75dB
1dB -5.88dB -2.7dB
2dB -4.88dB -1dB
SNR REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE 100% Pd
0dB -4dB -0.8dB
1dB -3dB 0dB
2dB -2dB 1.5dB
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have analyzed the performance of ED and
CD for BFSK, BPSK and GMSK signals. From the simulation
results we can observe that in the case of high noise
uncertainty ED cannot be considered as an optimal detector.
But if we analyse the performance of CD for different noise
uncertainties we can observe that its performance is not much
affected by high noise uncertainty. Thus we can conclude that
even though Cyclostationarity based detector has a higher
computational complexity, its performance is superior to
Energy based detector in case of high noise uncertainty and so
Cyclostationarity based detector can be considered as a more
robust and reliable detector when compared to Energy based
detector.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors thank Mr. S. Krishnakumar, Joint Director,
CDAC, Thiruvananthapuram and Mr. S. Sagar, Joint Director,
CDAC, Thiruvananthapuram for their support and guidance.

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REFERENCES

[1] Simon Haykin, Cognitive Radio: Brain-Empowered Wireless
Communications -IEEE Journal on selected areas in
communications, Vol. 23, No. 2, February 2005.
[2] Steven M Kay, Fundamentals of Statistical Signal Processing
Vol II Detection Theory.
[3] Alfateh M. Mossa and VarunJeoti, Cyclostationarity- Based
Spectrum Sensing for Analog TV and Wireless Microphone
Signals, 2009 First International Conference on Computational
Intelligence, Communication Systems and Networks.
[4] W. A. Gardner, Cyclostationarity in Communications and
Signal Processing, New York: IEEE Press, 1993.
[5] EvandreLuiz da Costa, Detection and Identification of
Cyclostationary Signals, March 1996.


393