Research Proposal

Cooperative Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio in FlatFading Environment

Author:
Supervisor:
1

M. Alamgir Hossain, Lecturer, Dept. of CSE, Islamic University, Kushtia.

Introduction

The spectrum, which is used for radio communications, is natural resources [1]. In the United
States, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) governs the usage of the spectrum.
Recently, with the increase in the adoption of new electric devices, the unlicensed spectrum
becomes increasingly scarce. Some recent government reports show that large part of
licensed bands are unused in the sense of time and space: some frequency bands are not
occupied by the licensed users in a particular time or at a particular location [2]. These results
direct us to a new area of communications, in which the unlicensed users (secondary users)
may occupy the free band when the licensed users (primary users) do not use the spectrum.
Such a system is called cognitive radio system. In cognitive radio system, one of the issues is
how the secondary users detect weather the primary users are using the spectrum or not.
Therefore, spectrum sensing becomes critical in cognitive radio system.
As discussed in [3], there have been many discussions and proposed solutions for
spectrum sensing. However, most solutions are still focusing on the single secondary user
detection, which means each secondary user works independently. As presented in [3], one of
the challenges in spectrum sensing is the hardware requirement since spectrum sensing needs
high sampling rate, high resolution Analog-to-Digital Converter (A/D Converter), and highperformance signal processors. This challenge becomes more explicit in the cognitive radio
applications of sensor network and ad hoc network. An alternative solution is cooperative
scheme. In cooperative scheme, two or more secondary users sense the channel coordinately
and share the information between each other. As shown in [4] and [5], with the cooperative
scheme, the probability of false alarm can be reduced significantly.
2

Project Plan

In this project, we propose to compare the performances of three cooperative spectrum

sensing protocols presented in [6], [7], and [8] in a flat fading and multipath channel with
Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). We will compare the probability of false alarm
(PFA ) and the probability of detection (P D) of these three protocols with dierent signal-tonoise ratios (SNRs) and the Doppler frequencies (FD). In addition, we will discover how the
performances change with an increased number of secondary users in the cooperative
schemes.
For the system model, we will start with a communication system with one primary user
and three secondary users. Both primary user and secondary users will share a common
receiver. Similar with many related works, we will perform the simulation in a TV band with
narrowband

transmission signals [5, 7]. The spectrum detector of each single secondary user will be
decided after reviewing more previous works.
3

Schedule
Week 1 (Feb. 3 th Feb. 5th): Read the related papers and decide the spectrum sensing
for single secondary user.
Week 2 (Feb. 6th Feb. 12th): Build the system model and revise the project proposal.
Week 3 (Feb. 13th Feb 19th): Reproduce the simulation results given in the selected
papers and perform the simulation in built system model.
Week 4 (Feb. 20th Feb. 26th): Write the progress report and analyse and verify the
simulation results.
Week 5 (Feb. 27th Mar. 4th): Analyse and verify the simulation results.
Week 6 (Mar. 5th Mar. 11th): Finish the first draft of final report, perform supplement
simulations, and prepare the presentation poster.

Week 7 (Mar. 12th Mar. 16th): Finish the final project report.
The estimated working hours are 25 hours per week. If time permits, we will analyse the
performance of these protocols with random locations of the secondary users.
References
[1] S. Haykin, Cognitive radio: brain-empowered wireless communications, Selected Areas
in Communications, IEEE Journal on, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 201220, 2005.
[2] M. Gandetto and C. Regazzoni, Spectrum sensing: A distributed approach for cognitive
terminals, Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 546
557, 2007.
[3] T. Yucek and H. Arslan, A survey of spectrum sensing algorithms for cognitive radio
applications, Communications Surveys & Tutorials, IEEE, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 116130,
2009.
[4] G. Ganesan and Y. Li, Cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks, in
New Frontiers in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks, 2005. DySPAN 2005. 2005 First
IEEE International Symposium on, pp. 137143, IEEE, 2005.
[5] A. Ghasemi and E. Sousa, Collaborative spectrum sensing for opportunistic access in
fading environments, in New Frontiers in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks, 2005.
DySPAN 2005. 2005 First IEEE International Symposium on, pp. 131136, Ieee, 2005.
[6] E. Peh and Y. Liang, Optimization for cooperative sensing in cognitive radio networks,
in
Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, 2007. WCNC 2007. IEEE, pp.
27 32, IEEE, 2007.
[7] S. Mishra, A. Sahai, and R. Brodersen, Cooperative sensing among cognitive radios, in

Communications, 2006. ICC06. IEEE International Conference on, vol. 4, pp. 16581663,
Ieee, 2006