Spatial-Spectral Joint Detection for Wideband Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cooperative wideband spectrum sensing method for cognitive radio networks that combines spatial and spectral information to improve detection reliability of primary signals.

Contribution

It proposes a novel spatial-spectral joint detection scheme that optimizes cooperative sensing using a linear combination of local statistics from multiple radios.

Findings

Enhanced detection performance through cooperative sensing

Efficient suboptimal solutions for the optimization problem

Improved reliability in detecting weak primary signals

Abstract

Spectrum sensing is an essential functionality that enables cognitive radios to detect spectral holes and opportunistically use under-utilized frequency bands without causing harmful interference to primary networks. Since individual cognitive radios might not be able to reliably detect weak primary signals due to channel fading/shadowing, this paper proposes a cooperative wideband spectrum sensing scheme, referred to as spatial-spectral joint detection, which is based on a linear combination of the local statistics from spatially distributed multiple cognitive radios. The cooperative sensing problem is formulated into an optimization problem, for which suboptimal but efficient solutions can be obtained through mathematical transformation under practical conditions.