Real-Time Spectrum Sniffer for Cognitive Radio Based on Rotman Lens Spectrum Decomposer

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel, passive, and tunable Rotman-lens spectrum decomposer for real-time spectrum sensing in cognitive radio, demonstrating broader bandwidth and channel capacity with practical experimental validation.

Contribution

Introduces a new RLSD-based RTSS that is simpler, more cost-effective, and tunable, improving upon previous designs for cognitive radio applications.

Findings

Supports broader bandwidth and more channels

Demonstrates tunability in bandwidth and operation band

Validated through theoretical and experimental results

Abstract

We introduce the concept of a Rotman-lens spectrum decomposer (RLSD) real-time spectrum-sniffer (RTSS) for cognitive radio. Compared to a previously existing RTSS, the RLSD-RTSS offers the advantages of being 1) based an a simpler and lower-cost purely passive structure, 2) easier to design and easily amenable to tunability, 3) of much broader bandwidth, and 4) of accommodating more channels. The electrical size of the device is electrically larger, but perfectly acceptable in the millimeter-wave frequency range. The proposed RLSD-RTSS is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally, and been shown to support tunability in terms of both bandwidth-resolution and operation band. Given its unique features, this device may find wide applications in 5G UHD and 3D video systems.