Improved energy detector for random signals in gaussian noise

New and improved energy detector for random signals in Gaussian noise is proposed by replacing the squaring operation of the signal amplitude in the conventional energy detector with an arbitrary positive power operation. Numerical results show that the best power operation depends on the probability of false alarm, the probability of detection, the average signal-to-noise ratio or the sample size. By choosing the optimum power operation according to different system settings, new energy detectors with better detection performances can be derived. These results give useful guidance on how to improve the performances of current wireless systems using the energy detector. It also confirms that the conventional energy detector based on the generalized likelihood ratio test using the generalized likelihood function is not optimum in terms of the detection performance.