Performance comparison of time delay estimation for whole and dispersed spectrum utilization in cognitive radio systems

In cognitive radio systems, information is transmitted and received over multiple dispersed bands using dispersed spectrum utilization approach whereas information is transmitted and received over a single band using whole spectrum utilization approach. In this paper, performance of both approaches are compared theoretically considering CRLB and maximum likelihood (ML) method for time delay estimation. The results show that dispersed spectrum utilization methods have a great potential to exploit the efficiency of spectrum utilization and support goal driven and autonomous cognitive radio systems.