An adaptive energy detection technique applied to cognitive radio networks

Spectrum sensing is an important functionality of cognitive radio as a means to detect the presence or absence of an existing user (EU), including the primary user or other secondary users, in a certain spectrum band. Energy detector (ED) is a widely used spectrum sensing technique based on the assumption that the EU is either present or absent during the whole sensing period. However, this assumption is not realistic in a dynamic environment where the EU could appear or disappear at any time. The performance of the conventional ED actually deteriorates in the scenario where the EU activity status changes during the sensing period. In this study, an adaptive ED is proposed to improve the detection performance in such dynamic environments. Analytical performance evaluation of the proposed adaptive ED along with simulation results prove its superiority over the conventional ED.