Spectrum awareness techniques for 5G satellite communications

5G communications will enable new paradigms architectures and services, and the integration of satellite and terrestrial networks can play a key role. Cognitive radios are seen as the most promising solution to dynamically cooperate, in order to exploit advanced frequency sharing techniques. To this end, efficient sensing techniques for spectrum awareness are a must. In this paper, we provide preliminary results on energy detection (ED) and cyclostationary feature detection (CFD) algorithms applied to a downlink Ka-band scenario. These results show that coexistence between satellite and terrestrial networks is possible and cognitive radios can ease their integration in future 5G communications.