Sensing and fingerprinting of ultra-wide band radio in UCELLS project

This paper reports the experimental work performed in the framework of the ICT-1-216785 UCELLS project aiming at sensing ultra-wideband radio signals and their fingerprinting for cognitive radio management purposes. The experimental proof-of-concept herein reported demonstrates successful capture and processing of UWB radio signals employing a photonic analog-to-digital converter. This approach permits both to cover a large frequency span without filtering and down-conversion stages altogether an excellent sensitivity due to the engineering of the signal amplification stages through the optical and electronic domains. The experimental work herein reported demonstrates that -48 dBm peak levels can be sensed with 11.2 dB SNR using the proposed photonic technique. This technique enables the precise fingerprinting of the UWB transmitters in the area. Successful operation is demonstrated for the first time detecting the time frequency hopping of ECMA-368 UWB transmissions captured and processed by the photonic analog-to-digital converter architecture. The experimental results confirm the excellent performance of the fingerprinting algorithms identifying the presence of signal in each band of the frequency hopping and the silence periods. The identification of these transmission parameters enables cognitive management of the different transmitters maximizing the overall system capacity.