E3 White Paper

Spectrum Sensing
1. ABSTRACT

This white paper presents an overview, and the most important conclusions, of the work related to spectrum sensing performed within the End-to-End Efficiency project (E3) [1]. Spectrum sensing could be an important enabling technology for future opportunistic spectrum sharing scenarios. One of the principal aims of spectrum sensing is transmitter detection, which is the main focus of this white paper. Various methods for spectrum sensing control, such as deciding which sensors should perform sensing simultaneously and finding the appropriate trade-off between probability of misdetection and false alarm rate, are described. Also, spectrum sensing and data fusion algorithms and their performances under realistic conditions are investigated. The findings are summarized in a concluding section.

2.

INTRODUCTION

Spectrum sensing is the art of performing measurements on a part of the spectrum and forming a decision related to spectrum usage based upon the measured data. In recent years, the service providers are faced with a situation where they require a larger amount of spectrum to satisfy the increasing quality of service (QoS) requirements of the users. This has raised the interest in unlicensed spectrum access, and spectrum sensing is seen as an important enabler for this. In a scenario in which there exist a licensed user (primary user), any unlicensed (secondary) user needs to ensure that the primary user is protected, i.e., that no secondary user is harmfully interfering any primary user operation. Spectrum sensing can be used to detect the presence (or absence) of a primary user. Recently, FCC regulations [2] have paved way for utilizing spectrum obtained from unused TV channels, the so-called TV white spaces. In these regulations, spectrum sensing plays a major role. There are some other solutions that can be thought of as alternatives, or complements, to spectrum sensing; such as using a database of (licensed) spectrum usage, which can be queried for spectrum opportunities, or advertising spectrum opportunities over a Cognition enabling Pilot Channel (CPC) as developed in the E2R and E3 projects [3] and in ETSI RRS [4]. The database solution requires a connection to that database, e.g., over the Internet, and also it requires that at least all primary users report any usage of the spectrum to the database owner continuously. Similarly, CPC-based solutions may require additional infrastructure. Spectrum sensing seems to be an attractive distributed approach for finding unused spectrum opportunities, although it should be noted that reliable spectrum sensing is sometimes a challenging task; see below. Additionally, spectrum sensing can provide valuable information on the spectrum situation to a database or CPC-based solution. It is worth noting that the main goal of all the possible solutions, and in particular the one based on sensing, is the reliability of the obtained information on the status of the spectrum.

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Radio Environment

Spectrum Opportunities

Spectrum Sensing

Awareness Networking (CCR)

Cooperative Spectrum Sensing

Opportunity Detection

Spectrum Sensing Control

Figure 1: Functional blocks representing the different functionalities needed in cooperative sensing. Also shown are the relations between the functionalities.

In this white paper, we summarize a number of techniques for spectrum sensing which could be used for opportunistic spectrum usage by secondary users. Figure 1 illustrates different functional blocks needed for (cooperative) spectrum sensing, and the various techniques can be mapped to different blocks in this figure. The techniques have been developed within the E3 project [1] sponsored by the European Commission under the 7th Framework-Program.

3.

SPECTRUM SENSING METHODOLOGIES

Spectrum sensing is an application of decision theory or detection theory. The final decisions may be binary, i.e., either the spectrum is occupied, or the Spectrum sensing is a spectrum is not occupied, or there may be multiple hypotheses, useful concept for such as system {A, B, C, } occupies the spectrum or the discovering spectrum spectrum is not occupied. One important observation is that it is opportunities for usually the transmitters that can be detected by spectrum secondary spectrum sensing, while it in fact is the receivers that need to be protected. usage in real-time. Thus, if, e.g., a licensed user is transmitting on a spectral resource that resource could in principle be used by a secondary user if that secondary user was certain that there were no primary receivers listening. However, in most applications the secondary user can not reliably detect primary receivers, and the focus is thus usually on transmitter detection. Of course, the secondary usage of the spectrum could be done in principle when appropriate agreements have been set up between the license owner of the spectrum (i.e. primary users) and secondary users. This white paper will mainly focus on transmitter detection. There exist several different approaches for transmitter detection which may be used in different sensing scenarios. The most well-known methods are perhaps energy detection, cyclostationary detection and matched filter (MF) detection, and these will be briefly described below. Furthermore, spectrum sensing can be performed by a single unit or it can be collaborative in which case End to End Efficiency (E3) White Paper November 2009 2/18

measurements from several sensors are combined in a fusion center to obtain a more reliable decision. In this manner cooperative spectrum sensing offers increased detection performance by spatial diversity of the sensors. The least demanding approach, from an a priori information point of view, is energy detection. An energy detector measures the energy in a radio resource and compares the value against a threshold. Generally, if and only if the measured energy is below the threshold, the radio resource is declared as not occupied, i.e., it is available for opportunistic use. Energy detection is a non-specific detection method in the sense that no particular knowledge of the signal properties is used. In this sense, energy detection can be used for declaring whether a resource is occupied or not, but it can not be used to identify the type of system or user (e.g., primary or secondary) that is occupying the channel. Also, an energy detector needs to have an idea of the noise level to adjust the detection threshold. A cyclostationary process has statistical properties which vary periodically over time. A widesense cyclostationary process (the analogue of a wide sense stationary process) has an autocorrelation function which is cyclic with a certain periodicity T, i.e., R(t, s) = R(t+T, s) for all time indices s and t. Communication signals are typically cyclostationary with multiple periodicities, e.g., the symbol frequency. Other periodicities may be related to coding and guard periods [5]. Cyclostationary detection is typically a statistical test based on the estimated autocorrelation function of one or several known cyclic frequencies. Cyclostationary detection exploits more knowledge (i.e., the cyclic frequencies) about the process one wishes to detect than energy detection does. Hence, cyclostationary detection will only be able to detect a limited amount of systems for which the communication signals possess known cyclostationary properties, but, on the other hand, these systems can be explicitly identified by the cyclostationary detector. Sometimes some parts of the signal one wishes to detect can be known; examples of such signals occurring in communication applications are synchronization words for GSM, preambles for WiMAX, Pseudo-Noise (PN) sequences in Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), and spreading sequences for UMTS. In this case one can utilize an MF detector. The MF detector can be shown to be optimal in the sense that it maximizes the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of a received single path signal in additive white Gaussian noise. An MF detector works by correlating the received signal with the pattern one wishes to detect. Thus, the amplitude and the phase of the signal are extracted. If this magnitude is above a threshold value, a detection decision is made. Generally, MF detection has very good detection capabilities. However, it requires a priori information which may not be available for all applications. When spectrum sensing is performed using a single sensor, that sensor may be in a deep fade, e.g., it may be shadowed, relative to a transmitter one wishes to detect. This is known as the hidden node problem. Because of this possibility a secondary unit basing its decisions on single sensor sensing may not engage in a secondary transmission unless it is highly confident in its detection of a spectrum opportunity, i.e., it must be able to detect a transmitter even as it experiences deep fading. To this end, the sensing node must use conservative detection thresholds and/or highly sensitive receivers, which cause high false alarm probability (the probability of reaching a detect decision when there was nothing there) and high cost devices, respectively. An approach that does not posses the above disadvantages, but requires some coordination, is cooperative sensing in which multiple sensors are utilized. If the sensor measurements are independent and identically distributed the probability that a collaborative sensing detects other spectrum usage becomes PCD = 1-(1-PD)N, provided a one out of N detection approach

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is used 1 , where PD is the probability of detection for a single sensor (the probability of obtaining a detect decision when the system was indeed present) and N is the number of sensors. This can be a significantly increased detection probability compared to PD, and thus one can be more aggressive in the detection by exchanging a reduced PCD for a decreased probability of false alarm.

4.

SENSOR SELECTION FOR SPECTRUM SENSING

In this section a method relating to spectrum sensing control in Figure 1 is described. The selection of the appropriate number of sensors to use in a cooperative sensing is a trade-off between high sensing performance (increases with the number of sensors) and low energy consumption and communication overhead (which also increase with the number of sensors). Hence, if a large number of sensors are available, as may be the case, e.g., if user equipments are used as sensors, it often makes sense to select a subset of the available sensors for the cooperative spectrum sensing event. Naturally, it is desired to get the best possible sensing performance out of these selected sensors. In most realistic applications, this corresponds to selecting sensors which are likely to experience uncorrelated (shadow) fading relative to a transmitter one wishes to detect. In [6] some algorithms were introduced for selecting N sensors out of M > N available. It was assumed that position estimates were available for all sensors and that the sensor correlation could be derived or estimated from the position estimates. In a more general formulation a cost cij was associated with each sensor pair (i and j are sensor indices). This cost can be related to the estimated correlation between sensors, but also to other factors. The goal is to select sensors for which the summed cost becomes as low as possible. The sensor selection problem discussed above can be formulated as an optimization problem:
M M i j ij

min
M

a a c
i =1 j =1

subject to

a
i =1

=N

(4.1)

ai {0,1}, i = 1,L , M
where the binary variables ai, i = 1, , M stand for the activity of the M sensors available for sensing (for an active sensor, ai = 1, for a passive sensor, ai = 0). The goal of the optimization is to find the values of all ai. The above problem is NP-hard, and in [6] some ad hoc algorithms, based on greedy optimization, for solving the above problem were developed and evaluated. The evaluation metrics were total shadow fading correlation (used as the cost in the above equation) between the selected sensors, and cooperative detection performance. For the latter evaluation, the M candidate sensors were randomly distributed over randomly generated fading maps and energy detection results from the N selected sensors were combined in a fusion center using the OR rule. It was shown that the sensor selection algorithms select sensors with low correlation and that these sensors offer increased sensing performance compared to random selection of the same number of sensors, see Figure 2.

This detection approach means that a decision is formed at each sensor node, and if a single sensor node detects spectrum usage one decides that the spectrum is occupied.

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1 Probability of detection PD
Probability of detection PD

0.99

0.95

0.98 Selection algorithm Random selection

-6

0.9 Selection algorithm Random selection

-6

0.97
-4

0.85
-4

10

10 10 Probability of false alarm PF

-2

10

10

10 10 Probability of false alarm P F

-2

10

Figure 2: Probability of detection vs. probability of false alarm for a sensor selection algorithm [6] compared to random sensor selection for two sensor position distributions: uniform (left figure), and clustered in one part of the fading map (right figure).

5.

COOPERATIVE SPECTRUM SENSING MANAGEMENT

This section relates to spectrum sensing control, awareness networking and cooperative spectrum sensing in Figure 1. As discussed in Section 3, cooperative spectrum sensing is a powerful concept to leverage the spatial separation of multiple spectrum sensing nodes in a wireless network. The optimal fusion of sensing results, acquired by distributed network nodes, allows to alleviate the hidden node problem and/or to share the sensing load between network nodes. The optimal fusion of decentralized observations has been studied since a long time, see e.g., [7] and the references therein. It has been shown already in [8], [9] that the optimal fusion rule is to compute the joint likelihood ratio of the distributed observations. Cooperative spectrum sensing requires a networking solution to communicate sensing results (sensing messages) between nodes. Using spectrum sensing individual network nodes, as well as the whole network by virtue of collaboration, becomes aware of the local radio spectrum situation. Consequently the distribution of spectrum sensing results can be understood as Awareness Signalling. Within E3 an awareness signalling solution, namely Cognitive Control Radio (CCR) has been developed [10], [11]. The CCR is targeted for sharing spectrum sensing and use related information between Cognitive Radio networks. The CCR network provides information mainly for the secondary users, which form local wireless networks. Thus, it can be seen to complement CPC, which is mainly targeted for providing information to primary users. CCR is an awareness signalling solution that supports the exchange of Information, Query, and Negotiation messages, needed for general collaborative information sharing. CCR is also a means to coordinate collaborative spectrum sensing CCR is a means to between network nodes. Here coordination covers functions like: distribute awareness sharing of sensing effort, requests for spectrum sensing, or information in wireless coordination of quiet periods for spectrum sensing. To share the networks. It can also be spectrum sensing load between network nodes, the frequency used to coordinate band allowed for cognitive use is divided into sub-bands. cooperative spectrum Different nodes sense different frequency sub-bands. The sensing. frequency sub-band each node is sensing in each time instant is determined by a pseudorandom time-frequency code. Consequently, sensing utilizes frequency hopping. The division of the spectrum sensing task End to End Efficiency (E3) White Paper November 2009 5/18 Cooperative spectrum sensing is a powerful concept to leverage the spatial separation of multiple sensing nodes in wireless networks.

between the nodes is illustrated in Figure 3. Since the hidden node problem can be alleviated if at least two nodes measure the same part of spectrum at the same time, subsets of collaborating nodes for each spectrum sub-band are formed and always changed after a certain period of time. The effects of propagation, such as fading and shadowing, are effectively mitigated through diversity because the channels the signals experience can be assumed to be uncorrelated since the secondary users are displaced from each other. The frequency hopping code can be optimized for fast scanning of the spectrum or diversity. In Figure 3 there is only one node per frequency sub-band and thus the code is suitable for fast sensing. In order to obtain spatial diversity gain, two or more network nodes have to sense the same sub-band during the same time slot. The diversity order, i.e., number of nodes per channel is defined by the design of the frequency hopping code by controlling how many hits there are among the codes in a time slot. Thus, one can trade off the diversity gains in collaborative sensing and the sensing speed, i.e. how fast the whole spectrum is covered. For more details on frequency hopping for spectrum sensing, see [5]. A quiet period where all the devices in the cognitive radio network are silent is needed for measuring the frequency sub-bands that are in use by the cognitive radio network in the same area. The time instant of the quiet period is defined by a pseudorandom signal generator which has been synchronized to the time base of the cognitive radio system and the seed is the same for each node of the system. Over several frames, the quiet periods should effectively cover the whole frame. Thus, the length of the pseudorandom generator word is dependent on the length of the frame and the quiet period. Then, during one pseudorandom sequence, the quiet periods cover the whole frame or at least the gap between the end of previously covered time position in a frame and the start of the next time position in a frame should be shorter than any signal sequence of a primary system. Randomization of the quiet period position allows the sensors to efficiently detect those primary and other systems, which happen to be in synchronous relation with the cognitive radio system in time, frequency, or any other domain. Spectrum sensing is a continuous task: the frequency sub-bands that are used in the cognitive radio network have to be constantly monitored in case a primary user becomes active in the sub-band. Thus, optimizing the power-efficiency of spectrum sensing is essential when the cognitive radio nodes are mobile, battery operated devices. A cognitive radio system may not necessarily use all frequency sub-bands that are monitored. It would be a waste of energy resources and, if cooperative spectrum sensing is used, of communication resources to keep track of unused sub-bands at all times. Thus, the frequency sub-bands are categorized so that in each category the spectrum sensing may be done with different time cycle. The more critical the sub-band is to the cognitive radio network, the more often spectrum sensing is performed. The categories can be, for example, used (cat 1), backup (cat 2), and other (cat 3). The used sub-bands would be monitored at each quiet period, the backup sub-bands would be monitored frequently, and the other sub-bands would be monitored infrequently (see Figure 3).

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Frequency hopping sequence f1 (cat 1) f2 (cat 2) f3 (cat 2) f4 (cat 3) f5 (cat 3) f6 (cat 3) Frequency Cat 1 timer Cat 2 timer Cat 3 timer

Pseudorandom delay S1 S2

Quiet period S3

Synchronizing time instant S4 S5 S6 Time

Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 Node 4 Node 5 Node 6

Node 2 Node 4 Node 6 Node 1 Node 3 Node 5

Node 3 Node 6 Node 2 Node 5 Node 1 Node 4

Node 4 Node 1 Node 5 Node 2 Node 6 Node 3

Node 5 Node 3 Node 1 Node 6 Node 4 Node 2

Node 6 Node 5 Node 4 Node 3 Node 2 Node 1

Active node Inactive node

Figure 3: Frequency sub-band monitoring is divided in frequency, time, and space among the cognitive radio nodes. A quiet period which is at a pseudorandom position inside a synchronizing time interval is reserved for spectrum sensing. The different frequency sub-bands are divided into categories (cat1, cat2, cat3) for which the sensing is performed at different time cycles.

6.

TRIGGERING OF COOPERATIVE SENSING IN AD HOC NETWORKS

This section relates to spectrum sensing control, spectrum sensing and cooperative spectrum sensing in Figure 1. Often the detection reliability of a single sensor is not sufficient as fast fading and shadowing may render a primary system signal very difficult to detect at a given location, while it may still be easily detectable at a nearby, but different, location. When the situation is such that a single sensor is certain that there is an active primary user transmitting on the frequency intended for secondary usage, the sensing task is complete and the secondary system may be informed of the detection. The sensing task is likewise complete when a single sensor is sure, to a certain level, that the intended band is free for secondary usage. However, for the case when neither of the two above cases is reached the sensor needs support to reach a reliable decision on the availability of the channel. This occurs when the confidence probability, defined as the probability of the presence of the primary signal in a channel k given the measurement y as experienced by sensor u:
Pu ,k = Pr (H 1 Y = y ) = Pr (Y = y H 1 ) Pr (H 1 ) Pr (Y = y H 0 ) Pr (H 0 ) + Pr (Y = y H 1 ) Pr (H 1 )
(6.1)

where Pr(H0) and Pr(H1) are estimated from the statistics of previous detected usage of the channel under consideration, falls within a predetermined interval, e.g. between 0.1 and 0.9. The blue curve in Figure 4 (left) shows the probability of this event as a function of assumed SNR in an energy detection context when there is no primary transmitter present. The blue curve in Figure 4 (right) shows the corresponding probability for the case when there is a primary transmitter present. In a suggested implementation [10] the sensor then transmits a request for assistance through cooperative sensing to nearby sensors in its ad hoc network. The request may be transmitted over several hops until a specified maximal range has been

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reached; this to ensure that the sensors in the ad hoc network are not unnecessarily burdened with sensing actions.
No signal present 1 1 Signal is present

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.4

Pr(certain of H1) Pr(uncertain) Pr(certain of H0)

0.6

Pr(certain of H1) Pr(uncertain) Pr(certain of H0)

0.4

0.2

0.2

0 -30

-25

-20

-15 Assumed SNR

-10

-5

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-25

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-15 SNR

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-5

Figure 4: Probabilities of the various decisions based on the confidence probability for variable assumed SNR using ideal energy detection for the two cases when there is not (left) and is (right) a primary signal present. The green curves show the probability of reaching the decision that the channel is free for secondary usage, the blue curves show the probability that the sensor is uncertain and needs assistance via cooperation, and the red curves show the probability that the sensor reaches the decision that a primary signal is present.

Once the request for assistance is received by the nearby sensors they will perform spectrum sensing and report their respective confidence probabilities back to the initializing sensor. The final decision on channel access is then based on the fused confidence probability:

PD , k = 1 (1 P , k )
V

(6.2)

Here, V is the set of sensors that has provided sensing reports. If this probability exceeds a certain predetermined threshold, the channel is determined to be free for secondary usage, otherwise, the initializing node will block access to the channel by distributing a blocking message to some or all of the nodes in the system.

7.

DATA AIDED SPECTRUM SENSING

This section relates to spectrum sensing block of Figure 1. Stand-alone spectrum sensing techniques dealing with MF detection achieve high processing gain in a relatively short time. The hereafter-proposed spectrum sensing technique makes use of extended correlation with reference sequences such as synchronization midamble for TDMA waveforms (GSM, DECT, TETRA etc.), scrambling and spreading codes for CDMA waveforms (UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA, CDMA2000, several WiMAX standards), preamble symbols and/or pilot sub-carriers for OFDM and OFDMA (DVB-T, DVB-H, WiFi, most of the WiMAX standards, LTE). The method is recommended in [12], [13] and [14]. Figure 5 illustrates the general architecture of the proposed spectrum sensing technique dealing with most of todays standards. The process is implemented on the cognitive device, either a mobile terminal station or a base station (BS), and tests the presence of reference sequences in the received signal. Tested waveforms can be GSM, DVB-T/H, UMTS, WiFi, WiMAX signal or any other known standard working with reference sequences. When available, the CPC [3] can be of great help to indicate which standards are present in the environment. The proposed spectrum sensing technique aims at detecting the most significant base stations and can provide relevant radio measurements.

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Cognitive device
Received signal Terminal/BS

Detection/Syn chronization processing

Tested waveforms : - UMTS - GSM - DVB-T - WiMAX -

Characterization

- Number of detected BS - Type of detected RATs (UMTS, GSM, ) - jamming level - SNR, SINR - channel impluse response -

Figure 5: General architecture of the proposed data-aided spectrum sensing method

Figure 6 shows examples of real field GSM and UMTS signals being processed by the method. The process results in the detection and recognition of a FCCH sequence and of a SCH sequence for GSM, and the synchronization on the SCH sequence leads to the detection of 9 different base stations for the UMTS case.
I/Q signal & Instantaneous amplitude
Time signal

SCH synchro. Criteria (5 antennas)

Detection of 9 P- SCH Related to 9 different BTS

Signal spectrum

Intercorrelation results and detection Decisio

n

Im response com p putation at P- CPICH scram bling Code 122

Synthesis of detection and P-CPICH characterisation

Dom inant scram bling Code 122

One GSM frame Recognition of GSM/FCCH sequence Recognition of GSM/SCH sequence

Yellow : antenna 1 Green : averaged over 5 antennas

Figure 6: application to real-field GSM (left) and UMTS (right) signals

Figure 7 presents detection curves for real WiMAX waveforms in a simulated environment. 3 WiMAX BSs are present with preamble index 1, 40, 100. Signals from BS2 and BS3 have SNR = 10 dB and 20 dB, propagation channels are mono path. N=1 to 5 sensors are considered for the processing.
1 0.9 N=1 N=2 N=3 N=4 N=5

Probability of detection

0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 -30 -25 -20

-15

SNR dB
Figure 7: application to real WIMAX signals in a simulated environment BS1 detection curves

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8.

COOPERATIVE DETECTION OF PMSE DEVICES IN TV WHITE SPACE

The current section relates to cooperative spectrum sensing in Figure 1. In recent FCC regulations related to utilization of TV white spaces for opportunistic spectrum usage [2] it is understood that additional spectrum can be acquired by ensuring that a TV channel is not in use at a certain location neither by a licensed TV transmitter nor by a licensed Programme Making Special Event (PMSE) device, such as a wireless microphone. The FCC regulations require protection of PMSE devices for any opportunistic usage of TV white space. Generally, detecting a TV signal is simpler compared to detecting the presence of a PMSE device since TV signals are relatively static in time and have high transmission power. In comparison, PMSE devices are mobile and use much lower transmission power levels. In addition there are no standards related to PMSE devices, so a method for detecting the presence of a PMSE device must not rely on very specific features of the signal. As mentioned in Section 3, cooperative sensing makes use of multiple sensors to detect the presence of primary signals. In the TV spectrum, both TV signals and PMSE-type signals are primary signals. The problem treated in this section is to find out the constraints and limitations that PMSE devices impose on usage of TV white space channels. In the results presented here the TV signal is an out-of-band interferer and the goal is to detect PMSE devices with unknown signal structures operating on 200 kHz channels. Energy detection is a suitable solution for such scenario since it does not rely on specific signal features. In the scenario there is a node that desires to transmit but first has to make sure that no PMSE device is placed within a distance of 1000 meters, corresponding to the contamination distance of the intended transmission. To this end, the node requires assistance from a number of sensors which are placed uniformly inside a circle extending 1100 m (i.e., 100 m additional protection distance) from the node. A DVB transmitter transmitting at 50 kW over 8 MHz is placed 2.5 km from the node with 13 MHz carrier separation from the PMSE channel where the sensing is performed. Each sensor takes a hard sensing decision and sends the result to the node which employs a 1-out-of-N decision fusion (see Section 3). The sensors are subject to an indoor-to-outdoor loss (15 dB) with probability 0.4 and have a noise floor of -110 + n dBm where n is zero mean normally distributed with standard deviation 0.5 and represents the sensor noise uncertainty. The interference from the TV transmitter in the PMSE channel is defined by path loss, shadowing (log normal with standard deviation 5.5 dB) (both described in ITU-R P1546), and TX and RX filter leakages. The signal from the PMSE device, when present, is subject to pathloss (a 2-ray urban street model [15]), Rayleigh fading and log normal shadow fading with a standard deviation of 7 dB. The sensing bandwidth is 200 kHz and the wireless microphone transmits at 10 dBm and is subject to a bodyloss of 2 dB. The results in Figure 8 show that, even for a high number of sensors, the probability of false alarm is quite high for reasonable detection probabilities. This is undesirable since it means that many spectrum opportunities will be missed. The results indicate that the potential presence of wireless microphones may impose significant constraints and restrictions on the whitespace usage. Furthermore, for an indoor wireless microphone, with additional associated indoor-to-outdoor loss, the detection performance becomes even worse. The poor performance herein can likely be attributed to the inability of the method of energy detection to differ between the signal of interest (the wireless microphone) and other phenomena (the out-of-band DVB transmitter and the noise uncertainty). Possibly, other detection methods may perform better. However, the choice of methods is quite limited due to the fact that the PMSE devices are non-standardized and hence have few signal properties to exploit when trying to detect them.

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1 0.98 0.96 PD 0.94 0.92 0.9 10 sensors 20 sensors 50 sensors 100 sensors 160 sensors 200 sensors

0.1

0.2

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0.5 PFA

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Figure 8: Probabilities of detection vs probabilities of false alarm for cooperative sensing in the described scenario.

9.

OPERATING POINT SELECTION FOR SPECTRUM SHARING IN SENSING-BASED COGNITIVE ACCESS NETWORKS

In the context of opportunistic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks, spectrum sensing techniques and methodologies (see Spectrum Sensing block in Figure 1) may be considered by secondary users to detect spectrum holes that can be accessed in a non-interfering manner [1]. As stated in Section 3, spectrum sensing is known to be affected by errors in the form of false-alarm and misdetection. False-alarm causes spectrum under-use while misdetection leads to spectrum interference between primary and secondary users. Unfortunately, these two magnitudes pose a trade-off on the sensing mechanism, i.e. low misdetection is achieved at the expense of high false-alarm and vice versa. Consequently, an adequate Operating Point (OP) for the sensing mechanism should be determined such that some QoS is attained by both primary and secondary users. The trade-off between the false-alarm probability () and the misdetection probability () can be observed by representing the so-called Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves where is plotted against for some given average signal-to-noise ratio () and timebandwidth product (m), see Figure 9. Accordingly, the feasible OPs are those pairs (,) that lie on the ROC curve. By appropriately selecting a specific decision threshold value in the energy detector a particular value for the OP is obtained. For ease of representation, a set of curves traversing the origin of ordinates with slope , where 01, is defined [16][17]. Parameter defines the operating-point mix which represents a normalized parameterization of the feasible OPs. In Figure 9, the set of curves is represented by the dotted lines which intersect with the ROC curve at specific OP values represented by the red circles. In order to evaluate the impact of and on the performance of a spectrum sensing scenario we use a Discrete Time Markov Chain (DTMC) model [18], and we determine the suitable OP for the sensing mechanism under different traffic load conditions. As a QoS metric we adopt the classical Grade-of-Service (GoS) definition and adapt it to the primary-secondary spectrum access scenario by defining the aggregate GoS (GoSA) [16], [17], which is a weighted contribution of both primary GoS (GoSP) and secondary GoS (GoSS). In turn, the primary GoS is a weighted metric that considers primary blocking probability ( PBP ) along with interference probability (PI). Primary weight factor P is adjusted so that interference involves higher penalization than blocking. Similarly, secondary GoS is defined as a weighted contribution of
S the secondary blocking probability ( PBS ) along with the secondary interruption probability ( PD ).

In the same way, secondary weight factor S penalizes interruption further than blocking. End to End Efficiency (E3) White Paper November 2009 11/18

Some illustrative results are shown in the following. In Figure 10, the aggregate GoS is plotted against a range of operating point values for different offered secondary traffic loads. Performance results reveal that by effectively choosing the OP bearing in mind the traffic load levels will lead to enhanced perceived GoS. The suitable values for the OP correspond to those marked as red stars in Figure 10. In addition, and not shown here for space reasons, the sensitivity of the OP with respect to the time-bandwidth product (m), the experienced signalto-noise ratio (), and the willingness towards secondary operation (given by the weight factor A) has also been evaluated, see [16], [17]. Results indicate that improved operation of both PUs and SUs can be achieved by suitably selecting the OP which, in turn, enables to identify some general rules. The OP values should be increased, so that primary usage is protected, when secondary traffic increases (see Figure 10). In addition, the OP should also be increased whenever the signal-to-noise ratio and/or the time-bandwidth product increases (see [17]). Finally, restrictions on the willingness towards secondary spectrum usage (i.e. high values of A) also imply a higher OP value to be selected.

10

0.14

Missed-Detection Proba bility ( )

m=100 = 10dB
10
-1

ROC Curve Operating Point

0.12

Grade of Service (GoS)

0.1

=0.5
10
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Increasing secondary Traffic

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Minimum GoS

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False-Alarm Probability ( )
Figure 9: Tradeoff between false-alarm () and misdetection probability ().

Operating Point ()
Figure 10: Aggregate GoS against OP for primary offered traffic of 2 Erlangs and varying secondary traffic.

10. CENSORING IN COOPERATIVE SPECTRUM SENSING

This section relates to awareness networking (e.g. CCR in E3) block as shown in Figure 1. As stated in Sections 3 and 5, collaborative spectrum sensing is a way to improve spectrum sensing performance by combining the sensing results (loglikelihood ratios) of multiple spectrum sensors. The spectrum sensing results which consist of local decision statistics of the nodes are communicated to other nodes using for example the awareness networking solution (CCR). The amount of information that is transmitted in the collaborative sensing can be reduced when a censoring scheme for spectrum sensing is utilized [19]. When censoring is used, only informative detection results are taken into account and transmitted in the collaborative sensing. The amount of spectrum sensing messages distributed in a network can be reduced by sending only test statistics which are informative. The decision, which test statistic is informative, is called censoring.

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In censoring, a communication rate constraint is defined which Censoring is a powerful limits the number of detection results transmitted under the solution to reduce the noise only (H0) hypothesis. Spectrum sensing performance when communication censoring is used is shown in Figure 11. The communication rate overhead in cooperative constraint is denoted by and it defines the number of sensing spectrum sensing. results transmitted per sub-band per sensing time slot. For example, 10% of the sensing nodes will transmit the sensing result when = 0.1 or 0.1% of the sensing nodes will transmit the sensing result when = 0.001. The number of sensing results transmitted is shown in Figure 12. The communication rate constraint applies only under the noise only hypothesis, i.e., low SNR region. Always, if a primary user is detected, the sensing result is transmitted to other nodes.

Figure 11: Probability of detection for spectrum sensing with censoring as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio of the primary signal to be detected. The primary user is an OFDM-modulated WLAN signal. Detection time is 0.8 ms and 10 users are sensing the same frequency sub-band. The false alarm rate was 0.01. The communication rate constraint is denoted by .

Figure 12: The number of sensing results sent in the collaborative sensing scheme, when censoring is applied. At the low SNR region the communication rate constraint defines how many results are sent. When the signal is detected, all results are sent regardless of .

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11. WAVELET TRANSFORM FOR SPECTRUM OPPORTUNITY DETECTION

Due to the higher bandwidth demand and increasing spectrum scarcity, wideband spectrum sensing has been introduced to provide better chances of detecting spectrum opportunities. In this section, edge detection using wavelet analysis is employed for the wideband spectrum opportunity detection for Cognitive Radio (CR). The significant property of the Wavelet Transform (WT) utilized here is its ability to detect the singular (fractal) behaviour of the signals, so called edge detection. Since the wideband sensing signals often carry irregularity and discontinuity patterns according to the dynamic spectrum utilization, this WT can be used as a tool to determine available portions of the spectrum band of interest. The sensing signal of the wide frequency band is divided into a number of sub-bands. A suitable mother wavelet is then located in each sub-band and a corresponding wavelet coefficient can be calculated. The first order derivative of the wavelet transforms is used to detect rising and falling edges of the wideband signal and locates the boundaries between occupied and non-occupied subbands. A WT software tool has been developed to analyze the wideband sensing signal and locate the available sub-band(s). In order to observe the sensing performance, the test platform was developed including a prototype receiver based on the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) [20] framework with the GNU Radio open source software [21], which communicates with the WT software tool. Figure 13 shows the setup of the test platform. The sensing signal is collected by the USRP hardware and processed using the host processing unit, which is integrated with the WT software tool for spectrum opportunity detection. The software tool uses a wavelet transform technique to detect rising and falling edges of the signals to find spectrum opportunities. Example results from the test platform are illustrated in Figure 14. The results are captured from the display of the WT software tool interface, while an extra set of RF hardware is used to transmit data packet at the centre frequency of 2.442 GHz. The first figure shows the plot of sensing information collected by the USRP hardware including the raw sensing data and the signal after the average of all bins in each sub-band. The second figure displays the result of the wavelet analysis and the detecting function for the spectrum opportunity detection with the blue overlaid rectangles representing available sub-bands.
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12. SELECTION OF HARD DECISION FUSION RULES IN ENERGY DETECTION BASED COOPERATIVE SPECTRUM SENSING
In this section a cooperative spectrum sensing scheme is proposed which takes into account the channel conditions, user correlation and mean SNR of each cooperative cognitive user. It has been demonstrated that local mean SNR and spatially correlated shadowing has direct impact on optimal decision fusion at the fusion centre and must be taken into account [22]. Energy detection is chosen as an underlying scheme for local spectrum sensing because of its simplicity and ease of implementation. In this section we are trying to answer the following questions: (1) Is the OR fusion rule the best fusion rule in all cases? (2) What is the impact of users local SNR on the global primary user signal detection performance? (3) Do channel conditions and spatially correlated shadowing have any impact on the performance of global spectrum sensing? Extensive simulations have been conducted when all cooperating users are not far away from the primary transmitter and have different mean SNR values. Three different cases are considered which describe three different scenarios depending on the location of the primary user and secondary users. Case 1 refers to a scenario in which all the secondary users are relatively close to each other and hence experience similar mean SNRs. Case 2 depicts the situation when half of the collaborating users have high mean SNRs while in Case 3 only one user has a high mean SNR as compared to other collaborating secondary users. The effect of spatially correlated shadowing on the selection of optimal decision fusion is also investigated. According to Figure 15, for optimal global sensing performance in AWGN channel, the band manager must know the mean SNR of each user along with its 1-bit decision. Similarly, in correlated shadow fading, for lower values of the dB-spread of the correlated log normal shadowing (the standard deviation of which is denoted by dB) voting based fusion rule gives superior performance while in heavily correlated shadowing (higher values of dB) the performance of all fusion rules are similar. Simulation results for Case 3 are shown in Figure 16 and Figure 17. Similar results can be obtained for other two cases [22]. Hence it is suggested that users estimate their local mean SNR values and send this information along with their decision to the fusion centre.

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1 Case 1 0.9 0.8

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Figure 17: ROC curves in urban environment with shadowing, dB = 12 (Case 3)

13. CONCLUSIONS AND OUTLOOK

In this white paper, various spectrum sensing methods are evaluated and presented. It is important to note that suitable detection thresholds need to be found for satisfactory sensing performance. The confidence probability concept described in Section 6 provides a means of performing an informed selection of a suitable detection threshold. It is further shown that cooperation among sensing nodes may provide significant gains in detection performance in some scenarios; hence cooperation can be crucial for protection of primary transmissions. When cooperative sensing is used, the number of sensors involved in the cooperation will determine the system performance and complexity, but also the correlation of the sensors has a large impact on the performance, and hence proper sensor selection is very important. This is investigated in Section 5, where a method for controlling cooperative sensing in a decentralized manner by utilizing pseudorandom hopping codes is described. The sensing policy in the network is reduced assignment of pseudorandom hopping codes that ensure a certain number sensing the same frequency range. It is found that the proposed scheme time-frequency to design and of sensors are outperforms a

random hopping scheme. In another study, described in Section 4, it is found that, if information on location of the sensors is available, much can be gained by utilizing this

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information with the goal of reducing the correlation of the shadow fading experienced by the sensors. In this white paper, an approach for energy detection based cooperative sensing scheme that takes into account the channel conditions and average SNR of each sensor, aiming to find the best decision fusion, is also presented. It is concluded that cooperative spectrum sensing does not always outperform single user sensing in highly correlated shadowing scenarios when using energy detection. An interesting scenario in terms of collaborative spectrum sensing is detection of primary users and protection of wireless microphones (i.e. PMSE devices) in TV white space. Reliable detection of PMSE devices by means of sensing seems difficult to achieve in realistic fading environments, at least with energy detection and 1-out-of-N fusion rule. In general terms, proper fusion techniques of sensing information from collaborating sensors need to be studied with realistic systems parameters before making the best use of collaborative sensing mechanisms. Moreover, complementary and/or alternative solutions have also been investigated, e.g. CPC, as reported in [3].

14. AUTHORS
Arshad, Kamran: K.Arshad@surrey.ac.uk Chantaraskul, Soamsiri: S.Chantaraskul@surrey.ac.uk Gelabert, Xavier: xavier.gelabert@tsc.upc.edu Germond, Ccile: Cecile.GERMOND@fr.thalesgroup.com Kronander, Jonas: jonas.kronander@ericsson.com Rahman, Muhammad Imadur: muhammad.imadur.rahman@ericsson.com Richter, Andreas: andreas.richter@nokia.com Sallent, Oriol: sallent@tsc.upc.edu Seln, Yngve: yngve.selen@ericsson.com

15. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been performed in the framework of the EU funded project E3. The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of their other colleagues from the E3 consortium. The views expressed herein are under development within E3 and therefore are subject to change and do not necessarily reflect the views of each partner of the consortium.

16. REFERENCES
[1] IST-2007-216248 E3 Project, http://www.ict-e3.eu/. [2] FCC 08-260, Second Report and Order, November 2008, http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-08-260A1.pdf [3] E3 White Paper, Support for heterogeneous standards using CPC, June 2009, https://www.ict-e3.eu/project/white_papers/CPC_white_paper_FINAL.pdf. [4] ETSI TR 102 683 V1.1.1, Reconfigurable Radio Systems (RRS), Cognitive Pilot Channel (CPC) September 2009, http://pda.etsi.org/pda/home.asp?wki_id=o-Vw,d7_@VqsyyrqcdIy5 [5] A. Huttunen, J. Pihlaja, V. Koivunen, J. Junell, and K. Kalliojrvi, Collaborative, distributed spectrum sensing for cognitive radio, in Wireless World Research Forum Meeting 20, Ottawa, Canada, 2224 April, 2008.

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[6] Y. Seln, J. Kronander, and H. Tullberg, Sensor selection for cooperative spectrum sensing, in DySPAN 2008, Chicago, USA, 1417 October 2008. [7] J. Unnikrishnan, and V. V. Veeravalli, Cooperative Sensing for Primary Detection in Cognitive Radio, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Vol. 2, No. 1, February 2008, http://www.ifp.illinois.edu/~junnikr2/pdfs/jstsp08.pdf. [8] S. Thomopoulos, R. Viswanathan, D. and Bougoulias, Optimal decision fusion in multiple sensor systems, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, AES-23, 5 (1987), 644665D. [9] E. Drakopoulos and C.-C. Lee, Optimum multisensor fusion of correlated local decisions, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 514, July 1991. [10] E3 Deliverable D4.4, Final solution description for autonomous CR functionalities, September, 2009. [11] A. Ahtiainen, K. Kalliojrvi, M. Kasslin, K. Leppnen, A. Richter, P. Ruuska, C. Wijting, Awareness Networking for Heterogeneous Wireless Environments, IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, vol. 4, issue 3, pp. 48-54, September 2009. [12] ITU-R recommendation, Question 202/1. [13] ITU spectrum toolkit, The Handbook of Spectrum Monitoring, edition 2002, Chapter 4, 4.9. [14] P.Chevalier and F.Pipon, Synchronisation dun modem malgr la prsence de brouilleurs," patent n94.00634, Jan 1994. [15] N. Patwari, Measured and Modeled Time and Angle Dispersion Characteristics of the 1.8 GHz Peer-to-Peer Radio Channel, M.Sc. Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, April 1999. [16] X. Gelabert, I. F. Akyildiz, O. Sallent, and R. Agust, "Operating point selection for primary and secondary users in cognitive radio networks," Computer Networks, vol. 53, Issue 8, June 2009, pp 1158-1170. [17] X. Gelabert, O. Sallent, J. Prez-Romero and R. Agust Exploiting the Operating Point in Sensing-Based Opportunistic Spectrum Access Scenarios", in proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications 2009 (ICC09), Dresden, Germany, 14-18 June, 2009. [18] J. Prez-Romero, X. Gelabert, O. Sallent, and R. Agust, "A novel framework for the characterization of dynamic spectrum access scenarios," in Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, 2008. PIMRC 2008. IEEE 19th International Symposium on, Cannes, France, 15-18 September, 2008. [19] J. Lundn, V. Koivunen, A. Huttunen and H. V. Poor, Censoring for Collaborative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radios, in Proc. 41st Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA, USA, Nov. 47, 2007. [20] ETTUS website, http://www.ettus.com. [21] GNURadio website, http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/. [22] K. Arshad and K. Moessner, Impact of User Correlation on Collaborative Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio, in proc. ICT Mobile Summit 2009, 10-12 June 09, Satander, Spain.

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