A Spectral Correlation Based Detection Method for Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio

Cognitive radio, which is designed to dynamically adapt its transmission to the environments, is believed to be one of the fundamental techniques for future spectrum utilization. As the first step of cognitive radio, spectrum sensing is treated as the most important technique, through which cognition is well explained. In this paper, we propose a spectral correlation based detection method for spectrum sensing. An unlicensed secondary user system operating in TV broadcast bands is taken as an example. Based on the cyclostationarity of communication signals, spectral correlation function is used to minimize the effect of random noise and interference. Energy measurement and peak detection based criteria are proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed detection method outperforms the energy detection and is more suitable for spectrum sensing in cognitive radios.