Cognitive ultra wideband radio spectrum sensing window length optimization algorithm

A critical objective of cognitive radio (CR) system is to enhance the spectrum efficiency, and one of the key factors that can determine the spectrum efficiency is the system spectrum sensing performance with respect to sensing window length. For non-coherent detection-based sensing technique, the length of the sensing window required to meet the detection criteria is inversely proportional to the detected signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the primary users (PUs). This fact may result in an inadequate use of the white or gray space for the conventional CR system whose transmission and sensing window length are both fixed because a high detected PUs SNR can lead to an excessive long fixed sensing window which occupies the potential CR transmission opportunities while a low received PUs SNR can result in an insufficient sensing window length which degrades the CR detection criteria. In this paper, to improve the spectrum efficiency compared with the fixed sensing/transmission window length-based CR system, we propose an adaptive spectrum sensing window length optimization algorithm. We design the algorithm based on the ultra wideband (UWB) system which is an ideal candidate for the implementation of the CR technology. Based on the analysis of the CR-UWB’s spectrum sensing technique in terms of the factors such as spectrum efficiency, spectrum sensing length, PUs SNR, detection criteria etc., we formulate the optimization problem into a convex problem, which enables the proposed algorithm to find the optimal trade-off with low computational complexity between the sensing window length and the desired detection probabilities for the CR-UWB system. Compared with the conventional fixed length spectrum sensing techniques, the proposed algorithm is verified to be able to adapt the length of the CR-UWB’s transmission window according to the PUs SNR to optimize the use of the available spectrum while guaranteeing the PUs from being interfered.