Spectrum sensing algorithms and software-defined radio implementation for cognitive radio system

The scarcity of spectral resources in wireless communications, due to a fixed frequency allocation policy, is a strong limitation to the increasing demand for higher data rates. However, measurements showed that a large part of frequency channels are underutilized or almost unoccupied. The cognitive radio paradigm arises as a tempting solution to the spectral congestion problem. A cognitive radio must be able to identify transmission opportunities in unused channels and to avoid generating harmful interference with the licensed primary users. Its key enabling technology is the spectrum sensing unit, whose ultimate goal consists in providing an indication whether a primary transmission is taking place in the observed channel. Such indication is determined as the result of a binary hypothesis testing experiment wherein null hypothesis (alternate hypothesis) corresponds to the absence (presence) of the primary signal. The first parts of this thesis describes the spectrum sensing problem and presents some of the best performing detection techniques. Energy Detection and multi-antenna Eigenvalue-Based Detection algorithms are considered. Important aspects are taken into account, like the impact of noise estimation or the effect of primary user traffic. The performance of each detector is assessed in terms of false alarm probability and detection probability. In most experimental research, cognitive radio techniques are deployed in software-defined radio systems, radio transceivers that allow operating parameters (like modulation type, bandwidth, output power, etc.) to be set or altered by software.In the second part of the thesis, we introduce the software-defined radio concept. Then, we focus on the implementation of Energy Detection and Eigenvalue-Based Detection algorithms: first, the used software platform, GNU Radio, is described, secondly, the implementation of a parallel energy detector and a multi-antenna eigenbased detector is illustrated and details on the used methodologies are given. Finally, we present the deployed experimental cognitive testbeds and the used radio peripherals. The obtained algorithmic results along with the software-defined radio implementation may offer a set of tools able to create a realistic cognitive radio system with real-time spectrum sensing capabilities

Algorithms for 5G physical layer

There is a great activity in the research community towards the investigations of the various aspects of 5G at different protocol layers and parts of the network. Among all, physical layer design plays a very important role to satisfy high demands in terms of data rates, latency, reliability and number of connected devices for 5G deployment. This thesis addresses he latest developments in the physical layer algorithms regarding the channel coding, signal detection, frame synchronization and multiple access technique in the light of 5G use cases. These developments are governed by the requirements of the different use case scenarios that are envisioned to be the driving force in 5G. All chapters from chapter 2 to 5 are developed around the need of physical layer algorithms dedicated to 5G use cases. In brief, this thesis focuses on design, analysis, simulation and he advancement of physical layer aspects such as 1. Reliability based decoding of short length Linear Block Codes (LBCs) with very good properties in terms of minimum hamming istance for very small latency requiring applications. In this context, we enlarge the grid of possible candidates by considering, in particular, short length LBCs (especially extended CH codes) with soft-decision decoding; 2. Efficient synchronization of preamble/postamble in a short bursty frame using modified Massey correlator; 3. Detection of Primary User activity using semiblind spectrum sensing algorithms and analysis of such algorithms under practical imperfections; 4. Design of optimal spreading matrix for a Low Density Spreading (LDS) technique in the context of non-orthogonal multiple access. In such spreading matrix, small number of elements in a spreading sequences are non zero allowing each user to spread its data over small number of chips (tones), thus simplifying the decoding procedure using Message Passing Algorithm (MPA)

Spectral and Energy Efficiency in Cognitive Radio Systems with Unslotted Primary Users and Sensing Uncertainty

This paper studies energy efficiency (EE) and average throughput maximization for cognitive radio systems in the presence of unslotted primary users. It is assumed that primary user activity follows an ON-OFF alternating renewal process. Secondary users first sense the channel possibly with errors in the form of miss detections and false alarms, and then start the data transmission only if no primary user activity is detected. The secondary user transmission is subject to constraints on collision duration ratio, which is defined as the ratio of average collision duration to transmission duration. In this setting, the optimal power control policy which maximizes the EE of the secondary users or maximizes the average throughput while satisfying a minimum required EE under average/peak transmit power and average interference power constraints are derived. Subsequently, low-complexity algorithms for jointly determining the optimal power level and frame duration are proposed. The impact of probabilities of detection and false alarm, transmit and interference power constraints on the EE, average throughput of the secondary users, optimal transmission power, and the collisions with primary user transmissions are evaluated. In addition, some important properties of the collision duration ratio are investigated. The tradeoff between the EE and average throughput under imperfect sensing decisions and different primary user traffic are further analyzed.Comment: This paper is accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Communication

Novel evaluation framework for sensing spread spectrum in cognitive radio

The cognitive radio network is designed to cater to the optimization demands of restricted spectrum availability. A review of existing literature on spectrum sensing shows that there is still a broader scope for its improvement. Therefore, this paper introduces an efficient computational framework capable of evaluating the effectiveness of the spread spectrum concept in the context of cognitive radio network in a more scalable and granular way. The proposed method introduces a dual hypothesis using a different set of dependable parameters to emphasize the detection of optimal energy for a low signal quality state over the noise. The proposed evaluation framework is benchmarked using a statistical analysis method not present in any existing approaches toward spread spectrum sensing. The simulated outcome of the study exhibits that the proposed system offers a significantly better probability of detection than the current system using a simplified evaluation scheme with multiple test parameters

Interference Alignment for Cognitive Radio Communications and Networks: A Survey

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Interference alignment (IA) is an innovative wireless transmission strategy that has shown to be a promising technique for achieving optimal capacity scaling of a multiuser interference channel at asymptotically high-signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Transmitters exploit the availability of multiple signaling dimensions in order to align their mutual interference at the receivers. Most of the research has focused on developing algorithms for determining alignment solutions as well as proving interference alignment’s theoretical ability to achieve the maximum degrees of freedom in a wireless network. Cognitive radio, on the other hand, is a technique used to improve the utilization of the radio spectrum by opportunistically sensing and accessing unused licensed frequency spectrum, without causing harmful interference to the licensed users. With the increased deployment of wireless services, the possibility of detecting unused frequency spectrum becomes diminished. Thus, the concept of introducing interference alignment in cognitive radio has become a very attractive proposition. This paper provides a survey of the implementation of IA in cognitive radio under the main research paradigms, along with a summary and analysis of results under each system model.Peer reviewe

Multi-antenna energy detector under unknown primary user traffic

In cognitive radio (CR) networks, the knowledge of primary user (PU) traffic plays a crucial role in designing the sensing slot duration and synchronization with PU traffic. However, the secondary user (SU) sensing unit usually does not have the knowledge of the exact time slot structure in the primary network. Moreover, it is also possible that the communication among PUs are not based on synchronous schemes at all. In this paper, the effect of unknown primary user (PU) traffic on the performance of multi-antenna spectrum sensing is evaluated under a flat fading channel. In contrast to the commonly used continuous time Markov model of the existing literature, a realistic and simple PU traffic model is proposed which is based only on the discrete time distribution of PU free and busy periods. Furthermore, in order to assess the effect of PU traffic on the detection performance, analytical expressions for the probability density functions of the decision statistic are derived considering Energy Detection (ED) test as spectrum sensing method. It is shown that the time varying PU traffic severely affects the spectrum sensing performance. Most importantly, our results show that the performance gain due to multiple antennas in the sensing unit is significantly reduced by the effect of PU traffic when the mean lengths of free and busy periods are of the same order of magnitude of the sensing slot