A Hardware Prototype of a Flexible Spectrum Sensing Node for Smart Sensing Networks

Abstract

In this paper we present a prototype for a spectrum sensing node for a cognitive radio sensing network. Our prototype consists of a custom down-conversion front-end with an RF input frequency range from 300 MHz to 3 GHz and a Power Spectral Density (PSD) estimation algorithm implemented on a Virtex-6 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The base-band processing part is capable of calculating the PSD for a bandwidth upto 245.76 MHz achieving a resolution of 60 kHz and an online variable averaging functionality with a maximum of 32767 averages. Real time performance and calculation of the PSD for real world signals in the GSM downlink, DECT and the UHF DVB-T bands is demonstrated.