A Study of SNR Wall Phenomenon under Cooperative Energy Spectrum Sensing

Abstract

Energy detection has a low complexity of receiver structure and requires no information about primary signal. However, a single user detection has been proved vulnerable to the noise uncertainty, which causes the existence of a SNR wall below which the detector cannot robustly a chieve the given detection requirement. Compared to single user detection, cooperative energy spectrum sensing algorithms can increase the detection probability significantly. In this paper we expound the SNR wall in a new perspective and analyze the SNR wall phenomenon under typical cooperative energy spectrum sensing algorithms. Besides, experimental tests have been made to study the influence of threshold setting methods to the detection performance. Analysis and simulation results show that cooperative sensing and suitable threshold setting are hopeful to decrease the limitation of SNR wall phenomenon.