Cyclostationary detection for cognitive radio with multiple receivers

Abstract

In order to detect the presence of the primary user signal, spectrum sensing is a fundamental requirement to achieve the goal of cognitive radio (CR). This ensures the efficient utilization of the spectrum. Cyclostationary detection is the preferred technique to detect the primary users receiving data within the communication range of a CR user at very low SNR. In this work, we investigate the performance of maximal ratio combining (MRC) based cyclostationary detector to detect a primary user. Using the proposed detection technique, we observed that the MIMO cognitive radio enjoys 6 dB SNR advantage over single antenna when using four receive antennas for all values of probability of detection.