Performance analysis of energy and eigenvalue based detection for spectrum sensing in Cognitive Radio network

Abstract

Cognitive Radio (CR) has recently been active area of research because of its ability to opportunistically share the spectrum. Spectrum sensing is an important functionality of cognitive radio by which the CR can sense the spectrum in nearly real time and provide knowledge of white spaces in the spectrum. It is desired in general to sense the primary signal at very low signal strength i.e. low Signal to Noise ratio (SNR) especially when the CR network (CRN) is to be operated on TV white spaces. Various detection algorithms have been researched in different conditions. This paper presents the performance analysis of energy detector and Eigen Value Based (EBD) detector in presence of very low SNRs.