Distributed RF sensing framework with radio environment emulation

This paper introduces a reconfigurable test bed for advanced distributed RF sensing algorithmic prototyping and performance evaluation that demonstrates the feasibility of the QoSMOS project sensing architecture. Both the individual sensors and the controller unit are implemented using the open SDR platform GNU Radio. The sensors use USRP hardware. The current implementation uses the energy detection algorithm in the sensors and the hard 1-out-of-M combination in the controller unit to generate the final decision on the presence of an incumbent signal. All communication between the controller unit and the sensing elements is done over standard IP protocol for ease of use. The test signals imitating the RF scene that the sensors would experience in a real world deployment are created using an Agilent's state-of-the-art radio environment emulator. The significant gains achieved with this distributed sensing test bed are aligned with the theoretical results found in the literature.