Wireless Fingerprint Aided Spectrum Sensing in Cellular Cognitive Radio Networks

Apart from the received signal energy, geo-location information plays an important role in ameliorating spectrum sensing performance. In this paper, a novel wireless fingerprint (WFP) aided spectrum sensing scheme is proposed. Assisted by the wireless fingerprint database (WFPD), secondary user equipments (SUEs) first identify their locations in the cellular cognitive radio network (CCRN) and then ascertain the white licensed spectrum for opportunistic access. The SUEs can pinpoint their geographical locations via time of arrival (TOA) estimate over the signals received from their surrounding base-stations (BSs). In view of the fact that locations of the primary user (PU) transmitters are either readily known or practically unavailable, the SUEs can search the WFPD or perform support vector machine (SVM) algorithm to determine the availability of the licensed spectrum, according to the locations of themselves and the PU transmitters (PUTs). In addition, to alleviate the deficiency of single SU based sensing, a joint prediction mechanism is proposed on the basis of cooperations of multiple SUs that are geographically nearby. Simulations verify that the proposed scheme achieves higher detection probability and demands less energy consumption than conventional spectrum sensing algorithms.