Assessment of energy detection spectrum sensing under different wireless channels

With the increasing spectrum scarcity due to increase in the wireless devices, and limited availability of spectrum for licensed users only, the need for secondary access by unlicensed users is increasing. Cognitive radio turns out to be helping this situation because all that is needed is a technique that could efficiently detect the empty spaces and provide them to the secondary devices without causing any interference to the primary (licensed) users. Spectrum sensing is the foremost function of the cognitive radio which senses the environment for white spaces. Various techniques have been introduced in the spectrum sensing literature and these techniques are still under research. In this paper, we study one of the chiefly used techniques called energy detection spectrum sensing. It is known that when the signals travel in the wireless medium via various channels, they undergo several impairments caused by the different channels like additive white Gaussian noise and Rayleigh fading etc. Here, an attempt is made to assess the energy detection technique over these two wireless channels.