Computationally Tractable Model of Energy Detection Performance over Slow Fading Channels

Energy detection (ED) has been widely used for detecting unknown deterministic signals in many wireless communication applications, e.g., cognitive radio, and ultra-wideband (UWB). However, the performance analysis of ED over slow fading channels is cumbersome, because it is difficult to derive closed-form expressions for the average probability of detection involving the generalised Marcum Q-function and the log-normal distribution. In this letter, we derive an approximation of the average probability of detection over a slow fading channel by replacing the log-normal distribution with a Wald distribution. In addition, we analyze the detection performance of the ED using a square-law combining scheme over multiple independent and identically distributed slow fading channels.