Spectrum Sensing over SIMO Multi-Path Fading Channels Based on Energy Detection

One of the techniques for spectrum sensing is the energy detection of signals from primary transmitters. However, when detecting in a certain frequency band, this technique suffers from the random fading introduced by the channel. This problem can be alleviated by the use of multiple antennas introducing spatial diversity. The performance of the energy detector with multiple antennas has already been analytically analyzed for flat fading channels. In this paper, we propose analytical expressions for the performance of multi-antenna energy detector with multi-paths fading channels. These expressions will enable to compare for different channel power profiles the gains brought by the two sources of diversity: spatial (or antenna) diversity and multi-path diversity. This analytical performance is compared to simulations to show the validity of the used approximations.