Real-time wide-band spectrum sensing for cognitive radio

Cognitive radio has received considerable amount of attention as a promising technique to provide dynamic spectrum allocation. Wide-band spectrum sensing is the corner stone for cognitive radio to be functional. Most existing commercial sensing solutions lack either the required flexibility or speed. Software-defined radio (SDR) on the other hand offers very high flexibility and therefore becomes a common platform for CR implementation. Among various SDR platforms, the universal software-defined radio peripheral (USRP) gained broad popularity. This paper presents a real-time wide-band-capable spectrum sensing solution based on USRP. The concept of energy detection and the methodology for wide-band sensing are explained. Finally, the performance of the proposed sensing solution is verified and compared with another popular commercial sensing solution, Airmagnet.