Distributed recursive energy detection

Recent studies have shown that, while the available licensed radio spectrum becomes more occupied, the assigned spectrum is significantly underutilized. To alleviate the situation, cognitive radio (CR) technology has been proposed to provide an opportunistic access to the licensed spectrum areas. CR systems are able to serve the secondary users for detecting and utilizing so called spectrum holes by sensing and adapting to the environment without causing harmful effects or interference to the licensed primary users (PU). CR systems need to detect the presence of a primary user by continuously sensing the spectrum area of interest. Radiowave propagation effects like fading and shadowing often complicate sensing of spectrum holes because the PU signal can be weak in a particular area. Cooperative spectrum sensing is seen as a prospective solution to enhance the detection of PU signals. This paper studies distributed spectrum sensing in a cognitive radio context. We investigate a distributed energy detection scheme without using any fusion center. Due to reduced communication such a topology is more energy efficient. The PU signal is assumed to be in slow fading. A recursive distributed power estimation and detection scheme is proposed. The theoretical findings are verified through simulations.