Effect of spectrum sensing errors on the performance of bit loading for orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing-based cognitive radio systems

The effect of spectrum sensing errors on the performance of bit loading algorithms in cognitive radio systems based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is studied in terms of throughput and average bit error rate. Different spectrum sensing parameters and data transmission parameters are examined to evaluate the performance degradation. Numerical results show that the sensing errors cause significant performance degradation and that, when the signal-to-noise ratio is high, the inter-carrier interferences caused by carrier frequency offset are dominant in the performance degradation.