Current Trends and Research Challenges in Spectrum-Sensing for Cognitive Radios

Abstract

The ever increasing demand of wireless communication systems has led to search of suitable spectrum bands for transmission of data. The research in the past has revealed that radio spectrum is under-utilized in most of the scenarios. This prompted the scientist to seek a solution to utilize the spectrum efficiently. Cognitive Radios provided an answer to the problem by sensing the idle (licensed) bands and allowing (secondary) users to transmit in these idle spaces. Spectrum sensing forms the main block of cognition cycle. This paper reviews the current trends in research in the domain of spectrum sensing. The author describes the type of channel being modelled, diversity combining schemes used, optimal algorithms applied at fusion centre, spectrum sensing techniques employed. Further, the research challenges are discussed. It is presented that various attributes like sensing time, throughput, rate reliability, optimum cooperative users, sensing frequency etc. needs to be addressed. A trade-off needs to be established to optimize two opposing parameters like sensing and throughput.