Design of Resource/Energy-Efficient Energy Detector for Real-Time Cognitive Radio using WARP

This paper addresses the issue of practical realization of real-time Cognitive Radio (CR) enabled opportunistic Secondary Users (SUs) through test-bed design and characterization of energy detection based spectrum sensing using Wireless Open Access Research Platform (WARP). To this end, the SUs leverage the proposed Practical Energy-Efficient Energy Detection (PED) method to sense the incumbent Primary User (PU) channels with high accuracy. The PED method exploits the already existing Carrier Sense (CS) module in a transceiver system for resource efficient implementation of energy detection based sensing. The PED method is further integrated within a proposed Energy Detection based CR Medium Access Control (ECR-MAC) framework developed at the Embedded Processor (EP) for real-time SU operation. The ECR-MAC has been designed to reduce the effective sensing time under medium/high received PU SNR at the SU. Finally, the superiority of PED method, ECR-MAC framework has also been reflected, through performance analysis, in terms of reduced energy consumption in spectrum sensing.