Energy-reduced non-contiguous spectrum sensing for compliance enforcement in dynamic spectrum access environments

Spectrum measurements are a crucial element of compliance enforcement in dynamic spectrum access (DSA) networks and for emerging interference limit policies such as harm claim thresholds. Such measurements should provide better spatio-temporal resolution than traditional compliance enforcement approaches for characterisation of spectrum usage. Using current techniques, even in distributed monitoring networks, monitoring nodes typically sense contiguous spectral bands, including sub-bands which may not be of interest. This can be energy inefficient, particularly for use in denser monitoring networks, such as those envisioned for DSA within the VHF and UHF bands. In this paper a knowledge-based, non-contiguous, multi-resolution sensing approach for characterization of spectrum occupancy is proposed for compliance enforcement networks. The knowledge framework is introduced for scenarios involving heterogeneous radio access technologies (RAT), and non-uniform spectral sampling using the Non-Uniform Fast Fourier Transform (NUFFT) is demonstrated. The performance of the proposed approach is compared to the typical contiguous sensing approach used in practice, using simulations. Results suggest that the proposed approach can decrease the number of computations required, which would improve energy efficiency for individual nodes in monitoring networks.