Cyclostationary spectrum sensing for OFDM signals in the presence of cyclic frequency offset

In this paper, we consider the problem of spectrum sensing in cognitive radio for OFDM signals using correlated pilots. The pilot correlation is exploited to detect the presence of a primary signal based on its cyclostationary properties. The performance of such detector relies on the exact value of the cyclostationary frequency of the signal of interest. However, in actual cases an offset may be caused in the cyclic frequency due to various reasons. Therefore there is a need to estimate the cyclic frequency offset in case of cyclostationary spectrum sensing for OFDM signals. In this paper, an iterative method to estimate and compensate the Cyclic Frequency Offset (CFO) is proposed and evaluated using simulations.