Spectrum estimator and cyclostattionary detector for cognitive radio

Spectrum sensing is one of the most challenging task in implementing future cognitive radios. The sensing unit should provide reliable information about the surrounding radio spectrum with small delay and low power consumption. This paper presents an implementation of a spectrum sensing unit capable of performing both cyclostationary feature detection and spectrum estimation for energy detection. A prototype is designed on a FPGA for measurement and demonstration, and synthesis for 65 nm CMOS process provides estimates for area and power consumption in an ASIC implementation.