Hardware implementation of reception diversity techniques for spectrum sensing efficiency enhancement in cognitive radio network

In this paper, we present a real-time hardware implementation of spectrum sensing based energy detection (SS-ED) with reception diversity techniques. The paper mainly focused on selection combining (SC) and equal gain combining (EGC) to improve the probability of detection for spectrum sensing purpose in cognitive radio network (CRN). The performance of system is evaluated in real-time over Rayleigh environment based FPGA (field programmable gate array) platform. The DVB-T (digital video broadcasting - terrestrial) signal in 2k mode is considered as primary signal as specified in IEEE 802.22 WRAN (wireless regional area network) draft standard for re-using the very high frequency and ultra high frequency bands. The empirical results showed that performances of SS-ED with reception diversity techniques enhanced significantly, and they also matched with theoretical analysis. Therefore, these techniques should be utilized to overcome disadvantage of ED over Rayleigh fading channel.