Cooperative Sensing with WIBA Energy Detection under Rural Area Channel Conditions

Remote and rural area connectivity is a true challenge that can be alleviated by allowing shared spectrum access in bands below 1 GHz. Spectrum sensing can provide benefits when used together with the database approach for realizing spectrum sharing. Energy detection (ED) is very suitable in cooperative sensing because of its low computational complexity and it does not need prior knowledge about the signal and noise. In this work, cooperative sensing using the window-based (WIBA) ED method is studied to maximize signal detection distance in a rural area scenario with a dedicated channel model. Based on the required individual user detection probabilities, cooperative signal detection distances in kilometers are explored using both OR and k-out-of-n -rules. The results are compared to that of the localization algorithm based on double-thresholding (LAD) method. Computer simulations using a rural area channel model show that the detection distance difference is tens of kilometers. Furthermore, it was found that the signal detection distance improvement can be even five-fold when using the cooperative sensing approach. Thus the proper use and design of cooperative sensing can help in rural area connectivity.