Cognitive Satellite Communications Spectrum Sensing Based on Higher Order Moments

This letter proposes a novel spectrum sensing method for cognitive satellite communications for detecting primary user signals. First, the useful signal power is estimated from the noisy received signal by combining the second- and fourth-order moments of data under investigation. Second, the possible presence of the signal of interest is stated by exploiting the aforementioned useful power as the decision variable. Computer simulations, substantiated by theoretical results, are carried out to evaluate the performance of the method in comparison with recently published techniques. The results evidence the efficiency of the presented technique for cognitive satellite communications.